cannabisnews.com: Arresting Kubby May Have Been Big Mistake!





Arresting Kubby May Have Been Big Mistake!
Posted by FoM on January 28, 1999 at 12:39:29 PT

 Proposition 215, the Medical-Marijuana Initiative that was passed into law more than two years ago, has already been beleaguered by active opposition from former state Attorney General Dan Lungren and haphazard recognition from police authorities statewide, but it underwent a serious buzz kill on Jan. 20 with the arrest of Steve Kubby, last year's Libertarian Party candidate for governor.
Dope Show! Kubby, an outspoken advocate of Prop. 215 and one of the fundamental forces behind its victory, and his wife, Michelle, were both arrested at their Lake Tahoe home on suspicion of possessing 260 marijuana plants, cultivation with intent to sell, possession of hypodermic syringes and "conspiracy with persons unknown.""The first thing you should know," says Kubby in an interview with the OC Weekly shortly after he and his wife were released on their own recognizance on Jan. 21, "is that these guys walked into a legal land mine. We set a trap, and they fell for it. We received a tip six months ago that Dan Lungren had ordered surveillance on us; we were told to watch for a green-black Cherokee with darkened windows. We spotted it twice. When the raid came, we were prepared."Kubby said he was diagnosed with adrenal cancer in 1975 and uses medical marijuana under his doctor's orders; his cancer is currently in remission. He also takes medical marijuana to treat his high blood pressure. He said his wife uses marijuana to treat the symptoms of irritable-bowel syndrome, the side effects of which include nausea. Neither makes a secret of their use and has, by all accounts, endeavored to be in compliance with the law. Although prepared for the raid, neither Kubby could have been prepared for the sheer slapstick it produced; the police seemed convinced they were in an episode of COPS. "My wife and I had been shoveling snow from the driveway," says Kubby, "and we went to play with our daughter, when a van went racing by. The next thing I knew, my wife was surrounded by agents. These big fat guys came running upstairs, shouting, 'You're in trouble now.'"The commando mission came to a grinding halt when they discovered the Kubbys' paperwork was all neatly in order. "It blew their attack," says Kubby. "They wandered around scratching their heads until the district attorney came."The district attorney arrested them anyway."The police aren't here to protect us," says Brian Cross, chairman of the Orange County Libertarian Party. "We used to call them 'peace officers' because their job was to maintain the peace. When things got out of hand, they were there to address the problem. We have laws and things that we will not tolerate in society; their job was, when somebody breached one of those laws, to do something about it. Now we call them 'law-enforcement officers' because they're there to enforce laws. Which means that they can go into somebody's house-even if it causes no problem whatsoever, even if the neighbors have no idea what's going on, and it doesn't harm anybody-we have the authority to go into that house because we think that something's going on. That they have something we disapprove of-guns, drugs, ferrets, whatever.""I think that it's unfortunate," said Mark Mattern, a Chapman University political-science professor who organizes the school's biannual gubernatorial debate, which last year was attended by all the candidates except Gray Davis and Dan Lungren. "I found Steve Kubby to be a very credible candidate. I'm not a Libertarian, but I felt he represented that ideology very intensely and consistently. He was very open about his marijuana use. I admire his honesty, especially when compared to Bill Clinton-'I puffed on it, but I didn't inhale.'"The OC Libertarian Party-already galvanized by the similar persecution of local medical-marijuana activist Marvin Chavez-was among the many groups that led a campaign to show the Lake Tahoe police their displeasure by jamming their inbox so full of e-mails that when the Kubbys were released, the cops asked that he tell the world how well he was treated.This is how well he was treated:"After we were booked," says Kubby, "we were forced to march through a blizzard to get to a transport truck. We were freezing and miserable. They took us to Auburn, and that's when it really got bad. I spent the night in an unheated holding tank next to a pool of vomit. For the first time in years, I suffered from horrific blood pressure. It was three hours until they gave my wife a blanket. When they started to process us, I felt so nauseated I couldn't see what I was signing. They told me to continue or they would put me in some kind of painful hold. It was a struggle; I spent the night vomiting and shivering."One cop told me, 'Prop. 215 may fly in San Francisco, but not here in Placer County.'"The Kubbys say they still suffer aftereffects of the arrest: Michelle contracted pneumonia, and her husband developed an eye problem. Steve Kubby has lost 15 pounds in less than a week.Kubby is enthusiastic about getting his day in court. By his account, there are no sales whatsoever of the marijuana he has cultivated, and the total amount of "smokable" weed weighs in at about 31/2 pounds -roughly half of what the federal government provides their seven licensed medical-marijuana smokers for a year. According to Kubby, police put the "street value," of his crop at $420,000. If true, that would make it about $120,000 per pound-"some mighty expensive weed," Kubby joked. As for the needles that were found, he claims a test will prove that he uses them to load his ink-jet printer.In reaction to the Kubbys' arrest, Cross has sent a letter urging new Attorney General Bill Lockyer to follow through on his promise "to seek ways for [Prop. 215's] implementation that would be safe both for the communities and for the patients." Other responses have been less genteel, including one "open letter to the powers that be" received by the Weekly. It stated: "Commencing with the release of Steve Kubby and his wife, you will make a public apology, and you will face retribution. This is a fate of your own making. The severity of your retribution is solely predicated upon your willingness to engage with the response-ability you know I can see in you. An immediate response by you and yours will be necessary for life to be able to continue to carry you into the future."By Victor D. Infante 
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