Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 18:15:16 -0700

Subject: WI: Should Marijuana Be Legalized? (Part 1)

Newshawk: Is My Medicine Legal YET? www.immly.org
Pubdate: Sun, 23 Jun 2002
Source: Fond du Lac Reporter, The (WI)
Website: http://www.wisinfo.com/thereporter/index.shtml
Address: 33 W. Second St., Fond du Lac, WI 54935
Email: tguenther@smgpo.gannett.com
Copyright: 2002 Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers
Author: Lee Reinsch, Reporter Staff

SHOULD MARIJUANA BE LEGALIZED?

Editor's Note: This is the first of a three-day series on the various points
of view about marijuana.

Thirty-somethings Tom, Dick and Harry are at a party. Tom's pounding down
beers, Dick's chain-smoking Marlboros, and Harry takes a few drags from a
funny pipe shaped like Disney's dog Pluto.

Which of them could face a criminal record?

It doesn't take a legal expert to figure out that the only one breaking the
law is Harry. But why is Harry's drug of choice any worse in the eyes of
the law than Tom's and Dick's?

It may just be an image problem, says one local college professor, though a
Fond du Lac County health nurse contends that there are good reasons why
marijuana is illegal.

"If you look at history of most drugs, most drugs really are not as
dramatic as publicity indicates," said Dr. Jonathan Nicoud, professor of
psychology at Marian College. "A lot of the history of drug regulation is
based more on PR (public relations) work than any kind of scientific research."

In the first quarter of the 20th century, marijuana was not illegal, and
opium and its derivatives were available by prescription from doctors.

In 1919, the government enacted Prohibition, with a staff of 170 agents to
enforce it, according to the textbook, "Drugs, Society and Human Behavior,"
used in Nicoud's classes. A year later, when Prohibition ended, the
bureaucrats faced unemployment.

"Once it's born, any bureaucracy wants to continue to exist and you had a
number of bureaucrats whose existence wasn't justified by the job they had.
So they looked for a new menace," Nicoud said.

That menace became marijuana.

"Marijuana itself is not without risk, but in terms of it being a menace,
it doesn't seem at all close to that," Nicoud said. "Other drugs are more
dangerous, but they picked marijuana because it wasn't used a lot in the
mainstream. It was used by farm people and minority people, so if they
picked on that one, there were no people who could vote against it."

The textbook suggests that the government had some influence in newspapers'
printing of stories about blacks and Mexicans smoking pot and becoming unruly.

"A lot of what was offered as 'evidence' against the drug was stories of
blacks and Hispanics going crazy and raping women and killing people,"
Nicoud said.

The textbook also cites an unfounded connection between marijuana use and
insanity as one of the main arguments for outlawing the drug in the 1930s.

"The notion still remains that marijuana can cause a type of psychosis.
There have been reports of psychotic breakdowns occurring with rare
frequency after marijuana has been smoked, but the causal relationship is
in question. The psychotic episodes are generally self-limiting and seem to
occur in individuals with a history of psychiatric problems." (Page 420).

"The history of any law is not always based on reason. The history of the
legal age for drinking has gone up and down over the years and has been
based on little evidence," Nicoud said.

Nicoud said studies have shown nicotine and alcohol to be bigger killers
than all kinds of illegal drugs combined, yet the war on drugs is waged
primarily upon drugs classified as illegal.

"It is a strange thing that we have concerns about certain drugs that
aren't very well based in fact, and drugs we are not concerned about are
drugs we should be concerned about, such as alcohol and tobacco," Nicoud said.

"In terms of killers, they (alcohol and tobacco) are first and second, but
how many times do you see wars on alcohol or nicotine? It's ironic that we
worry most about drugs that are problematic but are not the biggest
problems," Nicoud said.

Nicoud said the heavy constituency of cigarette smokers keeps the
government from rendering it illegal.

"There are so many people who smoke cigarettes that no one wants to outlaw
it. We allow it because there is a big political constituency that supports
it," he said. "

With marijuana, there wasn't a big political constituency, so it was easier
to outlaw, he said.

"As the constituency in favor of it gets larger, then there is more
pressure to decriminalize it."

But a local nurse says there's plenty to be concerned about with marijuana.

The problem with pot is that it's stored in the fat, said Fond du Lac
County Public Health Nurse Darlene Hanke. That's why it takes so long to
get out of the system.

"The brain is 99 percent fat," she said. Thus, the active ingredient in
marijuana, THC, hangs around in the brain and damages brain cells, she said.

Alcohol, on the other hand, is water-soluble and is usually out of the
system by the next day.

Hanke said a videotape of a test involving airline pilots who had smoked
marijuana convinced her that pot is worse for the body than alcohol. The
video showed that, the day after smoking pot, the pilots' coordination and
sense of direction were impaired, she said.

Hanke also maintains that contrary to popular belief that it's not
addictive, it is.

"Years ago people thought it wasn't physically addictive, but you do get
withdrawal symptoms if you've been smoking or eating it in brownies," Hanke
said.

She listed some side effects of withdrawal: "cravings, insomnia or sleep
difficulty, aggression, restlessness, irritability, strange dreams and
vivid color, highly emotional dreams or nightmares, decreased appetite,
weight loss and stomach aches."

She said using marijuana could suppress the immune system, so users may be
ill more often than they normally would be. For this reason, she doesn't
approve of medicinal uses of marijuana for AIDS patients and other people
with terminal conditions.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart

 
 


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Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 21:44:49 -0700

Subject:CA: J.Jones Arrested for Handing Out Literature at Brian Epis Trial Up TOC

From: Dale Gieringer (415) 563-5858  // canorml@igc.org
2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114

   SACRAMENTO, Jun 24:  The trial of medical marijuana defendant Brian Epis 
got off to a spectacular start today with the arrest of Oakland Cannabis 
Buyers Cooperative director Jeff Jones for handing out literature in front 
of the federal courthouse.
    Jones had been part of a group of demonstrators distributing FIJA 
literature and information copied from Epis' website ( 
http://lindenarms.com/court/ ).   He was apprehended by DEA agent Ron 
Mancini, who, after discovering his identity, ordered him arrested by a 
federal marshal. No other demonstrators were arrested. Jones was charged 
with misdemeanor obstruction of justice and released.
     Meanwhile, inside the courtroom Judge Frank C. Damrell, Jr. 
ordered  Epis to face a hearing for criminal contempt of court.  Epis says 
that he had no idea of what the demonstrators were doing. The Judge 
dismissed the jurors and ordered a new date for jury selection 
this  Wednesday, June 26th.



 
 


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Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 09:29:45 -0700

Subject:CA: Judge tosses out pot-case panel Up TOC

Judge tosses out pot-case panel
He accuses a defendant of trying to sway would-be jurors with fliers.

By Denny Walsh -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, June 25, 2002

A long-smoldering medical marijuana case burst into flames Monday when a 
Sacramento federal judge accused the defendant of trying to taint the 
prospective-juror pool and had him briefly arrested.

All 42 would-be jurors were disqualified by an outraged U.S. District Judge 
Frank C. Damrell Jr. when he learned that some of the panelists were given 
a first-person statement attributed to defendant Bryan James Epis, and a 
pamphlet purporting to explain how jurors are manipulated by judges.

Prospective jurors' exposure to the literature triggered a heated exchange 
between Damrell and an agitated J. Tony Serra, who insisted his client had 
nothing to do with the distribution.

The one-page statement "was apparently prepared by your client" and handed 
to people outside the federal courthouse after they identified themselves 
as prospective jurors, Damrell told Serra, while the defense attorney was 
talking over him.

The judge declared that if Epis was behind the distribution, "that's 
criminal contempt," adding that it "sufficiently contaminated" the panel to 
wipe out its viability. Damrell said he will bring in a new panel Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the judge set an Aug. 1 hearing on whether Epis is guilty of 
obstructing justice by attempting to influence the jury.

Monday's clash is the latest manifestation of the increasing tension 
between the advocates of California's law allowing medical use of marijuana 
on a doctor's recommendation and the agents and prosecutors who enforce the 
federal ban on pot for any purpose.

Underscoring the hostile atmosphere was a federal drug agent's arrest of a 
leading pro-marijuana activist, who was then locked up in one of the 
building's holding cells. Jeffrey Jones, who was arrested outside the 
courthouse during the Epis hearing, was later brought before U.S. 
Magistrate Judge Gregory G. Hollows. Jones was cited for a misdemeanor 
attempt to influence jurors by handing out the literature and released 
pending trial.

Jones heads the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, which provided pot to 
patients suffering from AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other serious 
ailments. It was hit with an injunction two weeks ago by a federal judge in 
Oakland.

The ruling halts the operation of such clubs, even though they are 
permitted under California's Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that made 
marijuana legal for some seriously ill patients. Next to consider that case 
is the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled for the pot clubs in 
an earlier, narrower Proposition 215 matter, but was reversed by the U.S. 
Supreme Court. The high court found that medical necessity offers no 
defense to federal prosecution.

While that litigation is playing out in the civil arena, the Epis case will 
be the first federal criminal prosecution involving a cannabis buyers' club 
to go before a jury. The trial is expected to last two weeks.

Epis, 35, was a founder and supplier of Chico Medical Marijuana Caregivers. 
He is charged with conspiring to manufacture at least 1,000 plants, which 
carries a mandatory 10-year prison term, and manufacturing at least 100 
plants, which carries a mandatory five years -- all within 1,000 feet of 
Chico Senior High School.

His voice rising Monday, Serra accused the judge of acting on "double 
hearsay," as U.S. deputy marshals moved in at Damrell's direction, 
handcuffed Epis and led him out of the courtroom.

Damrell later relented and ordered Epis' release. But he found there is 
"reason to believe the defendant caused the dissemination of (the fliers 
and pamphlets) in an attempt to influence the jury's verdict."

He said copies of each were supplied to him by the jury administrator and 
the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Wong. The judge appointed 
Wong and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Melikian to investigate Epis' 
role, if any, in the dissemination of the literature, and prosecute him if 
the evidence warrants it.

Serra said in a hallway interview that the statement of the case has been 
available on the Internet since early this year. An addition to the 
statement urging people to come to the courthouse Monday and join a 
"respectful" protest against federal marijuana policy was later available 
on the same Web site, he said.

In the statement, Epis is quoted as saying that, even though he was 
initially indicted in 1997, he was not charged with a 1,000-plant 
conspiracy until January, after he refused Wong's offer of four years in 
prison in return for pleading guilty to growing 100 plants.

"I never profited from medical cannabis and provided it to seriously ill 
patients with a doctor's recommendation," the statement says.

The pamphlet, a product of the so-called Fully Informed Jury Association, 
alleges that judges rarely tell jurors of their right "to judge the law 
itself and vote on the verdict according to conscience." The pamphlet says 
a person cannot be forced to obey a "juror's oath" and has the right to 
"hang" the jury "if you cannot agree with the other jurors."

About the Writer
- ---------------------------

The Bee's Denny Walsh can be reached at (916) 321-1189 or dwalsh@sacbee.com .

Jeff Jones
Officer of the City of Oakland for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative
PO Box 70401 Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 832-5346 Fax (510) 986-0534  www.rxcbc.org  jeffj@rxcbc.org

Our online store can be found here www.legalcannabis.com

Our online library of OCBC federal civil case legal briefs 
http://www.druglibrary.org/ocbc/

Support our ongoing Federal Civil Court case, visit and donate 
https://www.rxcbc.org/support/ldf_support.php



 
 


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Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 19:54:00 -0700

Subject:NV: Marijuana Petition Headed For Nevada Ballot Up TOC

Newshawk: Krissy www.mpp.org
Pubdate: Tue, 25 Jun 2002
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Copyright: 2002 Associated Press
Source: Associated Press

MARIJUANA PETITION HEADED FOR NEVADA BALLOT

CARSON CITY, Nev. - An initial count shows there are 109,048 signatures on
a petition to let Nevadans have up to three ounces of marijuana without
fear of arrest, the secretary of state's office says.

Verification of the names must be finished by July 8. Even if more than 40
percent were tossed out, the petition to amend the Nevada Constitution
would still meet a minimum requirement of 61,336 signatures to qualify for
the November ballot.

In counties where there are fewer than 500 signatures on the petition,
every one must be examined to determine if those who signed are registered
voters. In other counties, clerks or registrar of voters must sample 5
percent or 500 signatures, whichever is more.

The signatures must represent 10 percent of registered voters in 13 of the
state's 17 counties. The raw count shows the petition had the necessary
signatures in all counties except Elko and Douglas.

Billy Rogers, a spokesman for the group circulating the petition, said
Monday he's confident there are enough valid signatures to be eligible for
the ballot.

The drive is being sponsored by the nonprofit Medical Marijuana Project,
based in Washington, D.C. Rogers said the petition-gathering process in
Nevada cost $300,000.

If the plan qualifies for the ballot, it would have to be approved by
voters in November and again in 2004.

The petition would permit adult Nevadans to possess up to three ounces of
marijuana, and would authorize the Legislature to establish a distribution
system for people who use marijuana for medical purposes.

Voters gave final approval in 2000 to a constitutional amendment to allow
Nevadans to possess marijuana for medical purposes, once they get a
statement from a doctor.

"Under the current law, seriously ill cancer patients are forced to grow
their own marijuana or to purchase it from the criminal market," Rogers
said. "This initiative will allow seriously ill patients to purchase
medical marijuana through a regulated market."

A tax would be levied similar to the one on tobacco products, which are now
taxed at 30 percent of wholesale value. That produces more than $7 million
in revenue.

Advertising of marijuana would be prohibited, as would shipping it into or
out of the state.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth

 
 


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End of Restore-Digest V2002 #117
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