cannabisnews.com: Forced Out of Canada?





Forced Out of Canada?
Posted by CN Staff on January 04, 2004 at 08:32:38 PT
By Vin Suprynowicz
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal 
Steve Kubby, 55, the 1998 Libertarian candidate for governor of California, was a leading force behind the passage of that year's referendum which legalized medical marijuana there. But it was after voters approved Proposition 215 that California police broke into Kubby's Lake Tahoe home, busting him and his wife Michele for growing what they contended was "too much" marijuana. 
(Kubby asked them not to frighten his young daughter by breaking into his home with guns drawn -- saying he'd gladly show them his marijuana plants at any time. He tells me he sent this message to police by placing a note in his trash can. Police introduced the note at his trial.) After Kubby explained why he needed to maintain more than 200 plants in various stages of growth at his Lake Tahoe home to successfully breed the strains which keep his adrenalin levels below toxic levels, his California jury in 2001 unanimously acquitted the Kubbys of any wrongdoing for their marijuana cultivation. They did, however, convict Kubby on a minor related charge after police found a dried-up hallucinogenic mushroom stem or cactus button (police were never sure which) in a drawer in a guest bedroom of the house. Needless to say, rather than instructing the jurors of their irreversible power to decide that this law and its application were wacky, the trial judge told them they had no choice but to enforce the law. An adrenal cancer survivor who has received medical advice that he could die if incarcerated as long as four days without his quasi-legal medication, Kubby has been living in Canada rather than submit to a court-ordered 120-day California jail sentence on the dried-up vegetable charge. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, whom Kubby describes as having been "made to look ridiculous" in a 1998 debate with the Libertarian candidate, seems to have taken on the Kubby case as a personal vendetta, labeling Kubby a "fugitive" and successfully intervening with the court to get Kubby's misdemeanor conviction upgraded to a felony, after the fact. Canadian sources say it's Kubby's continuing high profile in the pot legalization movement -- founded the American Medical Marijuana Association; he and Michele host Canada's Vancouver-based Internet-based Pot-TV news -- that has led to pressure on Canadian authorities from "south of the border" to crack down on the Kubbys, after they invited press photographers to tour their home last year, resulting in the publication of photos of the medical marijuana they grow there. On Dec. 20, Michele Kubby wrote me from Sechelt, British Columbia: "The Kubby family could be forced by Immigration officials to leave Canada as early as Jan. 15. "Initially we were optimistic that our appeal would be heard (and) we were not at any imminent danger. We even told reporters and friends not to worry about us. However, now that we've had a chance to obtain competent legal advice, we finally realize just how serious and precarious our plight has become. "Although we have filed an appeal with the federal court of Canada, we've just learned that the judge has the right to refuse to hear the case. We are supposed to have the right to a full hearing before an independent board, but the Immigration Ministry has not yet created an Appeal Board and we are caught in the middle. "We're very concerned that we will be forced to leave Canada without a fair hearing." The Kubbys said they have been assured by immigration officials that before forcing them to return to the United States, they will have a risk-assessment evaluation. But Michele Kubby is not optimistic. "Immigration has done everything they can to have us removed from Canada and we don't expect any favors in the risk-assessment process. Furthermore, (our attorney) John Conroy has advised us that this decision has painted us into a legal corner and there's not much he can do to help us. "For the past five years, I've watched one judge after another refuse to protect my husband. I don't have much hope that this next judge will be any different. At this point, we can only hope that our plight will shock the conscience of Canadians and that somehow this terrible and unjust decision by the Refugee Board will get an honest and fair review. "The continued abuse of `due process' is wearing Steve down. How can these judges and government officials look at themselves in the mirror when my husband is suffering so? Why can't a judge simply say that Steve Kubby is a bona fide cancer patient and that he deserves to be left alone? It's like these officials are saying, `Merry Christmas; now get out of our country.' "We believe this recent decision by the Refugee Board is a fraud that cannot stand up to a proper judicial review. The evidence on our side is overwhelming. It was their doctor, not ours, who said Steve would die if deprived of medical marijuana for more than 48 hours. The Refugee Board even heard from a former U.S. prosecutor and sitting judge that it was not safe for Steve to return. And still they refuse to believe what was in front of their own eyes. Truly, none are so blind as those who refuse to see." Michele Kubby says that those who wish to help can contribute online at: http://www.kubby.com/00-contribute.htmlVin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is: http://www.privacyalert.usSource: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)Author: Vin SuprynowiczPublished: Sunday, January 04, 2004Copyright: 2004 Las Vegas Review-JournalContact: letters lvrj.comWebsite: http://www.lvrj.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:The Kubby Defense Fundhttp://www.kubby.org/The Drug War Refugeeshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/smk.htmRefugee Loses Bid To Stay in Canadahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17938.shtmlGrass Not Always Greener On The Other Sidehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17937.shtmlReefer Refugee Loses Asylum Claim in Canadahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17935.shtml 
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Comment #32 posted by jose melendez on January 04, 2004 at 22:57:57 PT
We love you Steve
Please keep trying, I know it's frustrating. If it helps, we could take some of that drunk tank footage and release it with commentary, like a documentary. Maybe there would be some public outrage after the video gets seen by TV stations in Canada and the U.S.Surely if Arnold was videotaped while watching a tape of you and Kubby, he'd be forced by the public to do something, like pardon you both?
which are you?
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Comment #31 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 17:05:46 PT
goneposthole, Sufism is going to rise again
I've been reading about events in Afghanistan in the LA Times. This is good news, according to the Ehrenreich article you posted about Wahhabism and the drug war and the religious right.According to the Times, the ratification process of the new Afghan constitution was marked by a lot of hostility between different factions. When things became too heated, the meeting would stop and people would break for a poetry recital.Poetry recitals?Sufism used to be the dominant way that Afghans experienced Islam. The Sufis were associated with hasish and hippies.Apparently, Sufi poetry is now the uniting force in the birth of the new Afghanistan. Delegates to the loya jirga took poetry recital breaks to calm tensions during heated arguments.Karzai read lines of Sufi poetry when he announced the final agreement.
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Comment #30 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 15:29:15 PT
herbdoc maybe things aren't so bad
This is a movement of people facing death. I guess we have to talk about what is the best way to face death, for the movement.It's a terrible thing to have to discuss but it's just unfortunately what goes on.We've lit the memorial candle many times in the LACRC. If you died in prison maybe it wouldn't feel dignified but it would set off a rocket in the world news media and might even end up discussed in Congress.For that reason I do not believe they would let you die if you ended up in the worst case scenario legally speaking.I think the federal probation department has decided there will not be another Peter McWilliams on their watch. I think the judges have decided nobody is going to be asked to die to support this one federal law. I don't know this to be true but I've been watching things on the ground here and that's what it looks like. There is a rebellion on the ground and I don't think the federal ground troops are willing to fight to your death.But you can't stake your life on my own assessment of the situation down here.I hope everything works out the way you want it to, and that you have control over your own destiny in the future.
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Comment #29 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 15:02:44 PT
Oh that's great goneposthole
Barbara Ehrenreich is spot on.
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Comment #28 posted by BGreen on January 04, 2004 at 15:02:08 PT
Steve Tuck
Remember the words I've written to you in the past. None of us can give up because that would be the ultimate victory for the bastards that just want us dead anyway.You need to be Martha's Triumph! She cares and I care.The Reverend Bud Green
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Comment #27 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 15:00:47 PT
Here's a radical view
My radical view that a lot of new converts like Underheim might not accept is that we're the vanguard of a new way of looking at human society.The understanding of the role of cannabinoids in the process of traumatization and the problems resulting from chronic traumatic stress is going to open up new therapies for traumatized people and even for whole societies.The violence and suffering in the world is like an engine that drives more violence and suffering through the process of repeated and recycled traumatization.I think there is an emotional and political sense in which Revelations is true, that human society can become so convulsed with its own pain that it can collapse on itself and become like Hell for everyone in it.And then for those who accept it, the Tree of Life will wash away their tears because it is meant for the Healing of the Nations.I think this interpretation of Revelations has a scientific basis if we look at the role that cannabinoids play in allowing animals to heal from trauma.The unhealed trauma of a society is an unhealed wound in the world whole world. Look at the problems in the Middle East. The trauma of oppression felt by the Palestinians feeds into the trauma of losing loved ones to suicide bombings among the Israelis.Neither side can heal from their trauma enough to make peace and stop the process of traumatizing each other even more.And now it's spreading to bring trauma into other countries, and trauma into the American political system as well.This is what Revelations is talking about in an emotional and political sense. Pain and hatred and ill will rule the situation. And create more pain and ill will, etc.Those who accept "annointment by Christ" with caneh bosm will have their tears washed away enough to see their way out of the mess and find a better way to live. And make the earth into Heaven instead of Hell.This is a radical view now but who knows what could happen in the next 20 years or so.Maybe John is talking about cannabis, and maybe cannabinoids really do play the central role in determining how well we humans can heal and move on from the rotten terrible things we do to each other.If that's true it could open up new things for the world. If we can break out of the harmful destructive cycles of the past, what could we do as humans? Great things, greater than we can even imagine right now.But I don't expect people like Underheim to be able to see that far, espcially not when they have to focus all of their attention on proving to their fellow Republicans that they really just want to help sick people and they aren't stealth stoners out to make heroin flavored ice cream available at Ben and Jerry's.
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Comment #26 posted by goneposthole on January 04, 2004 at 14:35:40 PT
clash of radicals
EJ, you wanted some of Barbara Ehrenreich's thoughts about pot, here are some on radicals. Somewhat on topichttp://www.progressive.org/0901/ehr0102.htmlFlip Side Barbara EhrenreichChristian WahhabistsThere has been a lot of loose talk, since September 11, about a "clash of civilizations" between musty, backward-looking, repressive old Islam and the innovative and freedom-loving West. "It is a clash between positivism and a reactionary, negative world view," columnist H.D.S. Greenway writes in The Boston Globe.Or, as we learn in The Washington Post: While the West used the last two centuries to advance the cause of human freedom, "The Islamic world, by contrast, was content to remain in its torpor, locked in rigid orthodoxy, fearful of freedom."So it is a surprise to find, on turning to the original text--Samuel P. Huntington's 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster)--a paragraph-long analogy between the Islamic fundamentalist movement and the Protestant Reformation: "Both are reactions to the stagnation and corruption of existing institutions; advocate a return to a purer and more demanding form of their religion; preach work, order, and discipline."Whoa, there! Weren't the Protestants supposed to be the up-and-coming, progressive, force vis-à-vis the musty old Catholics? And if we were supposed to root for the Protestants in our high school history texts, shouldn't we be applauding the Islamic "extremists" now?Huntington doesn't entertain the analogy between Islamic fundamentalism and reforming Protestantism for very long. But let's extend the analogy, if only because it implicitly challenges the notion that we are dealing with two radically different, mutually opposed, "civilizations."Like the Protestants of the sixteenth century, the Islamic fundamentalists are a relatively new and innovative force on the scene. Wahhabism--the dour and repressive creed espoused by Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden, and other Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world--dates from only the mid-eighteenth century. Deobandism, the strain of Islam that informed the Taliban (and which has, in recent decades, become almost indistinguishable from Wahhabism), arose in India just a little over a century ago. So when we talk about Islamic fundamentalism, we are not talking about some ancient and venerable "essence of Islam"; we are talking about something new and even "modern." As Huntington observes, the appeal of fundamentalism is to "mobile and modern-oriented younger people."Islamic fundamentalism is a response--not to the West or to the "modern"--but to earlier strands of Islam, just as Protestantism was a response to Catholicism. Wahhabism arose in opposition to both the (thoroughly Muslim) Ottoman Empire and to the indigenous Sufism of eighteenth-century Arabia.Sufism is part of Islam, too--much admired in the West for its relative tolerance, its mysticism and poetry, its danced, ecstatic rituals. But it is also, especially in its rural forms, a religion that bears more than a casual resemblance to late medieval Catholicism: Sufism encourages the veneration of saint-like figures at special shrines and their celebration at festivities--sometimes rather raucous ones, like the carnivals and saints' days of medieval Catholicism--throughout the year.Just as the Protestants smashed icons, prohibited carnivals, and defaced cathedrals, the Wahhabists insisted on a "reformed" style of Islam, purged of all the saints, festivities, and music. Theirs is what has been described as a "stripped-down" version of Islam, centered on short prayers recited in undecorated mosques to the one god and only to him.The Taliban imposed Wahhabism in Afghanistan as soon as they came to power in 1996 and took on, as their first task, the stamping out of Sufism.The closest Reformation counterpart to today's Islamic fundamentalists were the Calvinists, whose movement arose a few decades after Lutheranism. Pundits often exclaim over the Islamic fundamentalists' refusal to recognize a church-state division--as if that were a uniquely odious feature of "Islamic civilization"--but John Calvin was a militant theocrat himself, and his followers carved out Calvinist mini-states wherever they could.In sixteenth-century Swiss cantons and seventeenth-century Mass-achusetts, Calvinists and Calvinist-leaning Protestants banned dancing, gambling, drinking, colorful clothing, and sports of all kinds. They outlawed idleness and vigorously suppressed sexual activity in all but its married, reproductively oriented, form.Should he have been transported back into a Calvinist-run Zurich or Salem, a member of the Taliban or a Wahhabist might have found only one thing that was objectionable: the presence of unveiled women. But he would have been reassured on this point by the Calvinists' insistence on women's subjugation. As a man is to Jesus, asserted the new Christian doctrine, so is his wife to him.Calvinism--or "Puritanism" as it is known in America--was of course immensely successful. Max Weber credited it with laying the psychological groundwork for capitalism: work hard, defer gratification, etc. Within the West, the Calvinist legacy carries on most robustly in America, with its demented war on drugs, its tortured ambivalence about pornography and sex, its refusal to accord homosexuals equal protection under the law. It even persists in organized form as the Christian right, which continues to nurture the dream of a theocratic state. Recall the statement by one of our leading warriors against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism--John Ashcroft--that "we have no king but Jesus."In a world that contains Christian Wahhabists like Ashcroft and Islamic Calvinists like bin Laden, what sense does it make to talk about culturally monolithic "civilizations" like "Islam" and "the West"? Any civilization worthy of the title is, at almost any moment of its history, fraught with antagonistic world views and balanced on the finely poised dialectics of class, race, gender, and ideology. We talk of "Roman civilization," for example, forgetting that the Roman elite spent the last decades before Jesus's birth bloodily suppressing its own ecstatic, unruly, Dionysian religious sects.There is no "clash of civilizations" because there are no clear-cut, and certainly no temperamentally homogeneous, civilizations to do the clashing. What there is, and has been again and again throughout history, is a clash of alternative cultures. One, represented by the Islamic and Christian fundamentalists--as well as by fascists and Soviet-style communists--is crabbed and punitive in outlook, committed to collectivist discipline, and dogmatically opposed to spontaneity and pleasure. Another, represented both in folk traditions and by elite "enlightenment" thought, is more open, liberatory, and trusting of human impulses.Civilizations can tilt in either direction. And individuals--whether they are Christian, Muslim, or neither--have a choice to make between freedom, on the one hand, and religious totalitarianism on the other.
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Comment #25 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 14:35:24 PT
Off topic -- Dean used to live in Ashcroft
I just learned some thing about Howard Dean from the LA Times.He used to be a ski bum in Aspen, where he was one of those guys who couldn't party like a normal person, he had to party so hard that he had to give up partying completely.When he was in Aspen, he lived in ski cabin in a ghost town called --- Ashcroft!There was a ski cabin system for cross country skiers in the same area as the ghost town. The ghost town of Ashcroft is now an official monument preserved by the government. So let's see. Dean's last name beings with DEA, and he used to live in a town called Ashcroft.Okay fine, these are just coincidences, right??? WAAAAAHHHHHHHH  :-(
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Comment #24 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 14:28:32 PT
Where is The Middle?
Don't mind me but while I'm thinking about it I thought I'd add that the far left and far right of an issue is what determines where the middle is at a given moment in history.
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Comment #23 posted by Virgil on January 04, 2004 at 14:24:16 PT
definitions are like mincing words
EJ, I understand what you said. I not only do not have a radical view when I call for the regulation of cannabis, I have a very popular view and I would say the informed view. I would very much like to know if I am in a true majority just like the 80% of people that support MMJ. Unfortunately, we do not have any recent polls that dare ask the simple question on the Logical Conclusion- "Should cannabis be regulated like alcohol and tobacco."On the War on Drugs, it is all but universally accepted among anyone that it is the worst failure of American policy ever. It is a failure. It is not radical. It is hardly even debatable. It is a majority view. But everyone also understands that when you cannot even shake the stupid cannabis laws off the books, what is the use of getting worked up over the WOD. We know it a protracted and costly failure and we know it is not going to change anytime soon no matter the cost or the misery.Maybe opposing MMJ is radical, but calling for regulated cannabis is not and I take exception to the use of the word, although I understand what you are saying and reality behind it.
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Comment #22 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 14:22:57 PT
To put things in perspective
Susan B. Anthony worked tirelessly on the cause of votes for women and she died without ever seeing it spread outside of the West where they had their first victories.And now we all take it for granted that women have as much of a right to vote as men have.
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Comment #21 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 14:19:13 PT
How To Be Successful
Here I go again. Virgil and EJ are right in my book. I see the reform movement with a far left, a far right and middle folks. The extremes on either end bounce around and make great points but it will always fall in the middle. Some people will push the envelop and some stay closer to the middle. All the views are right in my book of thought.
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Comment #20 posted by Virgil on January 04, 2004 at 14:04:20 PT
Steve
It is all as senseless as you can get. There is an awakening but until we vote the Congress that would rather hand together out of office, talk is all we got, just like the Nazis only have a stonewall. People just do not know of the cannabis perspective as the consolidated media whores for profits and territory with their silence and their lies. There are questions society will be asking as the politicians consult with their corporate sponsors to find the remaining paths to artificially justify CP. There are people like you and me with a torch and pitchfork attitude and that attitude will dominate the silence the prohibitionist cherish just like federal policy dominates what are clearly states rights at some place back beyond the federal power we have today.The thing the media cannot stop is books and the Internet too. There is tremendous need to change these hideous laws and a void that will be filled by art. It will be the attitude in art that carries the knowledgde that our people and our country have just been had in a big way and for a long time. The see-saw will eventually be too heavy on the end of freedom and those that support prohibition will just slid down to end that will always be on the ground just like a Little Rascals scene.It all just comes with knowledge. Now you take DU where I homepage and you have scandals, and talk of breaking international law in wars of aggression, and a place where all the truth about the lies we are told can be found. It just sets in on you that the Bu$h cabal is all about rape and plunder for the few that have bought government to leave the land all but lawless and misguided.So with knowledge of all the wrongs a person comes to their torch and pitchfork attitude. Newsmax is giving away the Bu$h dolls with the aviator suit that he wore when he broke the law to land on the aircraft carrier to claim the mission in Iraq had been accomplished. So one guy in the thread a DU captions, "I want one!" He has a brief comment that says, "I want to turn it into a voodoo doll so I can stick pins up its ass."It all just sets in on people as the horror stories and senslessness continue to pour in while the money and integrity of government flow out. Congress does nto represent the people and that is treason. They did not overthrow the USG, they just transformed it so that the general welfare of the people is no directive at all, much less the prime directive.I know the incarcerationists would take away all your freedoms except to breathe air and have 2000 calories a day while they hoped for you life itself. There is an inversion of justice, an inversion of truth, and an inversion of who the criminals really are once people get their torches lit and march on the stonewall. Some America this is alright and when someone writes the parity to the National Anthem that changes the words, "The land of the free and the home of the brave" the prohibitionist will have to start boiling oil.
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Comment #19 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 13:52:33 PT
herbdoc215
I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all ok for you. I won't give you any advice because I haven't walked in your shoes and I think that would be wrong of me. God Bless you and your wife.
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Comment #18 posted by herbdoc215 on January 04, 2004 at 13:41:37 PT
FoM, sorry to upset you....
It's just getting closer to that time and the headlights are looming large...I got all I wanted of the jail thing here? I am much less scared of death than the alternative...quality vs quanity is an issue most severely ill people come to terms with at some point and I VERY much want to die with some dignity and not shitting myself in a cell with bubba and guards leering on(aside...no offense bubba)! It would only be as a last option but to me it's much preferrable to prison/pain/agony...our arguments have fallen on death ears here...I keep thinking of a line from a Steve King book..."Go now, there are other worlds than this" , at the very least I'll know that I tried and as stupid as I am I would do it all over again even if I knew it would end this way...while many may see a windmill here I see fierce and fire-breathing dragons, It's just that to see them you have to get closer than most people allow themselves, ergo the dragons have convinced the world they no longer exist biding their time until they can rule the country with fear again? Peace and Thanks, Steven Tuck
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Comment #17 posted by Max Flowers on January 04, 2004 at 13:30:13 PT
Steve T
Keep fighting to the bitter end man, it's beautiful to watch. You're right on target---don't let them take your dignity. But it's still a long way from over, and a lot of good things could still happen. Good luck.
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Comment #16 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 13:25:22 PT
Virgil use whatever word you like
If the word radical offends you then pick a synonym that also stands for "an idea very different from that held by the mainstream".Some people are far enough along in the learning curve to see that the problem is the whole War on Drugs and the philosphical underpinnings thereof.Right now the "Stop the Drug War Now" point of view does occupy the position of a radical opinion in the spectrum of opinions held by medical marijuana patients.It used to be a radical opinion that women should vote. The people who first started that movement were according to the politics of their time very radical. According to the politics of today, they were quite conservative.Eventually the women's suffrage movement had to split into two movements, one that appealed to the mainstream, concerned ONLY with the right to vote, and one that appealed to women with a much more complete vision of women's equality beyond merely being able to vote.This is also going on in the medical marijuana movement.Unity is overrated in a social movement. I think there always needs to be a mainstream part of any movement, to argue for basic things, and a radical part of the movement, to keep moving the conversation forward into new topics.If you don't like the word radical Virgil then use another one but my point still stands.The little natural plant stem Steve was busted for marks the dividing line between a movement that people such as myself can support and a movement that people like Gregg Underheim can support.
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Comment #15 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 13:25:20 PT
herbdoc215
Forget about doctor assisted suicide. I don't want you to think of that at all. That upsets me sir! We won't let you down. We might not be able to change somethings but we will be here for you.
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Comment #14 posted by Max Flowers on January 04, 2004 at 13:17:45 PT
Someday
We'll have it back to where the rule of law and respect for proper procedure will again be the norm. Sounds like your friend's attorney was real sharp also. The chain of custody on evidence is the first logical place to look for weakness in the prosecution's case if the possession can't be fought. In their zeal to ruin people's lives, police often overlook or ignore what they see as small procedural requirements that will never come up. It is one of the richest sources of case dismissals.
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Comment #13 posted by herbdoc215 on January 04, 2004 at 13:17:05 PT
BUT the Police wouldn't have been in House if NOT 
For medical cannabis?? I am always amazed at the excuses some make to cut people from the fold; AND these excuses are always the #1 priority for the cops when they come on their fishing trips...anything to hang their hat on to divide suport for our position! They know if they throw enough bulshit at us then maybe something will stick just enough to falter that crucial second when logic was about to shine through least or at least give our enemies something to throw at us! I've watched way too many people use bs excuses to not have to get involved or help to actually DO something other than talk shit! The cops are always going to win if we can't put this crap behind us and for one I am tired of watching the bad-guys win by default because they will use any dirty trick or lie to win while we Quixotically stick to a code of honor we all feel we've earned by being better than our adversaries, using logic and example isn't getting us anywhere in todays media driven world...we need to become much more mainstream and much less clique'... more normal folks MUST come out of the closet or alot of folks are going to wake up like me... up shit creek! I guess I'll be back in USA much sooner than I'd planned now...I guess my detractors will soon get their pound of flesh. The biggest problem will now be that it will be a bitch to put on a real defense for me now that I've been gone for 3 years. I just hope the end comes swift as a long drawn-out torture session is haunting me. I am appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada to allow me Physician-assisted suicide rather than be slowly killed in prison in USA...hell if it comes to it, I'd do it before I give those SOB's the satisfaction; I already think the videos of me and Kubby suffering in drunk-tank here the size of a doghouse are the hottest N. Cali Sheriff's Association stag-party material as it is!!! I hope someday these people are known to history as the Neo-Nazi's they really are! Now I have no country and no homeland...and just when things were starting to go good to, Peace, Steven Tuck    
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Comment #12 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 13:07:57 PT
Max Flowers
Many years ago we had a friend that got caught with an ounce. He won his case because they couldn't account for where the ounce was every step of the way and the judge said they couldn't prove what they had was what was actually his. Things sure have changed.
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Comment #11 posted by Max Flowers on January 04, 2004 at 13:03:13 PT
Thanks FoM
Based on what's in that thread you linked FoM, the reporter above does not know what he's talking about.It (the other CN thread) actually increased my confusion though, because it sounds like there are two different charges possible---one for possession of peyote and one for possession of mescaline. But it sounds like the cops extracted mescaline out of the peyote to test it and then charged him with possesson of the mescaline! I've never heard of anything so outrageous. THEY extracted it, not Kubby! Kubby did not do an extraction. So the lesser charge, if it is lesser, of possession of peyote is the proper charge.I think he should have had a good defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act anyway... that's certainly what I would say if some "authority figure" found me in possession of pieces of plant matter that I consider to be sacramental to my unique religious practice (and I actually do, I'm not just saying this for effect). I'd tell them right to their faces that my use of it is legal under the Constitution, with the protection of my religious ways SUPERCEDING their interests, and that THEY are committing the crime by taking it away from me.
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Comment #10 posted by Virgil on January 04, 2004 at 12:13:05 PT
I am no radical EJ
I just do not see being for the legalization of cannabis as being radical. What they did back in 1937 was radical and letting the Marijuana Tax Act survive its unconstitutionality was radical. Creating a huge bureaucracy like the DEA by Nixon's executive order was radical. But me radical. I do not think so. 
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 12:06:46 PT
Max Flowers
Does this article help?http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread16712.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by Max Flowers on January 04, 2004 at 12:03:03 PT
Woah, hold on!
- They did, however, convict Kubby on a minor related charge after police found a dried-up hallucinogenic mushroom stem or cactus button (police were never sure which) in a drawer in a guest bedroom of the house. -What!? How can there be a conviction on possession of a substance when the police can't even determine what that substance is?? That's a legal impossibility!! "Well we think it was either a mushroom or a piece of peyote"?? If they can't verify the identity of the offending morsel, there's no charge possible. They have to prove what it is conclusively through chemical analysis. It may have been a piece of San Pedro cactus and not peyote, making it perfectly legal. Or if a mushroom, it may have been some other kind (not a psilocybe)! What are they saying there? Does anyone have more info? That is shocking to me---you can't get a legal conviction without 100% certain identification of the "illegal" material! I can't believe Steve and Michele would stand for what the article suggests happened.
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Comment #7 posted by E_Johnson on January 04, 2004 at 11:53:44 PT
There are two separate movements for MMJ
Steve Kubby is a leader of the medical marijuana movement for people who are comfortable with Libertarian views and are already against the Drug War themselves. People who have been through the learning process of understanding WHY the government is so against it. But that does not reflect the vast majority of people who just happened to find themselves sick and suddenly have marijuana in their lives, something they never would have chosen in a million years if they weren't sick.People like that are going to be wanting leadership that reflects their understanding of their own situation regarding marijuana.And that's not any attack on Steve, just the way things are. For example take Gregg Underheim, a Republican who just had a brush with prostate cancer. Underheim's desire is to get his Republican peers to understand and support his position. Underheim's desire is not at this point to end the entire Drug War or attack the DEA as an entity.I do not foresee Underheim or other cancer patients like him accepting leadership from Steve.Those people are going to be put off by his little stem. No matter how small that stem was, it is going to repulse new converts like Underheim, who really just want to help sick people, and don't have any desire to go beyond that.So the more accepted medical marijuana gets by the mainstream, the more we will see a split between a mainstream branch of the movement and and a radical branch of the movement.It's already happening, and nobody is to blame for it. It's not something wrong, it's just natural and inevitable.
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 10:49:40 PT
Nuevo Mexican 
What did Willie's new song sound like? I couldn't get it because I can't get the player that was needed because my computer doesn't work with it.
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Comment #5 posted by Nuevo Mexican on January 04, 2004 at 10:42:43 PT
It was a 'stem', get your facts straight lushy!
Not an attack, just a 'correction'. Let me get this right, Steve Kubby gives the medical cannabis movement a bad name, for a mushroom stem, someones smoking schwag again! This is also a 'no-schwag' site, as schwag gave pot a bad name, but noone will turn down the 'kush'. Hmmmmm, wonder why?On another note, the Willie Nelson Concert for Dennis Kucinich was a sold-out success, and I was able to listen to it over the internet! What will Dean do now?
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Comment #4 posted by Maufred on January 04, 2004 at 10:24:33 PT:
lushylush
Mushrooms are natural, just like pot
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Comment #3 posted by goneposthole on January 04, 2004 at 10:13:48 PT
not 'forced out of Canada'
more like 'forced into the United States'Vee have our vays, swinehund.
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on January 04, 2004 at 10:08:28 PT
lushylush
You are recently registered and we don't attack people on CNews. 
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Comment #1 posted by lushylush on January 04, 2004 at 09:59:53 PT
Kubby?
Wait, didn't he get caught for having mushrooms? That's not medical. Frauds like Kubby give our movement a bad name. 
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