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Since April 20, 2003
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I may well be the first person to have felony marijuana cultivation charges dismissed in San Bernardino County.
(The Barretts got 3-years probation).
And I did it with a public defender ... and a lot of help from Lanny Swerdlow of The Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project (MAPP) and his partner Victor, Joe Elford of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), The Victors, and a lot of other people.
The photos above are of Deputy Dougan returning my property after the felony cultivation charge was dismissed and the Order For Return of Property was granted.
In addition to the criminal cultivation charges I also had to fight an eviction.
All the documents (briefs, transcripts, discovery, etc...) for the criminal cultivation charges, the eviction and the Department of Fair Employment and Housing complaint can be found on my Morongo Valley Timeline.
I became homeless because I am a medical marijuana patient in Santa Cruz in March of 2005 and was homeless for three years, until March 10, 2008 because Santa Cruz, California has 1,000 'units' of transitional and emergency housing and NOT ONE for medical marijuana patients.
I began a blog in November of 2005, and in that blog the entire experience is recorded in detail.
As of this writing (July 16, 2008) I am facing 4 trials, 2 for possession of marijuana, all a consequence of being homeless. Prior to this wave of harassment I was found not guilty of 4 sleeping tickets in Santa Cruz via the "necessity defense". It is truly ironic that I came to Santa Cruz believing I would be left alone as a medical marijuana patient, and they have thrown me out in the street, harraseed and terrorized me, and done everything they can to put me in jail since the day I got here.
March 17, 2008 – Figuring the only way I could keep them from
throwing me in jail was to run for city council, I did so,
qualifying on August 8, 2008. While it was
an ordeal, the result was that all the charges against me were dismissed: two marijuana possession
charges and a battery charge. I was next-to-last by the mail-in count but dropped to last place with the poll votes. The good news is at least
2,000 people do not want me to leave town.
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The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world - Carl Sagan Ph.D., Marihuana Reconsidered (1971).
It is difficult to imagine that future studies will subtract much from the clinical experience-driven perception that cannabis is a remarkably versatile medicine with relatively little toxicity. - Dr. Lester Grinspoon, M.D Associate Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School , co-host of Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine
Reckless Disregard — The robber barons of the drug industry, the real drug pushers of America, are determined that we live or die or suffer in ways that help their bottom line regardless of science, logic, medicine, compassion, or any other consideration.
When considering the witches brew of concoctions the drug companies want to pour down my throat and into my veins I say a resounding "Just Say No". - Dr. Jay Cavanaugh, Ph.D, member California State Board of Pharmacy 1980-1990, National Director American Alliance for Medical Cannabis. OverGrow forums, 03.11.2003
I was sent undercover to Bangkok during the Vietnam War. I was hanging with Chinese drug dealers in Bangkok. They were smuggling heroin into the U.S. in the dead bodies of GIs who were transshipped through Thailand...when you get in, the first thing you discover is that you can't touch some of the biggest drug dealers in the world because they're protected by the CIA or they're protected by the State Department. Everyone from Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico to Manuel Noriega to the contras in Nicaragua to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. Those of us who work overseas realize that this whole thing is a three-card monte game, that it's a lie....Michael Levine - Battlefield Conversions
If anyone tried to pass laws on those same bases today, they'd be condemned. Yet the laws that we have are the last vestiges of Jim Crow. You don't have to identify yourself as a bigot anymore -- you can be for the drug war and you really are getting "them." - Dr. Joseph McNamara - Police Chief for San Jose from 1976-1991, doctorate in public administration from Harvard, currently a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Battlefield Conversions
copyright © 2003-2012 J. Craig Canada aka palmspringsbum.
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