How the state can make life a living hell, for having legal pot

If you are a medical marijuana patient with a legal prescription, should you have to suffer harassment and intimidation that other valid prescription holders for other prescribed drugs, never do? Unfortunately, this happens all too often. The federal government interferes in the ability of individuals to receive medical marijuana as prescribed in their states.

Those who provide the drug are threatened with prosecution, even if following state law to the letter. If you have medical marijuana prescription, but find yourself in a differing state, you might find yourself with felony charges if stopped by the police.

Police in at least one case in California, where medical marijuana is legal, came to the doors of medical marijuana holders and proceeded to lecture the holders of this prescription what ailments they can use the drug for, and what they can't, though California state law explicitly gives that determination to doctors, to treat the pain the patient is suffering.

Medical marijuana patients were also threatened with arrest for distribution to a collective, which though is legally protected under California state law, along as it is a non-profit donation. Frankly, police in this small California county were either making the law up, or they didn't care and just outright lied to individuals. One patient named Sarah Pride who testified against a restrictive growing ordinance was one of those visited. Maybe coincidence, but it could be payback for her free speech.

Also, a Butte, California couple lost their kids because one of these "compliance checks" for their possession of marijuana though they both have legal marijuana prescriptions. They were charged with several felonies.

In another case a father in MIchigan faces losing custody of his daughter because he takes medical marijuana. The judge had preceded to lecture him that medical marijuana was not the best treatment for his epilepsy, and so denied him an exception to a drug testing requirement that came from him spanking his daughter. So much for the man's doctor's opinion, huh? By the way, I don't believe in corporal punishment but if he loses his daughter it won't because of that, but the marijuana usage. This is of course a classic case for jury nullification.

Finally, last year a John Ray Wilson was convicted of growing marijuana in New Jersey. He was not allowed to present evidence in his own defense that he was growing it for medical purposes to treat his multiple sclerosis. Since he grew 17 plants, he got 5 years in jail. He was denied the ability to state what he was growing it. The government wanted the jury to be grossly ignorant of these facts, because they wanted a conviction over all else. All at the cost of $35,000 a year to imprison him. To call this and these other examples stupid, is to do a disservice to the word.