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Buzzby

Medical Marijuana Advocate Arrested in San Francisco
Times staff | Los Angeles Times | 01/27/2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- Medical marijuana crusader Steve Kubby, a former Laguna Beach resident who was a 1998 Libertarian candidate for governor and one of the authors of California's watershed medical marijuana law, was in custody today.

He was arrested today at San Francisco International Airport after spending five years as a fugitive in Canada to escape a jail sentence here.

Kubby was sentenced in March 2001 to four months in jail by a Placer County judge for possession of a peyote button and a hallucinogenic mushroom after jurors acquitted him of the more serious charges that he was selling pot grown in his basement medical marijuana garden.

The peyote and mushroom were in his possession, Kubby said, for an artist's rendering to be used in a book he wrote on The Drug War while living in Olympic Valley, just north of Lake Tahoe.

Amid wrangling with authorities over his sentence, Kubby moved with his family to British Columbia in May 2001.

Kubby says he needs marijuana to curb symptoms of a rare type of adrenal cancer and says he will suffer and die without it in jail. Jailhouse use of medical marijuana is not allowed in California, where voters in 1996 approved the nation's first law allowing the use of cannabis as medicine with a doctor's recommendation.

Around the time Kubby moved to Canada, judges in Placer County ordered his original misdemeanor convictions converted to felonies. Kubby, who says he now could face up to three years behind bars, has appealed those rulings, which he calls a miscarriage of justice.

Kubby also worries that prosecutors will attempt to extend his jail stay because he left the country and was declared a fugitive.

"They don't want to admit it's political," Kubby said of officials in Placer County. "I committed the unpardonable sin of helping pass a medical marijuana law that police and prosecutors hate."

"The officials in Canada might be sending him back to a death sentence," Bill McPike, Kubby's U.S. lawyer, said last week when his client was cleared for deportation from Canada.

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killer12382

He was convicted on the peyote charge but will he be charged for going on the lam? I don't know if thats a crime or not. I think so but am not sure.

killer12382

Has he died yet? It's been almost 2 days now.

cosmo

yes, going on the lam is indeed a crime. I'm sure he racked up plenty of failures to appear, probably jumped bond too. Simple fact of the matter is that he was arrested for posessing controlled substances, not because he's politically unpopular. Regardless of how he was arrested, he can still file a writ of habeas corpus and have the federal government rule on whether or not his detention by the state is unconstitutional. This guy isn't going to die without marijuana. Medical marijuana allows him to function and eases the suffering that comes with cancer, but it's not keeping him alive.
I don't mean to sound so harsh, but the struggle for legalization and medical use is real. Creating sob stories by misapplying facts and making martyrs out of fugitives is not the way to help society progress. It's truly sad that someone who could benefit tremendously from medical marijuana is locked up, but he wasn't locked up for pot, and he's not going to die without it. If I had a bag of cocaine and a gun, and claimed they were for a picture, that still does not excuse me from posessing a controlled substance in conjunction with a firearm. If I decide to run to Canada to avoid going to prison, I can expect to be promptly snatched when I return (if they don't come to Canada to get me).
Education, not emotion, will win the drug war. Emotions are why marijuana users are "criminals" in the first place.

dedbr

he make's good sense...

Meanwhile, back in the bunker.....

Ded

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Tolerance4all

Another medical expert with no evidence to back up his assertions. Two doctors, who have examined him, say that Cannabis is the only thing keeping him alive longer than anyone else with adrenal cancer. The best you can come up with is it can't be true. Why is it not true? Is this a debate or a soap box?

Buzzby

I'm not clear as to how you can be so positive about that. Are you psychic?

This man has a form of cancer that the doctors predicted would kill him several years ago, and yet he's alive. Animals studies have shown over and over again that cannabinoids have tumor-suppressing properties. This type of adrenal cancer releases huge amounts of adrenaline into the bloodstream. Constant exposure to that level of adrenaline can have severely deleterious effects on many body systems. These effects appear to have been tempered by his use of marijuana.

Fleeing incarceration because you believe that it would be a death sentence makes perfect sense to me. Possession of minute amounts of controlled substances does not deserve capital punishment. He has said all along that he'd do his time if he could be provided with the medication he needs to stay alive.

Spock

I don't mean to be cruel or anything but, I'd be willing to go to jail if they let me get high while I'm there. Jail might actually be fun with the right kind of smoke.

Buzzby

Commit a crime, go to jail, get high, and let us know if it's fun.

Drugs of all kinds are very available in jails and prisons.

Spock

I was speaking of an ideal jail, like the ones they send the politicians to. In reality, most inmates can't afford the cost of the drugs that Tyrone sells in cellblock G.