cannabisnews.com: Chicoan Gets 10 Years for Growing Marijuana Chicoan Gets 10 Years for Growing Marijuana Posted by CN Staff on October 08, 2002 at 10:43:04 PT By Chris Rizo - Capitol Correspondent Source: Chico Enterprise-Record Bryan James Epis, co-founder of Medical Marijuana Caregivers in Chico, was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for his part in what prosecutors called an elaborate plan to make millions by selling pot.In June, a jury of eight women and four men found the 35-year-old Epis guilty of charges of conspiring to grow more than 1,000 marijuana plants near Chico High School. Epis, who says he uses marijuana for neck and back pain resulting from a 1983 near-fatal traffic crash, unsuccessfully argued during his weeks-long long trial that he had the right to dispense marijuana to seriously ill patients under Proposition 215 - California's Compassionate Use Act - approved by the voters in 1996."I am not a criminal," Epis said in a prepared statement Monday before his sentencing. "I am not ashamed of what I did. How can I be?"Epis said he fought the charges against him to effect change in the federal government's "inhumane" policy of prohibiting medically necessary use of marijuana."People should not have to choose between their liberty or their health," he told the court.Handing down the mandatory minimum sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. said Epis' case is yet filled with issues his court "cannot properly resolve."Congress - or the U.S. Supreme Court - may be best suited to end the legal inconsistency, which centers on whether the federal government should continue to enforce its unequivocal ban on marijuana, or whether it should turn a blind eye to certain cases, since Californians voted to allow the use of medical marijuana.California is one of nine states where voters have allowed physicians to prescribe marijuana to patients suffering from such conditions as AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis.Epis' defense attorney, J. Tony Serra, said his client operated the Chico medical marijuana dispensary out of compassion."He thought he was doing a good thing ... for the highest moral cause," Serra said.Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Wong bristled at Serra's characterization, saying Epis operated out of one thing: greed, using the state's medical marijuana statute as a "license" to make money."He is no different than any other drug trafficker or any other drug manufacturer that has come before this court," Wong said in his closing statement. "His attempt to play up the people who need medicine is sickening."Urging President Bush to grant Epis clemency, hundreds protested at the state Capitol earlier this month, as tensions intensify between state officials and the federal government over enforcing the federal ban on medical marijuana.San Francisco County District Attorney Terence Hallinan, an ardent proponent of medical marijuana, told the crowd that federal officials should take a hands-off approach when it comes to medical marijuana dispensaries.While the federal government is resolved that marijuana serves no useful medical purpose, he said, so have the people of California concluded that marijuana "saves lives, eases pain and reduces suffering."Judge Damrell will consider whether Epis may be released on bail pending an appeal.Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)Author: Chris Rizo - Capitol Correspondent Published: Tuesday, October 8, 2002Copyright: 2002 The Media News GroupContact: letters chicoer.comWebsite: http://www.chicoer.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:Americans for Safe Accesshttp://safeaccessnow.org Medical Marijuana Protest Pictureshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/protestpics.htm10-Year Sentence in Medical Pot Case http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14386.shtmlFirst Federal Medical Marijuana Conviction http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13398.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #3 posted by afterburner on October 09, 2002 at 11:14:52 PT: Due Process? Ironically, if Bryan James Epis were on the other side of the Medicine Line, i.e., Canada, he would have been allowed to provide medical marijuana to licensed medical marijuana patients as a designee. But in the "Land of the Free," he is considered a criminal, no exceptions, no tolerance, no mercy."Andrew Swift, spokesperson for Health Canada, stressed that the licenses only exempt licensees from the laws around possession and cultivation of marijuana....The licensing program started in 1999. About 817 people across Canada are now licensed to possess marijuana with the majority also licensed to cultivate it for their own use. Licensees can also designate others to cultivate it for them if their living situation doesn't permit them to grow it on their own." CN BC: Answers Sought On Legal Grow-Op URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1886/a07.html Newshawk: Join CMAP (http://www.mapinc.org/cmap/lists.htm) Pubdate: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 Source: New Westminster Newsleader (CN BC) Copyright: 2002 New Westminster Newsleader Contact: newsroom newwestnewsleader.com Website: http://www.newwestnewsleader.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1297 Author: Wanda Chow Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada) CN BC: Answers Sought On Legal Grow-Op http://www.mapinc.org/ccnews/v02/n1886/a07.html CN MB: Column: Medical Marijuana Ban An Unjust Law [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by FoM on October 08, 2002 at 13:54:12 PT p4me You lost your post? That's not fun. Do you use Notepad? I do and have found that helps me to not lose what I've written. I know there are more sophiscated programs but Notepad works and is simple. I have it on my tool bar. PS: Virgil is registered now. Same as yours just you can use Virgil now if you want to. I remembered you wanted it registered so I went ahead and did that for you. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by p4me on October 08, 2002 at 12:53:04 PT What else can I possible say? I had all but finished an essay that approached my 4k allotment so you can imagine how I feel having lost it. Now I will just say that people’s lawyer’s fees are punishment enough for the victimless cannabis crimes that come with a two trial guarantee and promises of meeting new people and going new places when they take your house. All the laws are just an abomination of the principles of justice. I wanted to mention an article from the Guardian in the UK today as an example of a controlled press as if we need more examples. It talks about how the US kept Iraq on ice for 8 years until it found use for it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,806585,00.htmlI want to put up a link to some real funny jokes about Busch. It of course is not really relative to anything, but something has got to relieve your mood about finding out the country is being run by agents of the rich and for the rich: http://allhatnocattle.net/joke_page.htmI lost my spill on the national debt. All I want to say now is that everyone gets a bank statement and keeps up with money. But the taxpayers get no statement and look at how pitiful the results are at USAtoday.com for a search using “national debt.” It was just another elaboration of the issue of a controlled media.Now, I am going to talk about a billion because it is hard to comprehend. But I also want to use MTBE as an example of corporate control of the media but also what NAFTA has done to give companies supremacy over environmental laws. In short, MTBE is made using the waste when oil is converted in to gasoline. They make methanol, wood alcohol, from natural gas, and heat the situation up to 100 degrees Celsius and make this terrible substance that easily dissolves in water and does not bind with soil or break down in groundwater. The California standard of contamination is 5 parts per billion although some sound alarm at 3PPB. First, you hear nothing of MTBE in the news just like cannabis. But in addition to the view you get at looking at things with a MTBE view, you can see the power of NAFTA and now the “Fast Track” trade agreements to override environmental laws meant to protect the people. It just shows the power of corporations and highlights the desire of Congress to ignore the welfare of the people. You can do a Google search using “MTBE lawsuits” and quickly see what I am saying.Now I got started. MTBE is added to reformulate gasoline so that it is 2% oxygen, which reduces pollution when it burns. The other alternatives are ethanol, grain alcohol, and methanol. In the Midwest they use grain alcohol and California called for the disuse of MTBE by the end of this year, but it got postponed. The similarity to MJ, is that when the carcinogen issues first came out, the industry said we need test on the safety of ethanol. Well, when alcohol burns its by product is water and it was called an ideal fuel in the early days of the automobile, and the industry shouts- “We need studies.” Now there are lawsuits everywhere about it being a defective product and lawsuits demanding money for cleanup of groundwater and you probably never heard of MTBE in a newspaper or television.http://www.cbecal.org/alerts/alerts_082101.htm - "The oil companies own documents proved that they knew MTBE would be a terrible polluter of our water for over a decade, yet they pushed it down our throats as a clean air miracle," said Azibuike Akaba, staff scientist at CBE. "We should not forget that all of our so-called environmental agencies went along with this preventable disaster."http://www.h2ochem.com/info/news/011300.asp - The chemical, roughly 300,000 barrels of which is used every day in the U.S., is a suspected carcinogen with a repugnant odor and taste that can render water undrinkable even in small concentrations. What could make it a lingering threat even after its use in gasoline is phased out is its prolonged lifespan in groundwater and the cost and difficulty of cleaning it up.http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/special/mtbe.html# What would an MTBE ban cost - California Energy Commission:(6) With a California-only ether ban the average cost of California reformulated gasoline would increase by 6.7 cents per gallon in the intermediate term (3 years) and increase by 2.5 cents per gallon in the long term (6 years).Really what I wanted to talk about is a billion. It is just that a MTBE light illuminates a lot of what a cannabis light does and it really should be mentioned sometime and I want to talk of a billion cubic feet of water. Now a pool of water 1’ deep, by 1000’ wide, and a 1000 long is a million cubic feet. If the pool were 1000’ deep it would be a billion cubic feet. But now lets make it only 10’ high and still 1000’deep it would then have to be 100,000’ long. Now transform that into something like an imaginary square pipeline that is 10’ tall and 10’ wide that now has to be 10,000,000’ long to be a billion cubic feet. A 10,000,000 long square pipeline would be 1894 miles long. 2%-reformulated gasoline is 11%MTBE by volume. 5 PPB would mean that 45 cubic feet of gasoline would contaminate the whole thing, with 45 cubic feet being 338 gallons of gas any would be terrorist could get at a gas station. Someone could pour thousands of gallons in the ground over months spending only a few thousand dollars. By the time it was detected, the perpetrator could long be gone.Now if you are talking about the national debt the number to use from http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ is $1.140 billion a day in increased debt. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. The national debt is growing at $13,194 a second. If the pipeline held 1.14 billion cubic feet of water it would be 11,400,000 feet long or 2159 miles long. To keep this going water would have to move at 131.9444 feet per second or 90 miles an hour. We are not pissing away the national treasury. We have a huge 10’x10’ tunnel sucking it away from us at 90 miles an hour.Brazil has 170 million people with only a $260 billion dollar debt and they are on the verge of repudiating that debt. Argentina could do the same. Then others, all the way to Russia. But the media doesn’t have time for news. The Republicans need to get reelected and they want to talk only of AttackIraq. The newspapers are eventually going to have to talk about the news or only the newspapers yet to come printed on hemp will survive.Well, FoM, I think I have said about all I can say. It looks like I will have to start over with, “Hang them all.”DAD-D,1,2 [ Post Comment ] Post Comment