'Forced to choose ... between being a fugitive or certain death'
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 19, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
'Forced to choose ... between being a fugitive or certain death'
"Medical marijuana activist Steve Kubby said Thursday he will continue to fight his misdemeanor drug convictions from Canada rather than submit to a 117-day stay in the Placer County jail," reported Wayne Wilson of The Sacramento Bee on July 27.
"They forced me to choose between going to jail and participating in my own death there or being with my family here," Kubby explains, speaking by phone from his new home in Sechelt, British Columbia.
Kubby, 54, was the Libertarian Party's California gubernatorial nominee in 1998, and helped win overwhelming voter approval of Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for medical use. Yet -- in an astonishingly brazen example of political retribution -- Placer County sheriff's deputies staked out the Kubby's house, peered in their windows and pored through the couple's garbage in search of "evidence," finally arresting Kubby and his wife Michele for growing marijuana after that electoral victory.
"I needed a reliable way to send them a message that we weren't armed and we weren't going to resist, that if they wanted to arrest us for medical marijuana I'd gladly show them where it was; they didn't have to storm in here with guns drawn and frighten our little girl," Kubby tells me. "So I addressed a letter to them and put it in my garbage can. Sure enough, they later produced it and used it as evidence against us in court."
Kubby suffers from adrenal cancer, and has survived the usually fatal disease for 16 years -- long enough to astonish his physicians. His only known treatment is the marijuana he selectively breeds to counter the effect of the excess adrenalin in his body. Kubby, who estimates the value of the breeding stock seized and destroyed by authorities at more than $1 million, is adamant that if jailed and deprived of the potent medicinal plant he would quickly die.
(I tried a few puffs of his crop in 1999 -- just doing my journalistic duty -- and promptly passed out cold.)
"I talked to the probation department yesterday. They have my address," Kubby told the Sacramento paper last month. "I'm not going to put my life at risk while this is under appeal, and I still haven't had a chance to have an attorney go before the judge and argue for a stay of the sentence."
Kubby was arrested in January, 1999, for possession of 265 marijuana plants. Police also seized the couple's computers, bankrupting them by destroying their home-based business (publishing an outdoor sports magazine), arguing in court that their subscriber mailing list was in fact a list of "marijuana buyers."
Replying that the crop was strictly medicinal and for his own use -- he cross-breeds different strains to maximize the effects helpful to his condition -- Kubby won dismissal of all five marijuana counts after a jury voted 11-1 for acquittal on Dec. 21, 2000. But he was convicted of possessing small quantities of two other controlled substances -- a mushroom stem and a peyote button -- which turned up during the search.
The Kubbys say they don't know whether the dried-out vegetable fragments were left behind by house guests or planted by police, who apparently changed the identification and labeling of the exhibits several times.
Judge John L. Cosgrove granted Kubby's request to have the convictions reduced to misdemeanors, placed him on three years probation and ordered that he serve 117 days in jail.
But Kubby says it became clear to him that the jail would not provide him with the marijuana necessary to treat his usually fatal disease.
"Steve has ... refused to serve any sentence or pay any fines until this appeal is heard," Michele Kubby reported in an e-mail sent to supporters on Aug. 7.
"It's absurd that Placer County would demand any jail time, since voters (even in Placer County!) solidly supported no jail for drug offenders when they voted for Prop 36. ... I'm proud of Steve for doing the responsible thing by standing by me and our two little girls, rather than turn himself over to be experimented upon by Placer County. ...
"Steve had told the Public Defender that he wanted his sentence stayed pending his appeal. The Public Defender never asked the court for a stay. ...
"When we first went to court, we were confident that The Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215) and the Bill of Rights protected us. To our horror we found that the law we helped pass in 1996 didn't matter. ...
"The reality is that everything they taught us about our rights in their government schools is a lie," Michele's Aug. 7 e-mail continues. "The Democratic system of checks and balances, so nicely outlined on the blackboard, no longer exists. Even the people's right to throw out bad laws handed down by the Legislature has been officially outlawed by the California Supreme Court. S
"Welcome to the Drug War, where ... police can invade your home ... peek through your windows, go through your garbage, and even listen through your walls. Before you know it, you'll be facing a jury where Libertarians and people who used marijuana or advocate its re-legalization are banned. ...
"Steve has the unalienable right to his life. And he has the unalienable right to grow any God-given herb, and use them as he sees fit. ... Here in the safe jurisdiction of British Columbia, where the Canadian federal government recognizes Steve's rights as a cannabis patient, we have a safe harbor from which we can continue our appeal. ...
"How can Placer County force Steve, while he exercises his right to appeal and doesn't even have competent legal representation, to choose between being a fugitive or facing certain death?"
I phoned the Kubbys in British Columbia, last week.
The family is staying in a four-bedroom house with a two-car garage overlooking Porpoise Bay for U.S. $690 a month, Steve reports. "And the only black-and-whites you see up here are the bald eagles. I think there are like six cops for the whole coast. ... We're living like kings and all our friends believe as we do. ..."
While that's good news, it doesn't make me any less ashamed to live in a country that would force a fine man and his courageous family to choose between exile and certain death in prison.
Financial help to fund Steve's appeal is welcome at www.kubby.com/00-contribute.html, or The Kubby Defense Fund, 5823 Marine Way, Sechelt, B.C. V0N 3A6 Canada.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. To receive his longer, better stuff, subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
