|
|
User's Guide to Marijuana News
Top Stories
Sponsored Links
Head Shop
Drug Test
(Highest Quality Drug Test Kits and Cleansers)
How To Pass A Drug Test
Pass A Drug Test
Drug Testing Information
Home Remedies To Pass A Drug Test
Ways To Pass A Drug Test
Passing A Drug Test
|
|
Ralph Seeley, Freedom Fighter --
Obituary by Michael D. Cutler, Esq.
Ralph Seeley died Wednesday night, January 21, 1998 at age
49 in a Tacoma, Washington hospital. A comedian, singer, sailor, flyer, journalist and
lawyer, but above all a freedom fighter, his mighty heart gave out five days after falling
into a cancer-induced coma. Today, Jan. 24, happens to be my 49th birthday. I look back
on our 49 years, his journey complete while mine continues, and marvel at my good fortune
in having known him. I hope that what Ralph taught me about life enables and compels me to
better use the time I have left.
Ralph Seeley stood not only for the strength of will that enabled him to struggle for
his personal freedom, enduring more than 11 years after being receiving an original
prognosis of less than two years to live. He also stood for the unrelenting commitment to
doing justice, reserving his greatest energy for the most hopeless victims' struggle for
personal autonomy against the strongest oppressor. His ultimate client, as counsel to
Davids against their Goliaths, was himself.
I came to know Ralph in our roles as lawyers engaged in the legal battle to change the
national policy known as the War on Drugs, more accurately, the War Against Drug Users. My
motives were theoretical. As a white professional, many of whose fellow lawyers enjoyed a
preference for cannabis to alcohol for recreation, the Drug War and its failure to change
human behavior posed no impenetrable barrier to marijuana access.
I was driven to donate time away from my family by the irrationality of a government
that harshly punished the possession of a non-toxic plant (by arresting and jailing mostly
the black and poor among the overwhelmingly white 10 million cannabis users), while
providing subsidies for different drugs (alcohol and tobacco) that kill half a million
citizens annually.
Ralph's perspective on the Drug War was different, far more practical and real. Ralph's
cancer nearly knocked him out of law school, until he found he could control the violent
nausea (caused by the potent chemotherapy needed to tame his equally potent cancer) with
two tokes of marijuana. This medicine caused a dramatic improvement to Ralph's quality of
life, as no conventional medication could relieve his body's debilitating reaction to the
toxic effects of his chemotherapy, without equally disabling side effects. Ralph's
medicine, however, was illegal.
Ralph had access to medicinal cannabis from the Green Cross CBC founded by Joanna
McKee, but he could not accept their (or his fellow patients') risk of criminal
persecution. He refused to endure any patient's needless suffering, caused by the state's
deprivation of what was -- for many wretchedly ill people -- their only therapeutically
effective medicine.
Two years ago in a High Times magazine interview, Ralph described his motivation to
challenge the state law. Referring to his chemotherapy and its resulting nausea that
prevented him from taking (and keeping down) pill medication, particularly Marinol,
synthetic THC, he said, "[I]t just seemed
fundamentally wrong, that here my doctor could prescribe THC in a form [Marinol] I
couldn't use, and she couldn't prescribe it in a form I could use."
So, Ralph took direct action: He sued the state, and at the initial ruling at the trial
court level, he won. The state appealed the trial court's ruling for Ralph, which
invalidated the state law preventing the prescription of marijuana, for violating a
patient's state constitutional rights to control and improve his quality of life, and to
avoid irrationally discriminatory laws. The trial judge determined that the interest of
cancer chemotherapy patients in cannabis' ability to relieve their suffering, far
outweighed the state interest in somehow curbing drug abuse by denying medicinal marijuana
to patients who needed it. On behalf of NORML, I filed supporting appellate briefs for
Ralph in September 1996 (as did the ACLU and the Drug Policy Foundation).
Ralph wrote to me, to advise me of the hearing date at the supreme court. He mentioned
his contact with a judge who asked him when the case was scheduled, then said, "Maybe
you should wait [because] You don't look sick enough." He described his expectation
that at the hearing, he would be wearing a "fanny pack" for the continuous
infusion of chemicals into his veins, noting "with luck, maybe all my hair will be
falling out."
For Ralph, the dry legal theories paled before the stark reality of patients' battles
with illnesses so deadly, and with their medicine that often caused nearly equal
suffering. In arguing his case on appeal in September 1996, Ralph asked the court to
balance the government's "theoretical benefit" of medical marijuana prohibition,
against the effect on him from the denial of his medicine:
"[T]here is nothing theoretical about my vomiting and shitting all over myself in
that hospital. Excuse my language [addressing the nine judges of the state supreme court],
but this is not a theoretical issue. This drug ameliorates genuine suffering of the
citizens of this state, and there's nothing but empty theory on the other [state] side of
the scales."
In July 1997, the state Supreme Court ruled against Ralph, upholding the state's right
to deny medicinal cannabis to patients. "The differences between marijuana [non-toxic
and self-regulated] and synthesized THC [having disabling side-effects], in addition to
the health risks associated with inhaled marijuana [to a dying cancer patient?], justify
the Legislature's decision to treat them differently."
In a decision which, in the words of marijuananews.com publisher Richard Cowan,
"will stand with Dred Scott as a monument to judicial ignobility," the court
found that a patient has no natural right "to choose a particular medical
treatment" (even if it works and nothing else does).
There was a dissenting opinion, beginning with the quotation: "When our rulers worry about our health, we should worry about our
liberty." The lone dissenter questioned how the majority could find the state's
interests superior to Ralph's as a patient in need of his medicine. He cited the US
Supreme Court's abortion decisions, upholding a woman's right to decide whether to keep a
pregnancy, as being superior to the state's interest in protecting a fetus from death by
abortion. In comparison, the majority found an amorphous state interest in somehow curbing
drug abuse to be superior to a patient's undisputed capacity to obtain relief from
debilitating suffering. Ralph's interest in the relief of his intractable pain was at
least as great as a woman's having to carry a pregnancy; moreover, the state's vague drug
strategy is far less compelling than saving the life of an otherwise deliverable child.
"From the perspective of one writhing in nausea on the tiled floor of the oncological
recovery room, the State's justifications to withhold the blessings of relief seem more
sophomoric than substantive."
Ralph's battles are over now, but his spirit endures. When asked whether he thought he
would sustain his initial trial court victory on appeal, Ralph replied "At the
moment, I'm just pleased that I won [at trial], because it injects some sanity into the
discourse [on the Drug War]." Rational discourse will topple Marijuana prohibition,
just as it ended Alcohol Prohibition. For his prodigious efforts in resurrecting the
public debate, as to whether the Drug War Emperor Wears [Any] Clothes, we owe Ralph Seeley
our thanks and undying memories of his life and work.
Mike Cutler's email address is cutlermj@aol.com.
|
|
|
 Supported |
|
|
|
Topics |
|
Thu 22nd 2008f May 2008
|
|
|
| Site Navigation |
|
|
