Subject:
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Birthday in Solitary Confinement
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 8 Oct 2000 21:59:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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113 times
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From the LP newsletter I get emailed to me, excerpted to remove the requests
for donations to run ads and letters to Todd to show solidarity:
<begin cite>
<snip>
Today, October 7 is Todd McCormick's birthday.
He will spend his 30th birthday in a closet-sized concrete
cell in solitary confinement at Terminal Island prison in
California.
His crime? He used medical marijuana to relieve the
crippling pain and spasms of a severe spinal condition.
Todd had cancer nine times before the age of ten. The top
five vertebrae of his neck are fused. His hips are
painfully deformed (one hip stopped growing when he was ten
years old as a result of radiation treatment.)
And he wrote about the miraculous relief he got from
medical marijuana - the only drug that ever gave him
relief.
And then he tried to provide that same medicine that had
saved his life and enabled him to be productive, active,
and happy, to other patients in the same desperate need. He
entered into a business partnership with best-selling
author Peter McWilliams. They began production on a book
about medical marijuana. And under Proposition 215, which
Californians had passed overwhelmingly in 1996 to legalize
cannabis for medical purposes, they began to produce
marijuana itself.
Or at least they tried to. Since what they were doing was
legal under state law, they made little effort to hide
their activities. They deliberately set out to define the
limits of Prop 215. Peter openly spoke of becoming "the
Bill Gates of Medical marijuana." They knew that, despite
the legality under California law, they were taking a great
chance under federal law. But they were willing to take
that chance for a cause they believed worth fighting for.
In late 1997, they were both arrested, and charged with
"conspiracy" to produce marijuana.
McWilliams, 50, had suffered from AIDS and non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma since 1996, and had used medical marijuana to
suppress the nausea that was a common side effect of the
potent medications needed to keep him alive.
After a federal judge ruled that McWilliams could not
mention his illnesses at his trial -- or introduce as
evidence any of the documented benefits of medical
marijuana -- he pled guilty to avoid a 10-year mandatory-
minimum prison sentence.
While out on bail awaiting sentencing, McWilliams was
prohibited from using medical marijuana -- and being denied
access to the drug's anti-nausea properties almost
certainly caused his death.
He was found dead in his home on June 14, having choked on
his own vomit.
Todd is serving 5 years without parole for his part in
trying to produce medicine for sick people. Unless we
change the cruel system that has imprisoned him, he will
face not only this birthday behind bars, but 5 more.
I've attached a message from Todd's Mother to the end of
this message. If you can read through it without tears, you
are a stronger person than I am. I'm hoping that you will
take a few minutes to send Todd a belated birthday card.
It's easy to feel forgotten behind bars, and sometimes a
note from the outside world is the only thing that keeps
you alive for one more day.
Especially when you have an extremely painful condition -
and you're denied the only medicine that helps the pain.
Peter McWilliams paid the ultimate price for speaking out
against the insane war on drugs. Even from what became his
deathbed, he never stopped speaking the truth. The
government could not silence him, except by his death.
I pray that Todd does not suffer the same fate from his
imprisonment. He and Peter fought with all they had for the
freedoms of us all.
But now Peter and Todd can no longer fight for us.
Now we have to fight for them.
And we have to fight for the other one million prisoners of
the drug war, and their families.
I believe that we now have the best weapon ever to fight
back against the abomination of the drug war. The Harry
Browne campaign has produced what I think is the most
powerful TV ad the Libertarian movement has ever seen.
The ad opens with man-on-the-street sound bites denouncing
the follies of the drug war. Then, as Harry speaks, we see
images of young people who are imprisoned, for 10, 20, 30,
and up to 99 years for non-violent drug crimes.
Then Harry asks the most important question missing from
the Presidential Debates - "George W. Bush and Al Gore,
would you be better people today if you had spent 10 years
in prison for your youthful indiscretions?"
And then prison doors slam shut over the images of Bush and
Gore.
<snip>
</end cite>
Same old same old.
Our great and pious "federal" government won't admit that the war on drugs is
a failure, won't allow states or the people to decide for themselves, and
won't even allow material facts to be admitted in trials (if there ever was a
stronger need for jury nullification than this case, I'm not aware of it).
As a reminder to readers, federal means a federation of soverign states, not
an overweening central government. While the Declaration of Independence can
only be taken as a polemic to stir revolt, not a blueprint for how to set up a
government, (and therefore statements of intent and of organization should be
taken at propaganda value, not face value, a point lost on some here who quote
from it in support of their claims about what authority the government has) it
does speak on the notion of laws being imposed against the will of the people
as being a justification for revolt.
The Constitution, as amended, which is the actual article of governance that
has controlling legal authority (something that Gore may or may not be
familiar with) speaks to this point in the Bill of Rights when it says all
powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are reserved to the
states or to the people (that last bit is often overlooked but it is an
important part of the sentence).
I am not explictly calling for revolt here (not my style, I prefer civil
disobedience and working for peaceful change) but a state clearly has tried to
implement the will of its people, to wit, to overturn a federal victimless
crime law that usurps states rights and that interferes with medical good, in
order to allow unfortunate victims of suffering some medication for their
ills. And the feds trampled that. As usual.
Same old same old.
BTW, here in the UK papers and telly there's a bit of an uproar about the Tory
shadow cabinet, seems many of them have admitted using drugs as callow youths.
Some papers are once again pointing out that UK bobbies recommend
decriminalization of cannabis... wonder if Labour will have the gumption to
tackle it, or is that an uncool part of Cool Britannia?
++Lar
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Birthday in Solitary Confinement
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| (...) Or an Old part of New Labour? :) I picked up my Evening Standard today, with much blushing about Widdecombe's backtracking and various Tory MPs coming out about having smoked marijuana in their younger years. I'd be surprised if Labour says (...) (24 years ago, 9-Oct-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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