cannabisnews.com: Man Gets Probation for Growing Drug 





Man Gets Probation for Growing Drug 
Posted by FoM on March 20, 2000 at 07:54:36 PT
By Conger, The Herald
Source: Herald Online
"A Rock Hill-area AIDS and hepatitis C patient will be able to continue the fight for his life at home - not in prison. Phillip Hagy, 39, was sentenced to a year of probation after he pleaded guilty Friday morning to manufacturing marijuana, the drug he says he smokes to ease his symptoms. 
His two-year prison sentence was suspended, and charges against his wife, Tammy, were dropped as part of a plea agreement. "I didn't feel I was harming the community. I never told anyone," said the Sturgis Road resident. "I wasn't dealing. I'm just doing it because it makes me eat," he said. The couple were arrested April 1, after an informant's tip led York County sheriff's deputies to their home. There, deputies, members of the State Law Enforcement Division and the National Guard seized 26 individually potted marijuana plants. Sitting in his living room Wednesday, Phillip Hagy said he smokes the weed because the legal, "medical" marijuana drug, a pill called Marinol, does not work as well on his nausea as his homegrown plants. Marinol does not make him hungry enough to keep weight on, he said. Hagy said he cultivated the plants because he was frustrated that he could not buy marijuana legally. Buying it illegally, he said, was too expensive for the couple, both of whom are supported by disability payments. "I'm scared. I'll start doing anything I can to stay alive," he said. The reason for Hagy's use of the marijuana weed doesn't matter to law-enforcement officials. Lt. Glenn Williams, a supervisor with the York County Multijurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit, said the sheriff's office investigates any case involving the plant or its illegal byproducts. "There is no provision for medical use of marijuana in South Carolina," he said. "We enforce the laws as they're written." South Carolina is not alone. The U.S. government and most other states have similar codes on the books. Five states - California, Maine, Washington, Oregon and Alaska - recently have passed laws allowing the use of marijuana with a doctor's prescription, said Chuck Thomas, the director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Hawaii's legislature also is close to passing a bill, Thomas said. The Hagys said they have considered moving to one of those states. But moving would pull Tammy away from her family and Phillip from the doctor he trusts. "We do know we broke the law. We think the law is wrong," Phillip Hagy said. So the couple have joined a class-action lawsuit against the federal government demanding that patients be allowed access to the drug. They also are lobbying the state to change its laws. "It's a drug just like any other drug," Phillip Hagy said. "You've just got to moderate it." In the meantime, the couple are trying to keep their lives as close to normal as possible. They attend support groups for AIDS patients and enjoy riding bicycles together. "We're trying to have an attitude, "He's not dying of AIDS; he's living with it,'" she said. "What little time he's got left I want to spend with him." Living with AIDS has been hard on both of them, Phillip Hagy said. The stress of facing the charges, combined with the symptoms of the disease and the side effects of the medications he must take, have taken a toll on his health. He has suffered from bouts of pneumonia and a case of shingles, a skin condition caused by the same virus as chicken pox. He has been hospitalized three times and has visited the emergency room frequently. "He should have the right to the medicine that works," Tammy Hagy said. "We're doing everything to get this legal so we won't have to see anyone else go through this." Contact Meg Conger at 329-4065 or mconger heraldonline.comYork: Published March 20, 2000 Copyright © 2000 The Herald. Rock Hill, South Carolinahttp://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews++medicalhttp://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews++hepatitis+C
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Comment #1 posted by al brown on March 20, 2000 at 11:29:15 PT:
dying
How nice of them to allow the gentle to die at home.
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