cannabisnews.com: Drug Tests For Welfare Recipients Upheld 





Drug Tests For Welfare Recipients Upheld 
Posted by CN Staff on October 18, 2002 at 23:38:36 PT
By Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer
Source: Washington Post 
A Michigan law that would subject welfare recipients to random drug testing as a condition of receiving benefits does not violate recipients' constitutional rights, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit held unanimously that the Michigan program is justified by the state's interest in preventing drug-related child abuse and other crimes, as well as in making sure that benefits are not wasted on drugs.
"We think it is beyond cavil that the state has a special need to insure that public moneys expended [on welfare] are used by the recipients for their intended purposes," Judge Alice M. Batchelder wrote in the opinion for the court.Michigan officials welcomed the ruling. "I am extremely pleased that the court has acknowledged the right of the state to test welfare recipients for illicit drug use as a condition of receiving benefits," Gov. John Engler (R) said. "We know that drugs are a significant barrier to employment, and testing and treatment for welfare recipients for drug use is consistent with our goal of helping them reach true self-sufficiency."Supporters of the law, which is unique in the nation, said the court's ruling could encourage other states to follow Michigan's example, now that some legal doubts about it have been addressed."This sets a terrific precedent," said Paul Kamenar of the Washington Legal Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Michigan.But opponents said that other states have rejected welfare drug testing because it is costly and ineffective. An appeal to the full membership of the 6th Circuit is likely."This decision opens doors that I don't think the full 6th Circuit would be comfortable with," said Graham Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents welfare recipients. "Its reasoning could be applied to all parents, welfare or not."The 1996 federal welfare reform law authorized random drug testing by the states, but only Michigan adopted it, in 1999. Enforcement of the law was promptly blocked by a federal district judge who agreed with ACLU lawyers that it violated the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches. Note: Yesterday's ruling overturns that judgment.Source: Washington Post (DC)Author: Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff WriterPublished: Saturday, October 19, 2002; Page A03 Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com ACLUhttp://www.aclu.org/CannabisNews Drug Testing Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/drug_testing.shtml
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Comment #13 posted by DdC on October 20, 2002 at 14:09:22 PT
Cannabis eradications should worry beer drinkers!
If it genetically alters cannabis seed, it will effect hops. The hidden goal of the Puritans? Grafting Hops to Cannabis Pic
http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/38/38885.gifGrafting Hops to Cannabis Text
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabisprohibitionwhyitstimetolegalize.showMessage?topicID=322.topic
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Comment #12 posted by Dankhank on October 19, 2002 at 18:59:35 PT:
fair is fair
I might be for such testing if they could and would test for nicotine and alcohol, too.It seems to open a door to some goofy testing if the authorities wanted ...What about testing for doughnuts? What a waste of money to some thinking that more nutritious food should be bought instead ....
Hemp N Stuff
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Comment #11 posted by FoM on October 19, 2002 at 18:33:26 PT
Dana
You very well could be right. You don't need to drug test to get a CDL but when you get a job you must drug test plus all the randoms they throw at you. My husband has been randomed 3 times in the last 12 months. 
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Comment #10 posted by DANA on October 19, 2002 at 18:25:46 PT
..Here's what's next!!!
...The time is coming,,when you will be drug tested to obtain,or renew your drivers license!!
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Comment #9 posted by DdC on October 19, 2002 at 16:59:44 PT
Freaky Funky Fascism...
...should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. MussoliniACS - Division of Analytical Chemistry - DAC Awards - John P. Walters 1980 Profits on Pisstest...Philanthropy Roundtable John P. Walters President Tax Shelters for DARE Donations...John P. Walters criticized ABC News for reporting on the Montgomery case. Walters showed no concern for Montgomery but rather complained, "Apparently ABC couldn't find a grandmother on death row for carrying a roach clip..." Conserving Compassion...Food Stamps Become a Weapon in the War on Drugs 
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread9965.shtml Gramcracker 
http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/36/36958.gifThe Elkhorn Manifesto
http://www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html D.E.A.th Deceptions
http://www.angelfire.com/ca7/ddc/DEAth.html
D.E.A.th Terrorists
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Comment #8 posted by Naaps on October 19, 2002 at 13:39:45 PT
Herbdoc215, Sir
I’m shocked and appalled by your rough handling at the hands of the immigration and police. It’s easy to be ignorant without hearing your story, without suffering at the hands of the police. I thank you for being open about your ordeal, allowing others to know fuels the drive to bring sanity to the issue of medicinal cannabis, and the need for Canada to be more embracing of those prosecuted elsewhere seeking refuge here.Sometimes Canada appears as a progressive country, but like all nations there’s plenty of improvement to be made. The DEA and possibly the US Marshals had a hand in the arrests.I remember going to Roberts Creek last year thinking about the gathering of Americans, looking for safety to live and medicate. It represented my idea of an inclusive Canada. Then several months later, I cringed reading about the influx in the local papers, then on the television. The media spotlight brings unwelcome attention. Marc Emery had said that his store would be busted just after reports on American television. Then later it was reports of your and Steve’s arrests. It was so sad, and I had no idea how much you went through.
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on October 19, 2002 at 11:56:24 PT
herbdoc215
I know that having good medical care is hard to get under the system here or in Canada. I know I can't go to a Doctor because I don't have insurance. We've already paid around $15,000 because of no insurance. No society is a Utopia. Utopia just doesn't exist but we can always try to make things better for those who will need care in the future. I hope it works out for you. Try to take care of your health.
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Comment #6 posted by herbdoc215 on October 19, 2002 at 11:42:02 PT
Yes, I require many medicines to stay alive!
FoM, Yes my MD has said that if I quit using morphine and cannabis to potentiate it then I can die from shock caused by the pain, this is also not mentioning the fact of withdrawl or stopping eating/starving from no cannabis. My medicine has taken years for my doctors and me to work out to a carefully balanced protocol and being here the last year alone has almost killed me as I don't have alot of weight to lose. My MD in California Dr. Tam was a Canadian citizen who was working in US, he was best physician I have ever had anywhere. He left US right after I did and he was always proactively attacking my illness to allow me some sembalence of a life. Since being in Canada for over a year not one MD has laid his hands on me during an examination. Think about that now as I get written some very strong drugs Every month???? Any number dived by zero is still zero and social medicine as practiced in Canada is a joke, I have been on a waiting list to see a specialist for 5 months already and finding a family MD to see is like looking into Ashcroft for a heart? Peace, Steven Tuck   in exile
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on October 19, 2002 at 09:14:43 PT
herbdoc215 
I have been thinking about you and am very concerned. Everyone wants to know their future and to a degree we can figure out what we will be doing in the next few weeks but I know you can't project your future. It almost doesn't matter how we get to where we are currently but how will we handle the immediate future. The reason I am worried is because I sense you are using prescription medicine that if you stopped abruptly you could get very sick. Am I wrong? Your health is my concern and I hope you will feel comfortable answering my question but if not I understand. I'm praying for you.
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Comment #4 posted by WolfgangWylde on October 19, 2002 at 08:47:16 PT
I think...
...they should drug test Social Security recipients as well. I want to make sure my tax dollars aren't going to partying geezers.
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Comment #3 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on October 19, 2002 at 07:50:05 PT
Well, I'm nauseated
Steve, you have the support of our community. Your words are very powerful. What can we do to help you? Is there someone we can call in the Canadian or US government? Is there a fund set up for your legal fees?
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Comment #2 posted by lookinside on October 19, 2002 at 05:40:19 PT
Do Canadians realize the truth?
It looks like Canadian jails are worse than those in Mexico. At least you can bribe the Mexicans.Americans: Canada doesn't deserve your tourist dollars.Go to Europe, where sanity is breaking out.
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Comment #1 posted by herbdoc215 on October 19, 2002 at 00:01:23 PT
Forgive length of post but I wanted to show truth
FoM, I am sorry for length of this post but I have never really explained the events surrounding our arrest and my possible deportation to die Monday so I wanted to post this here for all to see before I give this to the media. My comment about the Nazi's the other day was in response to all the media in National Post and other papers about the 91 Nazi war criminals who have lived here since end of WW2 and Canada is talking about just pulling their citizenship and not deporting them which after the way I have been treated shocks me to my core. I am not wanted but people who skinned little kids can stay? I am just not understanding too much anymore. I have nom been told by Immigra that I have to attend this hearing with no lawyer so my odds don't look good to me plus my permission to move to Ottawa has been recinded. Today Legal Aid told me they wouldn't help me because I can't prove my income. I sure crawled down a rabbit hole here?Tuck, Steven  10/18/02      Jail and My Political Nightmare On the morning of April 2nd we were raided by RCMP in response (they said ) to several reports that had appeared in media about me and a couple of other refugee's from the United States fanatical war upon drugs. At about 9am I was awakened by a very loud knock upon our back sliding glass door that led to our deck in back yard that's closed off by a gate. Our dogs were barking loudly and a general mayhem ensued. I was clad in my underwear and blue jeans and nothing else, my wife Lucy was allowed to bring me a t-shirt after I was handcuffed. Aside-- In the mornings my illnesses is at it's worse, due to a failed surgery by a military MD my spine leaks fluid faster that it makes it, so at night when my body reabsorbs the fluid (as everyone's does) the level drops a lot and fast in me leading too much pain, nausea and pressure headaches, which causes a much greater effect on my lower extremity paralysis. This is also followed with my morning battle to urinate and defecate without resorting to mechanical means as has been used so many times in my case--- Cannabis is documented by several physicians in several hospital controlled situations as being ONLY tool that allows me to use bathroom without catheters and colostomy bags which are both smelly and can cause life threatening infections. Cannabis also allows morphine to dose in morning to synergize and work 75% faster and 200% stronger- until these kick in I am in agony in mornings. RCMP along with 2 immigration officers were being " supervised " by two DEA agents who looked like they had been sent looking for any excuse to cause a ' scene ' but we put dogs in a room and gave them no excuse to get violent. The RCMP said they KNEW I had a grow and they could smell it so they didn't need a warrant to search for it, I could not find the keys to basement so they tore door off it's hinges to look inside for our " grow " but finding none they charged me with being honest- am immigration violation when I knew no record of my entry into country existed so I could have told RCMP that I got there the month before and they could never have proven otherwise... So after being charged with overstaying a visa by 2 weeks I was placed into a holding cell in Sechelt RCMP station with little or no explanation, no phone call, and begging to be allowed to go to hospital to be catheterized because RCMP refused to allow me to smoke my medicine or even take my pills like morphine that I am prescribed to have and must have to live before I was placed under arrest and put in police van along with 2 Immigration officers while RCMP searched my house (which they did not find anything to charge me with to their amazement ) and we left for Sechelt jail/police station were I was placed into a holding cell by myself- I must add here that I requested medical attention from minute I was placed into cuffs because the cops would not even allow me to attempt to go to bathroom and my bladder was full from night before, every request from me was met with derision from Immigration and RCMP, as a matter of fact the cops made fun of my statement that I could not urinate without cannabis and my pain level was through the roof without my morphine as even with morphine and hash I am in extreme pain for about 2 hours every morning until my body builds up enough spinal fluid. My wife gave RCMP my medication bottles, which contained Dexedrine, morphine, and an antibiotic I was taking at the time for an infection. After being held at jail in Sechelt_ for 3 hours and being told nothing, I was loaded into a van with Steve Kubby and we were told we were going to Vancouver to Immigration and I was being turned over to US authorities and would be in jail in California the next day, despite my pleas for them to hear me out before this went any further. I started complaining louder to the 2 Immigration officers that I badly needed to go the hospital to be catheterized to drain my bladder as I was in extreme pain by then, I even tried explaining to them the dire reasons I had to be drained like bladders rupture and back-flow to kidneys but it was all a big game and joke to them, I even told them I would not seek any sort of medication or treatment other than catheterizing me which I told them would not take 5 minutes as the Imm. Cops were hyper worried about missing ferry despite my earlier pleas and our 3 or 4 hour wait at Sechelt RCMP when this could have taken place. Well with a 3 hour ferry trip in front of me I wigged out and told them that shit was on if I wasn't taken to hospital and after MUCH heated debate I was taken to Sechelt hospital and with a police escort and in handcuffs I was taken upstairs and cath'ed by a nurse to told cop guarding me that she had never had that much trouble getting a cath in as my prostrate was not responsive and VERY tight and that I wasn't faking it. Well, when cop told Immigration people they didn't want to hear it and left. When we arrived at ferry the same DEA cops who supervised the raid at my house was parked in next row, I showed the cops and truck to Kubby. We missed our supposed ferry and had to wait for next for 2 hours. After the ferry trip I could see Steve Kubby's blood pressure rise and sweat was pouring out of him and he was pleading still to be allowed to use bathroom as he had for entire ferry trip and wait, Officers kept telling him to wait until we got to jail. At that point Steve drops his sweats and does the coolest thing I have ever personally seen and he urinates on floor of the Immigration van, well you would have thought he shot the King Cop by the way they acted. To say they threw a fit is an understatement. Well no long after that Kubby has a blood pressure attack and we thought he was having a heart attack so I begged the cops to call a ambulance, which after much hollering and screaming she did, after I told hr who Kubby was and that if she let him die in the back of a van on side of the road I would ensure that the entire world knew it was HER fault, well she backpedaled and I went in for the cinch, ambulance was called instead of us heading for nearest hospital in N. Vancouver. In about a half hour a fire truck and 2 cops show up and scene takes on a carnival atmosphere, after cops all talk for 10 minutes a cop sticks his head in and ask Steve how he feels (ask him how he feels??) at that point Steve say's to cops to just forget it as he will die at this rate before he would see an MD but this is after we overhear the fire truck driver actually say to Immigration cops, " Fuck him, if he dies he dies I isn’t crawling trough that piss to check him out and he's probably faking anyway " After circus loaded up we were really auguring with the female Immigration officer as she continually showed disgust with me and Kubby and our plight. After arriving at jail she told me on way in that she was going to " ensure my stay was very special “ for giving her such a hard time (sorry, I am crippled?). 
By now I am in full blown withdrawal and things are crawling all over me plus pain was as bad as it had ever been and logic gets ever more elusive the further into withdrawal I get. First they stand us in this little room handcuffed for what seemed like forever. Then this sadistic corporal comes in and orders us to get undressed, when Kubby asked to see MD the guard starts going into this spiel about this is his jail and we get none of those pussy American pleasures as doctors and besides he say's we will be in US tomorrow and we can get aid there. Well, by then I was feeling pressure upon my bladder as it was a rush job at hospital and not drained well. The jailers got real pissed because me and Steve kept asking to see a doctor and he said he was going to make my life a living hell and I told him the military had already beat him to it. I was thrown into the drunken tank as soon as we were booked in at the jail. The two corporals who were in charge kept telling me how they hated our kind and they started taunting us from the initial strip-search until the minute we left with the 2 corporals being the worst offenders. One of them looked like Opine Taylor from Andy Griffin TV show and the other one was from Pakistan or something like that because he could barely speak English and it was so surreal to have him telling me my kind wasn't welcome here and Americans were pigs, and he could barely pronounce the hate he spewed forth. The more we asked for medical treatment the worse we were treated; the threats kept escalating until they started becoming physical. We were placed into one 3x6 ft. cell after another, one had cum on floors, 3 had puke in them and stench was unbearable, 2 had blood in several places in them that hadn't dried yet. I was placed into 2 cells that were already full and wasn't even allowed a mattress on floor, one even had milk poured all over floor of it that the Pakistani corporal took extreme pleasure in placing me in during the height of my pain. I was cath'ed 4 times in almost 4 days, this is torture against the Geneva Convention and I was never treated this bad even in US were offense is alleged to have occurred? We were put on exhibit like zoo animals with every jailer taking turns when we were in 3x6 cells coming by our windows and staring/leering/taunting us with insults. I have never in all my days seen anyone hard-timed like this, we were continually told we were not wanted and to go back to US plus both corporals told me nobody cared what they did to us in there that we had been written off as nobodies? Anecdotal Evidence...
Details: The corporal who looked like Opie Taylor was trying to hard time us in the 3x6 cells which were in a chamber of 4 linked together by a common room where they could supposedly keep an eye on all of us in isolation cells that was meant to mess with us. The parade of jailers continued the entire night the first night as we were held the entire night in isolation cells and rotated about every two hours for psychological effect. These isolation cells all had camera's in them in very prominent positions so we would KNOW that big brother was watching, I would like to present those films as evidence of our torture and degradation by jailers at direction of Immigration officer Andrea ... who told me she was going to make my life hell because I made rude comments about her being heartless and cruel. She fought tooth and nail against me going to hospital and getting catheterized and against Kubby receiving any medical attention at all. Every time I was cath'ed it was only following much hell raising by me, the jail staff played this psych-ops game with us of not telling us anything that was coming up or schedule for sick-call (which in Vancouver jail consisted off jailers handing out blood pressure medicine (clonidine) to all the inmates going through horrible withdrawal symptoms who screamed all night and day with the agony of hell, this attempt to knock all unconscious was preceded by a nurse with a BP cuff and stethoscope who pronounced all fit by fiat I assume as many I saw were clearly not " alright ' and she gave Kubby an Imodium AD and Clonidine with the junkies for 3 days and I was amazed at total lack of any medical care or compassion. I was told first that I wasn't prescribed morphine (despite jailers having possession of my bottle of meds from my Canadian MD), then I was told no how no way would they give me my morphine out of my bottle, BY THEN my mind was shot and stuff was crawling all over me, my pain level at that time was about to put me into shock anyway as my MD for last 5 years has warned me repeatedly against stopping my morphine because my heart would have trouble with pain level, suicidal pain is what Dr. Tam called it. Then last day (day 3) I was given ONE of my pills but by then I was so far in deficit that it didn't touch the withdrawal I was going through. In court my attorney kept trying to get my attention and answers and could not understand that I was incommunicado about all facets of case at that time. After release from jail it was 7 or 8 days before I could urinate without 3 hours of manipulating my bladder and much pain as I am afraid another episode like that and I will utterly loose the ability to live without a dangerous and smelly colostomy bag. My pain in my spine has been very intense also since then. I have spared you the reader many horrible details but I think I made my point, we came here only to be free and live and was treated worse than Canadians treat dogs, have I become that much less than human because of my infirmary or is my medicine that keeps me alive cause me to become less than you?   .
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