cannabisnews.com: Yes, We're At War ... Against Sick Americans Yes, We're At War ... Against Sick Americans Posted by FoM on October 14, 2001 at 07:05:19 PT By Vin Suprynowicz Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal As "we watch a war unfold on the television -- a 'good' war to protect us from terrorists ... it raises some questions," writes L.J. Carden of Meadow Vista, Calif., in a Wednesday letter to the editor of California's daily Auburn Journal. "Why then are precious resources -- specially trained, heavily armed and already on the federal payroll `home security types' -- attacking a licensed medical physician and her attorney husband in rural El Dorado County?" asked Carden, whose letter was headlined: "Good war vs. pot raid." "Shouldn't their goal be to protect us from really dangerous people?" Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents on Sept. 28 seized files that contain legal and medical records of more than 5,000 medicinal marijuana patients in El Dorado County when they raided the home and office of Dr. Mollie Fry, a physician, and her husband, Dale Schafer, a lawyer who earlier had announced he will run for El Dorado County district attorney. Fry and Schafer run the California Medical Research Center in Cool, Calif. The patient files remain sealed pending an Oct. 22 court hearing. "In any law book you look up to answer this problem it's going to say it's illegal in the margins," J. David Nick, a San Francisco attorney hired by CMRC, told the Tahoe Daily Tribune. "These type of records are confidential in the eyes of the law. It falls under attorney-client privilege. It's a huge invasion of personal privacy that chills one to the bone." Police and prosecutors respond that the doctor-patient privilege is voided when there's fraud, and they're investigating doctors who they believe are writing recommendations for marijuana when it's not medically justified -- as though police bully-boys are in any position to second-guess doctors on their medical recommendations, and as though these same goons would ever admit there are any legitimate medical uses of marijuana. Fry is herself a breast cancer survivor who is a medical marijuana patient. Cancer has recently reappeared in her blood, according to Jaimie Daniel, an employee of CMRC. In the Sept. 28 raid, the federal government confiscated 32 marijuana plants Fry kept for personal use. "The two-year-old clinic in the town of Cool charges $200 to determine if people can use marijuana for medical conditions from cancer to chronic pain." The AP reports. "If they qualify under 1996's Proposition 215, which bars criminal prosecution for using marijuana for medical conditions, they are referred to cannabis 'clubs' elsewhere for marijuana." A federal magistrate will hear arguments Oct. 22 to decide if the records of the more than 5,000 northern California prospective medical marijuana users can be viewed by federal authorities. Chief Magistrate Gregory Hollows set the hearing Oct. 4 in a courtroom packed with medical marijuana users, several in wheelchairs, according to The Associated Press. Since its passage in 1996, Prop. 215 has been tested in several court cases, including the Placer County trial of Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Steve Kubby. Kubby was acquitted last February on marijuana possession-for-sale charges after a 1998 raid netted 256 plants at his Olympic Valley home -- but has fled to Canada after being threatened with jail for refusing to pay $4,500 in court costs and fines arising from a related misdemeanor conviction for possession of a mushroom stem and a dried cactus button. An adrenal cancer survivor who attributes his survival to his use of medical marijuana, Kubby says he would be deprived of the medicinal herb and would die, thus losing his ability to support and protect his family, if he allowed himself to be jailed. Schafer and Fry weren't arrested during the Sept. 28 searches and remain free, with no charges filed against them. "This is a big, big story," Kubby told me Thursday. "I can't think of another instance where police go into a doctor's office and an attorney's office and just take all their files. It's unprecedented and it's outrageous. ... It's a very important story because if the doctor-patient and attorney-client privilege is breached, then we have no more rights in this country, none. If you can't speak to your most trusted advisers without the police being able to see what was said, then the Constitution is gone, the Bill of Rights is gone, and we've just witnessed a slow-motion police coup d'etat." What's going on here is perfectly clear. We were all taught in our high-school civics classes that if you want to change the law, all you have to do is get a majority of voters to agree with you -- which is exactly what backers of California's humane Proposition 215 did. But these California prosecutors and so-called "police" now reveal they don't believe in -- or honor -- that system at all. Where are the ACLU and the federal civil rights authorities, as these goons now reveal themselves to be an armed gang thoroughly undeserving of any claims to being in the "law enforcement" business, instead harassing and ruining the lives of sick people? Represented by a team of attorneys from the respected California law firm of Halpern and Halpern, Steve Kubby filed suit against Placer County in Placer County Superior Court on June 18, seeking $250 million in damages and compensation. Kubby's lawsuit charges Placer officials violated the Americans With Disabilities Act, committed assault, battery, trespass and false imprisonment, deliberately inflicted emotional distress, and violated the medical marijuana law that Kubby helped pass in 1996. Here's hoping every one of these rabid, life-hating zealots is convicted, personally bankrupted, and given a lengthy sojourn in the gray-bar hotel. Vin Suprynowicz, the Review-Journal's assistant editorial page editor, is author of "Send in the Waco Killers." His column appears Sunday. Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)Author: Vin SuprynowiczPublished: Sunday, October 14, 2001Copyright: 2001 Las Vegas Review-JournalContact: letters lvrj.comWebsite: http://www.lvrj.com/Related Articles & Web Site:Medicinal Cannabis Research Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/research.htmDEA Raids in California http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11079.shtmlNew State Law Eases Penalties on Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11008.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #8 posted by BGreen on June 18, 2002 at 16:25:08 PT Don't believe the lies The patients are the next target! [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by herbdoc215 on October 16, 2001 at 23:32:23 PT: Thank God, finally the media is seeing the truth As someone who's life was ground into the dust by the Humboldt pigs I am overjoyed at reading the truth. I think the dam is finally crumbling around the fools. Maybe there is hope of coming home after all? At least if it's still left. When will we humans ever tire of controling and killing each other? Enough! Steve Tuck, exiled in Canada [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by lookinside on October 15, 2001 at 18:18:15 PT: freedom fighter... i've been REALLY pissed off for 3 years(and sorta pissed off for 30 more...)...i agree with everything you say... [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by freedom fighter on October 15, 2001 at 01:02:16 PT Lookinside to me, Asscroft lied when he said he would divert DEA(death agency) to pay f&%king attention to terrorists. In my book, Dr. Mollie Fry is no terrorist nor the 5000 patients. I think one of our poster, Dutz is one of her patient. He/She is no terrorist either. You are quite right when you said fed got no jurisdiction over your state. They never did under the constitution. However, we got a problem.. There are folks who thought nationalizm is the way to go. These folks been using consitution as toliet paper for too long time.It is really time not for a change. It is just a time to get real pissed off. It is not about revenge or anger. It is about what is constitution is all about.I wondered what does DEA(th)watch.com has to say about this wasting resources on folks who are not terrorists?ff [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by Jose Melendez on October 14, 2001 at 15:23:35 PT: 'Cure' for blindness discovered in spinach As a videographer, the 1 volt generated by spinach "proteins" excites me, since video is measured at 1 volt peak to peak.Jamaicans used to credit cannabis with improving their night vision. Perhaps "Cheech and Chong medicine" wins again!:)See below:'Cure' for blindness discovered in spinach By Lorraine Fraser and Martin Halle (Filed: 14/10/2001) SPINACH, the vegetable loved by Popeye, could prove to be a cure for certain forms of blindness.Doctors now believe that an eye-drop containing a protein taken from spinach could be soon available to treat the millions of people suffering from age-related macular degeneration of the eye and retina pigmentosis.Age-related macular degeneration is a common eye disease associated with ageing that gradually destroys sharp central vision. The macula is made up of millions of light-sensing cells in the middle of the retina. When these cells degenerate, vision is impaired and if the disease progresses quickly, blindness follows.Retina pigmentosis is a genetic disease which affects about one person in 4,000. Sufferers develop night blindness, then tunnel vision and finally loose their colour and day vision. In the Western world it is the most common cause of blindness in people under the age of 70. The cause is unknown.Scientists working for the US government discovered that the protein, known as Photosystem One, was able to generate electrical energy. That energy can trigger light-receiving cells to function, enabling the retina to "see" images again.A team of surgeons working at the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California with Dr Eli Greenbaum, of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has already established that light-receiving cells in the eyes of the blind can be triggered to work again.When pinhead electrodes were implanted in blind people they were able to see images and patterns. Now the Doheny team believes that the spinach protein is capable of setting off a chemical reaction which will stimulate the eye cells.Dr Greenbaum said: "We have found that the protein from the spinach is able to make up to one volt and sustain that over a long period.""Although the neural wiring from the eye to the brain is intact in diseases such as macular degeneration, the cells at the front of their eyes lack photo-receptor activity to transmit the information that makes images."He added: "We believe that Photosystem One can start that process again. We have established the mechanism that could help so many people who are blind or semi-blind to see again."Dr Greenbaum is planning experiments with rats and mice next year and, if successful, human clinical trials in about two years.© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2001. from:http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/14/nspin14.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/14/ixhomef.html Pot is for Peace [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by xxdr_zombiexx on October 14, 2001 at 09:07:32 PT Assualt on Cannabis Movement. The war has escalated. Ashcroft has gotten the power he has wanted. I am simply assuming these 5000 patient records are already violated. I think its reasonable to assume the DEA will have no more respect for the confidentiality of patient or attorneys-client records than they do for other civil rights, and they are already searching through them.Its an assualt that will be used to establish a precedence , on which they will further escalate thier cannabis war. Could marijuana cause Concentration camps? The DEA POT-NAZI's would love to see this funded and probably think this is an oppotune time to sneak it through while everybodys still wavin flags and being told "drug use is treason". Stranger things have happened.The assualt on the Doctor and her attorney husband is a huge deal going almost totally unreported in the commercial media, of course. They get to try to legally erode Doctor -Patient confidentialty, attorney-client priveledge (the very same thing claimed by Cheney in refusing to hand over a list of who was in on the selling of the Arctic Wildlife refuge.).They get access to a database of 5000 medical consumers - I would watch for methodical raids even before it goes to court. forfieture laws will be applied in an industrial manner. The husband was going to run for public office and the raid came AFTER he made the announcement. This is now referred to as the "Kubby Treatment", as they did the same thing to him. He is going to sue them for the ass they sit on and I hope he gets everything. This is terrorism on our own soil, paid for by tax dollars. especially in this time of siege by outside forces, those who dropped the ball to begin with should show some decency and stop the war on cannabis culture.... not escalate it. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by lookinside on October 14, 2001 at 08:08:52 PT: this occurred... about 50 miles from where i live...if a federal judge, on october 22nd, does anything besides having those DEA goons arrested for violating 5000 citizens' civil rights, we can assume that the constitution and the federal government are dead...in my mind, this would mean that they no longer have jurisdiction over us...we would then be citizens of our respective states...is it possible the DEA has backed itself into a corner? could this be the court case that forces the constitution down the fed's throats? we'll see what the judge decides... [ Post Comment ] Post Comment