cannabisnews.com: A Family Torn by Marijuana





A Family Torn by Marijuana
Posted by FoM on December 30, 1999 at 23:05:54 PT
By Fern Shen, Washington Post Staff Writer
Source: Washington Post
Plenty of teenagers get yelled at by their parents for staying out late and lying about where they've been. Plenty are told by their fathers to apologize to their mothers. But when it happened to Kerry Tucker last August, the Takoma Park teenager lashed back in a singular and devastating way.
The 16-year-old marched down to the Takoma Park Police Department clutching photographs of her mother's basement marijuana garden and turned her in.A fight over Kerry not showing up at a driver's education class was what precipitated her actions, says her mother, Kathleen Marie "Kitty" Tucker.But the teenager never anticipated the consequences of her approach to the police, her mother said -- that her parents would be arrested, that her father, Robert Jason Alvarez, would lose his high-level job at the U.S. Department of Energy or that a judge would order Kerry to have no contact with her parents, forcing her to stay with family friends.Still, Tucker, 55, acknowledged in an interview in her attorney's Rockville office yesterday that Kerry had been "really angry" and said she is "still baffled" over why her daughter did what she did.Perhaps, Tucker speculated, her daughter was getting a double message -- schoolteachers saying drugs are bad, while at home, her mother was smoking a home-grown marijuana joint three times a day for migraines and a neuromuscular disorder and telling her children that marijuana has gotten a bad rap in this country."I tried to teach them there is more evidence of danger from alcohol and tobacco and drugs like speed than from marijuana," said Tucker, a lawyer and anti-nuclear activist who pursued the case of nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood.At a recent dinner party, Tucker recalled, she heard Kerry telling someone that people of her generation are "really, really angry" and "I got my hopes up, thinking I would finally learn what the problem was." But she never explained it.And the therapy sessions that were supposed to start the family down the road to healing their wounds are off to a rocky beginning. Tucker said her daughter never showed up at the first family counseling session her parents scheduled, fearing the therapist would be biased toward the adults, since she had seen them already."I just do not understand '90s children," said Tucker, whose intense blue eyes matched the aqua in the scarf she wore yesterday.The issue that is contorting the Takoma Park family is playing out in the shadow of the larger debate that is unfolding across the country, as increasingly vocal advocates push for the legalization of marijuana for medical uses.A half-dozen states, including the District of Columbia, have approved referendums allowing the medical use of the drug. The District law has been overturned by Congress.The Clinton administration has opposed such laws on the grounds that the medical use of marijuana should be dictated by science, not politics, and it has warned doctors of possible sanctions if they invoke such referendums. But some presidential hopefuls are staking out a position on the side of limited legalization. Vice President Gore, for instance, seemed to depart from the administration's position this month when he said doctors should have greater flexibility to prescribe the drug for medical uses.While the highly politicized debate rages on, Maryland currently has no medical marijuana legislation on the books (although a Baltimore County legislator plans to introduce such a measure in the upcoming session, and Tucker hopes to testify on it).So when detectives came to Tucker and Alvarez's Takoma Park home and were hit by a waft of marijuana the minute Tucker opened the door, what followed was inevitable. Montgomery County police charged each with marijuana possession and manufacturing, as well as conspiracy to manufacture and possess marijuana. Police had found 69 plants, grow lights, rolling papers and marijuana stored in cannisters and boxes in the master bedroom.Kerry Tucker was finally allowed to come home in September, under the unusual condition that no one talk about the drug cultivation or arrest. And earlier this month Kitty Tucker and Alvarez were each able to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor, and received six months' probation, a $150 fine and a 10-day jail sentence, suspended.Kitty Tucker said yesterday that she has been growing and using marijuana for years to help with the pain from migraines that were diagnosed when she was in her thirties."I remember I was organizing the National No Nukes Conference in Kentucky in 1978 and I just burst into tears during it," she recalled. "The pain was awful."Other problems followed: depression, pains that shot out in spasms from her spine to her body and limbs. Tucker has seen a host of physicians and been told that she also suffers from fibromyalgia, a neuromuscular disease, and from chronic fatigue immuno-deficiency syndrome. A few years ago, she qualified for Social Security disability status based on her illness.Tucker said the suicide several years ago of her son from a previous marriage deepened her misery. "He was in a drug and alcohol treatment program, and we thought that he was improving, but then he stepped in front of a train," she said Said Tucker of her marijuana use: "I initially started smoking it when I felt like I was dying. It gave me hope. . . . I mean, it helped me feel good enough I could get up and empty the dishwasher." Tucker said her husband didn't use marijuana because, as a federal employee, he was subject to random drug tests.Despite the arrest and its aftermath, Tucker is unrepentant about her use of the illegal drug. She said she's angry at her daughter and only angry at herself "because I failed to teach her why I was using it."Tucker says, she worries she hasn't conveyed to her daughter her strong feelings about the drug's long history of use by other cultures, its "mellow, contemplative, creative" uses by her '60s-era generation and its merits when compared with tobacco or alcohol."If I were the one making the laws," Tucker said, sitting besides a stack of 16 books about cannabis, "marijuana would not be outlawed."These days, the family is trying to get Kerry into a new private school. Alvarez is writing and consulting.Kitty Tucker said she always tried to be discreet about her marijuana use, only smoking it mostly when she was alone or around "people I trusted."I never thought I would have to worry about my own family." By Fern ShenWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, December 31, 1999; Page B01 © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post CompanyRelated Articles:Md. Parents Want Teen Tipster Back Home - 9/07/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread2794.shtmlMd. Couple Arrested on Marijuana Charges - 9/04/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread2748.shtml 
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on December 31, 1999
 at 15:24:03 PT
We Have High Hopes!
I hope you have a Happy New Year Too. Thank you for the compliment. I'm very proud of all the people that visit Cannabis News and all the help that has been given to me to keep it going. We have made progress! Thank God for that! I've looked at the news from a year ago now and see the positive more then the negative. I wish they got it but slowly they are. It is wrong to punish people for experimenting with marijuana or any drug. As I watch the new years celebrations around the world I wonder how many people aren't high in one way or the other. It is so odd that this war as gone on so long without them seeing what we see!Happy New year kaptinemo! Thank You!
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on December 31, 1999
 at 15:12:45 PT
May we all *truly* have a Happy New Year!
Things are looking better, just in the last 6 months.Sure we've had some setbacks - big ones, like the McWilliams trial verdict via judicial chicanery, and the McCzar being able to dodge the IoM report bullet-with-his-name-on-it without getting winged. I'm not being Pollyannaish; we've got a long way to go to correct the willful (and highly profitable) 'ignorance' of our leaders, elected and otherwise.But just in the last 6 months we've had State governors (Johnson and Ventura, to name the most vocal) lending their support to MMJ, more journalists (worthy of the name, that is) are asking increasingly tougher questions about the WoSD, more people are asking what's so wrong about MMJ for the sick? and other things thought impossible a few years ago. We are making a difference. The opposition is running out of lies to tell; they've begun to ever more shrilly repeat the more outrageous portions of their propaganda repertoire to the point that even Joe Sixpack is starting to have doubts.So, bit by bit, we're making it. Largely because of you. Take care, all, and have a safe Happy New Year's celebration.
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Comment #4 posted by FoM on December 31, 1999
 at 12:05:39 PT
Happy New year 2000!
Hi Freedom,I answered you on the political board. Please disregard the last link I left everyone. I think I messed it up. Happy New Year!Peace, FoM!
Happy New Year 2000
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Comment #3 posted by Freedom on December 31, 1999
 at 11:55:37 PT
I say...
  Let her pay for her own college tuition. She sounds like a human being well on her way to becoming a jerk. I have little sympathy for narcs motivated by revenge. She isn't 11, she is 16. Time to work at the local fast food restaurant. Heh-heh.  Even if she is confused by the propaganda, well, I was also hit with propaganda. I rejected it. I was under the impression that she was trying to save her parents from the demon weed. Now, she appears no different than the spoiled brat who makes false accusations of child abuse.I replied to you FoM at Politics, I had seen your reply a few days back. Get ready for the world to end in 9 hours. :)
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on December 31, 1999
 at 09:36:41 PT:
Happy New Year 2000!
Hello Everyone,I made a little New Years page and I want to wish everyone a Happy & Prosperous New Year! Maybe this year we will see the changes that we all hope for everday! I'll try to put a little music on the page later if I can figure out how. I haven't found any news today so if very little news gets posted it's because the news is slow and as long as the computers keep working I'll get news up as soon as I find any. Thanks for making Cannabis News a regular stop!Have a Safe and Happy New Years Eve!Peace, FoM!
Happy New Year Everyone!
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Comment #1 posted by Chris Campbell on December 30, 1999
 at 23:48:47 PT:
they forgot something
This family has been torn not by any pharmaceudical properties of the drug marijuana, but by marijuana prohibition. The title of this article is this inaccurate.
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