Fingerprinting the sick

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:12:06 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 8, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Fingerprinting the sick

Attempting to steer a course that will honor the letter of the law -- Nevada voters have twice overwhelmingly OK'd a constitutional amendment authorizing the medical use of marijuana -- without throwing in the towel on the entire repressive police state superstructure built on the "War on Drugs," Nevada's state Board of Agriculture last week unanimously OK'd an Oct. 1 startup for the state's amazingly prissy new medical marijuana regime.

Participants may send in written applications to the Department of Agriculture in Carson City beginning Sept. 24. Approved applicants (a doctor's "recommendation" is required) will be required to go get fingerprinted by a local law enforcement agency, thereupon acquiring an appropriate government-issued photo ID -- whereupon they'll be allowed to possess no more than seven plants and no more than one ounce of harvested marijuana, which may not be smoked in public.

I called Steve Kubby, 1998 California Libertarian gubernatorial nominee (Steve was instrumental in helping win passage of California's Proposition 215 on medical marijuana, and is now living in exile in Canada) to ask him his opinion of this proposed system.

Rather than requiring fingerprints, "I think it'd be a lot simpler for everyone involved if they just had us patients tattooed," Mr. Kubby advised, possibly indulging in a touch of irony. "That way they couldn't punish us for losing or forgetting our cards. ...

"Doctors regularly prescribe really toxic, dangerous, lethal drugs, and no one really cares," Mr. Kubby points out. "But if it's a drug that actually makes patients feel good, now we need to fingerprint them and monitor them as criminals. ..."

Kubby -- an adrenal cancer patient -- was himself found innocent of all marijuana charges based on a medical defense in California earlier this year, after explaining to his jury 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.

"The federal government sends its medical marijuana patients between seven and 10 pounds of pot each year," Kubby reports. "So why can't Nevada at least conform to the federal standard? There's no way to make the calculation (of precisely how many plants it takes to produce that volume of herb) accurately, but typically indoors you get 1/4 to 1/2 ounce per plant, according to DEA studies. And four ounces per plant outdoors."

Using those figures, producing the volume of marijuana supplied annually by the federal government to its own registered medical marijuana patients would take 28 to 40 large, mature plants grown outdoors, or 224 to 640 plants grown indoors -- while anyone who's ever grown lettuce or radishes knows you need to start many more seedlings than you ever expect to harvest as mature plants.

"That's according to the DEA's own study," Kubby points out. "And of course that's under optimal gardening conditions" ... for which arid Nevada is not exactly renowned.

"There's only one limit that's going to work," Mr. Kubby concludes. "The police want a bright blue line that they can identify to tell them how to enforce the law, and there's only one limit that will work, because any limit that's a set amount invites police to kick down doors and go on a fishing expedition to find some crime to charge a patient with.

"So the only limit that we recognize is the property line. There's no reason that a patient shouldn't be able to grow as much marijuana as they feel they need as long as they're not engaging in sales or diversion.

"Once you set any kind of a limit on how much a patient can possess, it's just a matter of time before the county and state officials are going to be looking at multi million-dollar civil suits, just as they are now in Placer County (California), where the Placer County Tax League has publicly rebuked the sheriff, the district attorney and the board of supervisors for the millions of dollars in lawsuits -- I think we're now up to over eight lawsuits now. ..."

A possession limit of seven plants "shows a callous disregard for the civil rights of seriously ill people and it criminalizes a whole group of people who are simply trying to stay alive," Kubby says. "It just creates conditions where patients are forced to go over the line" -- patients who will now conveniently have provided their names and addresses to arresting authorities, of course.

On the bright side, Nevada doctors may gain some de facto immunity from federal harassment for recommending marijuana -- at least during the next year -- under the permanent injunction issued by the federal courts in the case of Conant vs. McCaffrey.

California attorney Jonathan Weissglass -- one of the attorneys in that California case -- reports the permanent injunction in that case "technically applies only to California physicians because the suit was brought after the federal authorities responded to California Proposition 215" by threatening to pull the DEA numbers of participating physicians, "but the same logic would apply elsewhere."

That case "is currently being briefed in the 9th Circuit" and will probably be heard there next year, at which point a ruling would have effect in all the states of the circuit (including Nevada), advises Weissglass, of the San Francisco firm Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin and Demain.

"So while the injunction technically doesn't protect them, the question is whether, if the federal government went after a physician in Nevada, the same thing would happen there that happens here in California. I'm assuming that if what that physician was doing was giving a sincere recommendation within the doctor-patient relationship, it would be protected."

Still an awfully tentative "guarantee" for doctors contemplating putting their careers on the line, and a disturbing reminder that today's fearless drug warriors don't seem to have attended the same junior high school civics class as the rest of us -- the one where we were told that if you want to repeal a bad law, all you have to do is a get a majority of the citizens to vote with you.

"We find the worst atrocities always occur at the end of the war," concludes Steve Kubby. "And this is the end of the war. It is changing; it is over; it is the end of the war, and you just have to keep out of the way of the dying dinosaur's tail -- the Jurassic Narcs, as we call them."

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

"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin 1759

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair