Georgia

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Mourners remember elderly woman who died in shootout with police in her home

November 28, 2006
7 News Boston

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/kathryn_johnston.bmp></td></tr></table>EAST POINT, Ga. -- Friends and relatives packed the small chapel of a funeral home Tuesday to remember the 88-year-old woman killed in a shootout with plainclothes police who broke down the door of her home.

Kathryn Johnston was killed Nov. 21 when she confronted narcotics agents, who authorities said had obtained a "no-knock" search warrant for her home after an informant allegedly bought drugs from a man there that afternoon.

Police said the agents identified themselves, but when they knocked down Johnston's door she shot at them, wounding three of the officers.

Some mourners at Tuesday's service said they won't feel at peace about Johnston's death until police answer questions about why they believed drugs were being sold out of her house in northwest Atlanta.

"I've always thought from the beginning there was a mistake. Nobody wins in this situation," said JoAnne Trawick, a niece.

Family friend Kelly Hill remembered Johnston as a sharp, caring woman who was "like a mother" to her. Johnston never forgot birthdays, addresses or how much she spent at the grocery store each month, Hill said.

"She was the strongest person I've ever known," Hill said in a tearful eulogy. "People would come in town to visit me, and I would say 'You've got to meet Miss Johnston. She's a phenomenon."'

The FBI will lead the investigation of the shooting, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington said Monday. Seven narcotics investigators and a police sergeant have been placed on paid leave until the inquiry is complete.

A family spokesman, the Rev. Markel Hutchins, said an informant's statements to reporters that police told him to lie gave Johnston's family hope that the truth about the shooting will come out.

"They felt that the odds were stacked against them, but this has shown light into this darkness," Hutchins said.

A man who said he was the informant whose tip led to the warrant said in an interview aired Monday on WAGA-TV that he had never purchased drugs at Johnston's home. The man, whose identity was concealed, also said that police had asked him to lie about providing the information.

Pennington said the informant is in protective custody and would be a key part of the investigation.

After the shooting, officers said they found marijuana inside Johnston's home, but the chief said it was not a large amount.

Johnston was described by neighbors and relatives as living in fear; there were burglar bars on the windows of her one-story brick home and she rarely let anyone inside.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office reported Sunday that records show Johnston was 88, despite her family saying she was 92. The funeral program listed her birthday as June 26, 1914.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

[palmspringsbum]

Spokesman: DA should step out of elderly shootout case

Access North Georgia
February 7, 2007


A spokesman for the family of a 92-year-old woman killed in a shootout with police is calling for the district attorney in Atlanta to remove himself from the case.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, the Rev. Markel Hutchins accuses Howard of "a clear conflict of interest" and calls the prosecutor's initial response to the shooting complacent. The claims drew a sharply worded response from Howard hours later.

Kathryn Johnston died and three officers were wounded in the Nov. 21 shootout when police used a no-knock warrant to search for drugs in Johnston's northwest Atlanta home.

When officers raided her home without first announcing their presence, police say Johnston fired a handgun and officers returned fire, killing her. Narcotics officers said an informant had claimed there was cocaine in the home, but none was found.

"(I)t is the fervent desire of Ms. Johnston's family that the same federal authorities that we asked to lead the investigation be allowed to also lead any prosecutorial efforts, should that be appropriate in this matter, without inhibition and with full cooperation from the State," Hutchins wrote.

A week after the shooting, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington asked the FBI to lead a multi-agency investigation into it.

In a written response made available to the media by his office, Howard called much of Hutchins' letter "completely without merit."

"The death of Mrs. Johnston constitutes one of the greatest tragedies ever to occur in Fulton County," Howard wrote. "I will not rest until every person responsible for her death is held accountable."

The shooting has brought renewed scrutiny to the police use of no-knock warrants, with which officers are allowed to raid homes where criminal activity is suspected without first announcing their presence.

Civil rights leaders, including the NAACP, have called on politicians and judges to restrict how often and how easily the warrants are issued, and for cities like Atlanta to create citizen review boards to oversee police actions.

Other questions swirl around the shooting as well.

Pennington placed the city's entire narcotics squad on suspension after a man who claims he was the paid informant in the case said he was told by officers to lie about buying drugs at the home.

Johnston lived alone in the home, family members said. Police said a small amount of marijuana was found during the raid.

In his letter, Hutchins claims it would be impossible for Howard's office to fairly consider prosecuting members of a police force with which it works closely every day.

"This became crystal clear to us as we watched, in horror, as you stood side-by-side with officials from the Atlanta Police Department on the morning of November 22nd as they addressed the public regarding this case," Hutchins wrote.

Howard replied that his office will continue working with state and federal investigators and "(a)t the appropriate time, we will reach a prosecutorial decision based on the facts and circumstances of the case, as justice demands."

An autopsy report by the Fulton County Medical Examiner says Johnston was shot five or six times, in the chest, arms, legs and feet.

The report lists Johnston's age as 92, while noting she "does not appear to be as old as the reported age." The office had initially reported her age as 88. Johnston's family has said she was 92.

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The Kathryn Johnston Indictments: A Good Start. A Long Way to Go.

<span class=postbigbold>How to win real reform in Atlanta.</span>

Radley Balko | February 13, 2007
Reason Magazine

When 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston was shot and killed by Atlanta narcotics officers last November, it had all the trappings of your typical drug raid gone wrong. Critics (like me) cautioned Atlanta officials to use Johnston's death to spur real reform in the investigation and policing of drug crimes, and to avoid what other cities have done in the wake of such tragedies: express regret and remorse, promise changes, then return to doing things the same way they've always been done.

Nearly three months later, Atlanta is showing some encouraging signs. Last week, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced a series of tough charges against the officers who conducted the raid on Johnston's home, including felony murder. And in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, city Police Chief Richard Pennington and Christopher Stone, a criminal justice professor at Harvard, have called for the city to set up a civil rights commission with subpoena power to look into police excesses.

There are two issues at stake in the Johnston raid, and it's important to separate them. The first is the behavior of the individual narcotics officers, who according to reports invented an informant, then pressured an informant used on other cases to lie to cover their mistakes. If true, their behavior is obviously an aberration, and ought to be punished.

The other issue goes to the very heart of drug policing. Yes, the officers' behavior in this case was atypical. But they operated within an all-too-common criminal justice system in Atlanta that gave them room to maneuver. There is a troubling lack of accountability, transparency, and misplaced priorities and incentives with drug policing. Kathryn Johnston's death was tragic, but it was also foreseeable, just the latest in a long and tired series of needless tragedies.

Johnston's family was actually upset by the announcement last week that the officers had been indicted by Fulton County. They fear the charges will interfere with a broader investigation now underway by the FBI and U.S. attorney's office. Some in fact have suggested that the indictments are a way for the DA's office to stave off any investigation into its own conduct in the prosecution of drug warrants. FBI investigators seemed to confirm Johnston's family's angst when they announced that the indictments were a surprise, and may impede the federal investigation.

It's also true that while the Johnston raid seems to have been the handiwork of a few rogue, malevolent narcotics officers, there are also systemic failures in Atlanta's criminal justice system that gave the bad apples room to operate, and allowed Johnston's death to happen. In March 2005, for example, there was a remarkably similar raid on the home next door to Johnston's. Like the Johnston raid, that raid involved a phantom informant, a "no-knock" entry, and turned up no drugs or arrests (the Johnston raid allegedly turned up a small amount of marijuana, but there are doubts about its origin). It also involved several of the same narcotics officers that raided Johnston's home. Unlike the Johnston raid, however, none of the officers were disciplined.

One of the officers involved in the Johnston raid, Officer Arthur Tesler, was also recently reprimanded for lying in a police report about the details of a traffic accident involving his police cruiser. He was allowed not only to keep his job, but to conduct narcotics investigations, where a police officer's word alone is often enough to secure a high-risk no-knock search warrant.

A broad investigation, then, should look at why that prior raid on the home next to Johnston's wasn't properly investigated. When a no-knock warrant—which is supposed to more difficult to obtain than a normal search warrant—turns up no drugs or arrests, alarm bells ought to go off, if not for reasons of accountability and professionalism, then for the fact that an innocent citizen was needlessly terrorized. Why was there no investigation?

It should also look at the judges who sign off on forced-entry warrants. They're supposed to be guardians of the Fourth Amendment, not (literally) rubber stamps. Why did the city magistrate approve a no-knock warrant for Johnston's home just twenty months after the house she shared a driveway with was wrongly raided—by many of the same officers making the same claims?

A recent Associated Press review of all the no-knock warrants granted in Fulton County in 2006 found that "authorities often give scant detail when applying" for them. In some cases police gave no evidence at all. There were times, the AP reports, when "officers only detailed their years of experience with the police force as justification for no-knock powers." And yet the judges still signed off.


A thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to Kathryn Johnston's death should also take a hard look at how informants are used in drug policing. While it's true that in some jurisdictions, informants are registered and evaluated, and their track records are properly scrutinized, in many others, there's little or no oversight at all. That appears to be the case in Atlanta. Informants are also typically given complete confidentiality. Defense lawyers can't question them. Even in the case of botched raids were an informant's tip led to the wrong address, courts have kept the informant's identity secret from plaintiff's lawyers in subsequent civil rights suits. Many times, judges don't even know their identities. All of this puts undue reliance on the word and judgment of narcotics officers.

This isn't to say that all or even most narcotics officers are as dishonest as the officers involved in the Johnston raid. But it is indicative of a system unconcerned about catching the few who are. And even an honest officer can misjudge an informant's trustworthiness. One police officer's judgment alone shouldn't be enough to instigate an action as violent and confrontational as a forced-entry raid.

Finally, a serious inquiry into Johnston's death should take a critical, sweeping look at the fundamental nature of drug policing. The Atlanta Journal reported last month that a misguided focus on arrest numbers and stacking statistics have led to low morale, short-cutting, and conducting high-stakes raids resulting in paltry amounts of contraband. The lure of a big bust, as was promised by the real informant in the Johnston case (a suspect arrested on other charges who said police would find a kilogram of cocaine in Johnston's home) can make a career, tempting officers to cut corners.

A proper look into Johnston's death, then, wouldn't end with the lying narcotics officers. It would include criticism of the entire culture of the city's drug policing. It would include criticism not just of the police, but also of prosecutors and judges. It would reevaluate long-standing policies on the proper way to conduct a drug investigation. And it would ask tough questions about the goals, priorities, and very nature of drug policing.

To their credit, the Johnston family is calling for precisely that kind of sweeping review. "This family doesn't want vengeance," family spokesman Rev. Markel Hutchins told the Atlanta Journal. "The violations that happened had little to do with police personnel and more to do with policy."

Thing is, it's doubtful that kind of reform will come from either a local or a federal investigation. The Johnston family is probably right to assume that the Fulton County DA's office lacks the detachment and authority it would need to investigate colleagues, superiors, judges and even its own conduct in prosecuting drug crimes. But it's doubtful that federal investigators will do much beyond addressing the conduct of the individual officers, mostly because it isn't their job to make policy. Even if it were, the same federal government that raids medical marijuana clinics and prosecutes pain specialists isn't likely to come back with recommendations for sweeping drug policy reforms.

When 57-year-old Harlem resident Alberta Spruill was killed in a botched drug raid after a bad tip from an informant in 2003, the city of New York faced many of the same questions Atlanta faces today. Despite public outcry, a rash of media stories and investigations, and promises from the city to change its ways, it wasn't long before police were knocking doors off their hinges, and new reports of "wrong address" raids again popped up in the newspapers.

If Kathryn Johnston's death is going to be a watershed moment in the way Atlanta conducts its drug policing, the city will have to do better than New York (and, frankly, just about every other city in the country). Reforms need the teeth of enforcement mechanisms, the accountability that comes with transparency, and they need to grant review boards broad jurisdiction and subpoena powers. These reforms will have also to come from policy makers, at the insistence of their constituents. Advocates will have to see them through to implementation without losing interest, or developing outrage fatigue.

Anything less, and within months it will be back to business as usual.

Radley Balko is a senior editor of Reason.

[palmspringsbum]

Issue #20.34 :: 03/18/2009 - 03/24/2009

Smoking your meds

<span class=postbigbold>An Augusta AIDS patient lays out his argument for legalizing medical marijuana</span>

BY JOSHUA MCCRACKEN

AUGUSTA, GA - In September, Elizabeth Wilsey of South Augusta became one the nation’s most unusual casualties in the government’s war against marijuana and medical marijuana users.

According to news reports, 80-year-old Wilsey, a white-haired grandmother, was a medical patient who used marijuana for relief of severe migraine headaches. When Richmond County narcotics officers raided her home, they found approximately one-half pound of marijuana.

They charged her with possession with intent to distribute. She admitted selling it. Sources close to the case say the reason she had so much on hand was because her dealer was moving out of the city, so she stocked up, not knowing when she’d get more.

Yet, to our knowledge, she had no firearms on the premises. Wilsey had no prior criminal record. That helps explain her relatively light sentence of five years probation.

However, in light of the increasing number of states that have passed compassionate-use laws for medical patients, in light of polls showing that 75 percent of Americans believe there is a place for medical marijuana, the Wilsey case raises the question: Why are we using our law-enforcement resources on medical marijuana users?

It’s a serious issue for people like Wilsey. And for me.

That’s right. Yours truly was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS just last year. I went from weighing 180 pounds in the beginning of 2008 to weighing less than 130 pounds in August, when I first became seriously ill.

My first HIV test was negative. But upon re-testing, the presence of HIV-1 antibodies was discovered. In November, doctors told me my disease had become full-blown AIDS. Though it normally takes 8-12 years for HIV to become AIDS, it would appear that it took my disease only a matter of months. I have been sick ever since.

Because I cannot have legal access to potentially more effective (and less addictive) medicine — such as marijuana — I am prescribed meds such as hydromorphone for pain caused by golf-ball sized lymph nodes in the sides of my neck. Hydromorphone is an opioid painkiller that is five times the strength of morphine. It is also known by the brand name Dilaudid. For the record, I am grateful that my doctors gave me the relief that they could (some of them might be reading this).

But Wilsey and I both could be helped by something much cheaper and less dangerous. I believe our pain and suffering is being compounded by draconian drug policies. Government entities such as the DEA continued to push their agendas without regard to people like us, or the millions who support our option to be treated with the medication called marijuana

California has progressed beyond any other state on the medical marijuana front. It’s one of more than a dozen states that have passed laws allowing its use by AIDS and cancer patients, individuals with sleep disorders and chronic pain sufferers.

Until recently, federal enforcement routinely trumped state laws, closing down medical marijuana dispensaries, even those that were carefully regulated by city and state laws. Some owners of these dispensaries are still facing life sentences simply for supplying patients with state-approved medications for which they are in dire need.

Currently, there are no alternatives to cannabis for pain, wasting syndrome and sleep disorders that are anywhere near as effective. Most conventional medicine being prescribed for these disorders is also highly addictive.

Has anyone ever heard of someone breaking into vehicles to steal car stereos in order to sell them so they can score some more pot? The same cannot be said for dangerous drugs such morphine, hydromorphone or oxycontin, just to name a few. Most effective sleeping medications are also addictive, as many celebrities can attest.

On the forefront of the battle for medical marijuana lies an organization known as NORML. NORML (National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws) has 135 chapters worldwide, including one at the University of Georgia. It directed by Allen St. Pierre in Washington, D.C.
St. Pierre is a well-spoken activist who carries the air of a highly successful businessman or lawyer. That’s fitting for an organization that lobbies at local, state, federal and international levels for marijuana law reform.

“There are 13 states that have some sort of protection for medical use on the books,” St. Pierre said. “Most of them don’t offer marijuana at retail locations like in California and parts of Colorado, but they do allow for possession of small amounts of the drug and many of them even allow medical patients to cultivate it.”

During the February interview, St. Pierre said Eddie Lepp and Charles Lynch, owners of two medical marijuana dispensaries that the DEA raided in different parts of California, were being sentenced as we spoke. They are facing extremely long prison terms despite the fact that the new administration has pledged to stop allocating federal resources to circumvent state laws with respect to medical marijuana.

Not even a week after Obama was inaugurated, the DEA staged raids on several dispensaries in what appeared to be an effort to thumb their nose at the new president. In the very beginning of February, again, federal agents staged raids on four additional medical marijuana dispensaries, all of which complied with city and state laws.

This time, public outcry prompted a response from the White House. “The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind,” White House Spokesperson Nick Shapiro told the press.

The DEA’s attacks on medical marijuana in states with compassionate-use laws officially ended on Feb. 27, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder responded to questions about recent DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.

“What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we will be doing here in law enforcement. He was my boss during the campaign. He is formally, technically, and by law my boss now and so, what he said during the campaign is now American policy,” Holder said.

His announcement confirming that the government will no longer be targeting dispensaries and medical patients protected under state laws was a milestone for the cannabis community. Activists now expect the introduction of new legislation for compassionate use in multiple states. Whether or not the administration will actually reschedule the drug is unclear, but many are looking for some sort of legislation at the federal level to make the announcement “official.”

However, that affects only the 70 million Americans who live in states where medical marijuana is legal. There are 37 more states with laws outlawing marijuana for all uses.

Some may be surprised to know that, at one point, legislation was even introduced for Georgia, though it never passed. (On a personal note, of the top 10 most AIDS-infected states, Georgia is No. 6. A local doctor speaking under conditions of anonymity said Augusta is the third most AIDS-infected city in the entire Southeast.)

“Most of the people I know grew up with the notion that the punishment should fit the crime,” St. Pierre of NORML says. “But in cases like those of Elizabeth Wilsey, do they?”

He noted that it costs the government far more to investigate and prosecute cases like this than it’s worth. And for what? To arrest an elderly woman for self-medicating?

“The fact that she only received five years probation speaks to the fact that the laws don’t enjoy the popular support necessary to be embraced fully in this country,” St Pierre said. “It would be cruel, inhuman, a public relations disaster if they took it to the extreme. If you’re going to catch this woman dead center, I mean, if she was a 19-year-old black man caught on the side of the road would she have gotten probation then? This undermines the morality of the law at its core.”

St. Pierre went on to note that if the government really wants to save money during these times of economic crisis, it should move to at least decriminalize possession of small quantities of marijuana. Nine out of 10 people arrested for marijuana are arrested with very small quantities. Some 700,000 people are arrested each year for simple possession. Most of these people are not dealers. They are casual users or medical patients.

St. Pierre notes that the Southeastern United States is the worst when it comes to laws revolving around cannabis. “These policies are unjust, bordering on malevolent, especially when it comes to medical marijuana.”

In places like Ohio, individuals can possess up to 100 grams (almost a quarter pound) of marijuana and receive no more than a $200 fine. In those places, Elizabeth Wilsey’s story would not have even made the news.

Though the government officially claims that it believes there is no medical value for marijuana, they have contradicted themselves by funding the research behind a drug called Marinol, which is synthetic THC. THC or Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol is one of the primary active ingredients in marijuana. Marinol is prescribed to AIDS and cancer patients for a condition called wasting syndrome, a condition I am personally familiar with.

When a patient has wasting syndrome, they lose their appetite, become malnourished and lose weight rapidly. This condition causes patients to become much sicker and, in some cases, without treatment they die. Marijuana and Marinol are the only two known substances for effectively treating wasting.

Some of you may have heard talk of the “munchies” back in your hippie pot-smoking days.

Active chemicals in marijuana have the unique ability to stimulate the appetite of users by a wide margin, helping those suffering from wasting remain well-nourished.

However, Marinol has become yet another means for government entities and the DEA specifically to undermine the reform movement, but there is a problem with this. Activists say there is no comparison between Marinol and marijuana. The effects of marijuana are immediate. With drugs like Marinol, it takes an hour to kick in.

In regards to Marinol, St. Pierre made an important point. “Cancer or AIDS patients with nausea cannot hold it down,” he said. Nausea and vomiting are common side effects of antiretroviral medication for AIDS patients, and chemotherapy for cancer patients. That makes Marinol worthless.

St. Pierre said it costs between $9 and $11 per pill for Marinol. Patients consume the drug two to three times a day. That’s $30 a day, which is more than even the inflated street prices of marijuana. Growing marijunana yourself, of course, is almost free. Now, in effect, patients are paying far more for a drug that is less effective.

“Marijuana has been used as a medicine for thousands of years. It first appeared in Western medicine in the mid-19th century. Its latest renaissance began in the 1960s with the appearance of a trickle of letters in popular magazines (such as Playboy) of anecdotal accounts testifying to its usefulness in the treatment of a variety of symptoms,” said Dr. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School.

At that point, he said, its illegal use as a medicine began to grow dramatically. In 1996 California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana and 13 other states followed suit.

“These cascading developments speak to the growing understanding that it is a sort of wonder drug for three reasons: it is remarkably free of toxicity, it is less expensive than the conventional medicines it replaces, and it is remarkably versatile,” Grinspoon said. “It is currently used in the treatment of a large and growing number of symptoms and syndromes.”

Prohibitionists argue that by legalizing even medical marijuana, we’d be giving kids the wrong idea. St. Pierre says that if those very same people were injured in a car wreck and screaming in pain, an EMT would inject them with an opioid painkiller (and they’d be grateful) yet children do not think that means it is acceptable to go shoot up heroin. There is simply no logic to it.

One of the greatest obstacles the medical marijuana reform movement has to overcome is the idea among some conservatives and many law-enforcement officials that medical use is simply a guise for people who want to use recreationally. For me, nothing could be further from the truth. The simple fact is there are scientific studies backing the medical value of cannabis. The individuals opposed to medical marijuana are simply unaware of the studies, or worse, they just don’t care about the well-being of the sick and dying.

In regards to medical marijuana, Richmond County Sheriff Ron Strength has a clear view.

“It’s against state law and that’s the law we’re going to enforce. If the law changes then we will enforce the new law,” Strength said.

“I would not advocate marijuana law reform for medical patients,” he added, citing that it would be abused.

That’s true. Drugs will be abused regardless, but is that any reason to deny medical patients the treatment they need? Currently, marijuana is classed as a Schedule I drug along with drugs like LSD, heroin and PCP. Schedule I drugs have no medical value according to the DEA. They are completely illegal in the United States. Even methamphetamine — arguably one of the most terrible and addictive substances currently known to society — is classed as schedule II and available for prescription under brand names like Desoxyn for people with disorders such as narcolepsy.

“We don’t make the laws. We just enforce them,” Strength said.

Of course, we can’t fault the police for doing their jobs but it is much more complicated than that. Strength also decides where local law enforcement’s priorities lie. Do we go after meth cooks, cocaine and crack dealers, thieves, violent criminals or grandmas self-medicating themselves?

I admit to smoking marijuana recreationally in the past, as have 80 million other Americans, including our current president. Does that negate the medical benefits of this drug?

Steven Hager of High Times magazine noted that even the government’s Institute of Medicine agrees that marijuana is medicine. “So did Francis Young, the DEA administrative law judge who reviewed marijuana’s medical applications and insisted it must be rescheduled. He was ignored. There are hundreds of disorders and diseases for which marijuana can be a useful treatment,” Hager said.

A Canadian medical patient with legal access to marijuana due to compassionate-use laws enacted in his country of residence agreed to be interviewed under conditions of anonymity. This medical patient worked as a consultant for the Department of Defense just last year. His diagnosis is Crohn’s disease.

Crohn’s disease is an autoimmune disorder where a victim’s immune system attacks his own body when he eats food. Crohn’s disease can be excruciatingly painful and require regular hospitalizations. The discomfort experienced can be so extreme that victim also struggles to keep on weight due to appetite loss caused by the pain experienced when he ingests food.

“I get the usual Crohn’s symptoms, constant pain whenever there’s any food in my body,” the medical patient said. “I was prescribed adrenal steroids, Asacol and Diazepram. Most of this stuff didn’t work. Adrenal steroids worked for a month then my body became immune to them and they messed me up pretty bad. I put on like 40 pounds. Then they put me on Remicade, an immune suppressor. I still get sick every day but it’s one-twentieth as bad as it used to be.”

His symptoms include nausea, vomiting and extreme abdominal pain. “There have been cases where people don’t even feel any symptoms and end up in the ER. A few hours later their stomach is open and the doctors have five feet of completely black necrotized intestine on the table.”

He reports consuming 1-3 grams of marijuana a day to treat the pain from his disease and to improve his appetite.

Hager says marijuana can treat other diseases, too. “For glaucoma it relieves pressure on the optic nerve and prevents blindness. For MS it relieves pain and allows freedom of movement. For epilepsy it can reduce seizures. Cannabis is safer than any pills. We have hundreds of thousands who die every year from legal drugs. No one ever overdosed on marijuana, ever.”

Hager pointed out that there is even a group of law-enforcement professionals who are marijuana law reform activists. The group is called LEAP, which stands for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Drugs like oxycontin, dilaudid, morphine, codiene, phentermine, xanax, valium, ativan, talwin, stadol, methadone, hydrocodone and temazepam all have mind-altering and pleasant effects for users, yet they can still be prescribed by doctors. As an AIDS patient, I have personally had prescriptions for three of the above drugs within the last 90 days. Yet I can’t be prescribed marijuana.

Some believe that the question we should be asking is what a multi-billion-dollar industry such as the pharmaceutical industry would stand to lose if marijuana was legalized for medicinal use. The answer is a lot, according to High Times’ Hager “Marijuana is illegal because the legal drug industry (pills, alcohol and tobacco) want it illegal. It competes with their products. The oil companies are also on this agenda because hemp can replace many petrochemical products, including gasoline and plastic,” Hager said.

Amid the cannabis community, some are pushing an underground weapon for the reform movement. They call it “jury nullification.” That’s when jurors return a “not guilty” verdict for a defendant in spite of the evidence. They do that because they believe a law is unjust.

Jurors who believe a patient has a legitimate medical need for marijuana may dismiss a case against the patient, even if that patient was caught red-handed with a joint in his or her hand. Prosecutors may believe that they are protected from nullification by asking potential jurors about their beliefs ahead of time, but given that so many millions of Americans support the medical use of marijuana, the odds are that most juries will contain people sympathetic to the defendant.

The courts do not want jurors to know that jury nullification is even an option. One of Augusta’s most talented attorneys, who is also a judge, was alarmed when we brought up the subject. “It is a juror’s duty to uphold the law, not ignore it,” he told us under conditions of anonymity.

As a former prosecutor, he’s troubled by the idea of spending so much time building a case against a defendant only to have a jury dismiss it.

Defense attorneys cannot suggest jury nullification to a jury or in front of them. “It would be ethically questionable and any lawyer would likely get hammered by the judge at the mention of it,” the judge told us.

That’s why the jury nullification movement is underground, talked about outside the court in hopes a few jurors will become aware of the possibility. It’s talked about because the next time someone like Elizabeth Wilsey faces marijuana charges — and has a medical reason for it — that person may take the risk of facing a jury.

I’d take that risk.

The medical conditions people like Wilsey and I suffer are painful and debilitating. In my case, it’s probably fatal — and it carries a significant stigma. But I expose my own medical details with this in mind: If one good thing could come from my illness, such as a change in attitude toward medical marijuana, it’s worth the risk.

[palmspringsbum]

Metro Spirit
Issue #20.35 :: 03/25/2009 - 03/31/2009

Letters address marijuana

BY TOM GRANT


AUGUSTA, GA - Last week’s cover story on medical marijuana brought two responses that I normally would not publish. We almost never use letters from people who ask that they remain anonymous.

In these cases, however, the writers have legitimate reasons for their reluctance to be identified. One is in the military. Another is an AIDS patient.

The AIDS patient writes, “I would like to first give my personal thanks to Joshua McCracken for his valor in speaking out publicly about his struggle with HIV, and now full-blown AIDS!

This is great that he pushed aside the stigma that is anything but hidden here in Augusta.

“I also really want to thank the paper itself for putting this on the front page. Great job on bringing light to issues that affect so many silently.

“I totally agree with his stance on the use of marijuana as a medication. It truly does have great prospects as a medication. There are next to no unpleasant side effects such as addiction, as there is that possibility with most all other medications.

“I know of many who need this medication (myself included) to keep going and also to just make life a little easier. Losing so much weight as well as the pain associated with AIDS can only be combated with marijuana! I hope that this article and those to follow will change laws because they aren’t working currently.”

The soldier writes: “I am a chronic pain sufferer. My pain has led the Army to medically separate me this spring. The best the Army could do for me was to prescribe me 800 mg of Motrin (ibuprofen) and hydrocodone (Vicodin) and just deal with the pain.

“Since I started this regimen in November, I have had to get the dosage of the Vicodin, which is a narcotic, increased to the highest dosage available on Fort Gordon. I have built a tolerance to the drug. The problem with building a tolerance is that it eventually builds into addiction.

“The doctors I was dealing with understand the level of my pain, and have prescribed me up to 40 at a time, knowing that I can take up to three a day if I am active. Fortunately, I am not currently working, and am only having to take one or two of them a day. I am 23 years old, and my wife is pregnant with twins. I know with the level of pain, which is increasing daily, I won’t be able to run with my kids, or play with my kids.

“If I was given the opportunity to use medical marijuana, I would jump on it. I am a firm proponent of marijuana reform.

“I hope that someday, for the sake of Joshua, Elizabeth Wilsey and the countless others who benefit from marijuana, that the laws will change. But I know that as long as the pharmaceutical companies have their hands in the wallets of the legislators, that day will never come.”

[palmspringsbum]

Posted on Sun, Jun. 21, 2009

Georgia gets a medical marijuana green light
By Ronald Fraser

Special to The Telegraph

At long last, policymakers in Washington have begun to draw a line between illicit drug use and the legitimate use of drugs as medicine. In March, President Obama’s attorney general announced the federal government will no longer prosecute medical marijuana clinics that operate in compliance with state laws. This means lawmakers in Atlanta are now free to decide — without interference from Washington — if marijuana will fill a medical niche in Georgia.

Thirteen states have already removed criminal penalties for the use of medical marijuana and actively regulate how, with a medical doctor’s recommendation, marijuana is made available for patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, severe pain, glaucoma, epilepsy and other chronic conditions. But until now, Washington has disregarded these state laws. Since California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, for example, federal agents have raided over 100 marijuana distribution centers there.

WASHINGTON’S FIRST STEP.

The first step has been taken with Washington’s tacit acknowledgement that closing down state-regulated marijuana clinics is a misuse of taxpayers’ money and harmful to Americans coping with serious illnesses. Many thousands of ill people attest that smoking, vaporizing or orally ingesting marijuana relieves pain, nausea and other symptoms far more effectively than Marinol, a pharmaceutically available synthetic version of marijuana.

GEORGIA’S NEXT STEP?

According to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based advocate for legalizing medical marijuana, Georgia already has a limited medical marijuana law on the books. Under this statute, the state is authorized to distribute marijuana received from the federal government to a small number of patients taking part in research programs.

Washington’s new medical marijuana policy gives Georgia the freedom to exercise its historic roll as the primary watchdog for the health and welfare of its citizens. Whether or not Georgia patients will be given greater access to medical marijuana is now up to the state Legislature.

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OTHER MEDICINAL DRUGS

Marijuana is not the only targeted medical drug. In all 50 states federal raids can still close down pain clinics and arrest pain management physicians who prescribe large doses of opioids, highly effective, legal painkillers made from opium or synthetics with the properties of opiate narcotics.

Dr. Joel Hochman, director of the National Foundation for the Treatment of Pain in Houston, Texas, says the drug-war hysteria is making it too risky for many doctors to accept patients in chronic pain and that, with help from the media, federal raids on so-called “pill mills” paint a false picture that the streets are awash in drugs carelessly handed out by unprincipled doctors. Instead, he claims, these clinics provide last-resort care to largely uninsured or under-insured blue-collar and other limited-income workers, many with work-related injuries, who can only afford a five-minute visit at high volume, low-cost, low-profit clinics.

What to do? “End opiophobia and fantasy-driven public policies,” says Hochman. “Confront the fact that law enforcement agencies and prisons are all strung out on the drug prohibition laws and need to be brought back to reality.”

Here is a rare opportunity for elected officials in Georgia and in Washington to take a long hard look at how harsh drug laws are undermining medical care in America. For the millions of people desperately coping with chronic ailments, let’s not waste it.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. Write him at fraserr@erols.com.