The Cannabis Defense Coalition has now received the second and third bundles of documents from the Department of Corrections in response to their public disclosure request. Following the first set of documents the CDC received, I posted about how Attorney General Rob McKenna’s office was advising the DOC to take an extremely hard line against the use of medical marijuana for individuals on probation. With the newer sets of documents, even more has been revealed, including a flagrant case of police misconduct by several corrections officers, and an attempt by even the head of the DOC, Eldon Vail, to cover it up.
All three sets of documents released by the DOC have been indexed here and posted here. Within this post, I’ll be referencing the released documents the same way the index does – for example [2:256-258] would be the second document dump, pages 256 to 258.
The case in question involves a woman named Kathy Parkins (who also goes by Kathy Merry-Parkins), a medical marijuana patient from Washington who suffers from fibromyalgia. Parkins was considering moving further down the west coast in 2007. After spending some time in southern California, she decided to make a trip into Arizona to visit a friend and have her car looked at before driving back up to Washington for Thanksgiving. Along the way, on November 14, 2007, she was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint just after entering Arizona (the Border Patrol is allowed to set up checkpoints like this within 100 miles of an international border).
Arizona is not a medical marijuana state, so Parkins was arrested and charged with three marijuana-related counts after a drug-sniffing dog located the less than 1/4 ounce that she had in her possession. So instead of making it back home for Thanksgiving, Parkins spent over three weeks in an Arizona jail. She was finally released back to Washington in January 2008, but had to return several times for court appearances. Parkins was eventually sentenced to probation by the judge in Arizona.
In order for Parkins to spend her probationary period back home in Washington, however, an Interstate Compact was required, an agreement between states to have someone on probation move from one state’s supervision to another. Neither Parkins nor the corrections officers in Arizona, however, understood the extent that the Washington DOC was attempting to fight their own battle against Washington’s medical marijuana law and medical marijuana users.
Upon her release back to Washington, Parkins moved in with a woman named Carla Cole, another authorized medical marijuana patient who says she heard about Parkins’ situation and volunteered to let her stay in her house. On May 21, 2008, hours after Parkins got an updated medical marijuana authorization from Dr. Bethany Rolfe at Sea-Mar Community Center, Community Corrections Officer (CCO) Jeremy Praven and another unidentified CCO conducted a home inspection at Cole’s West Seattle residence and found Cole’s small legal garden of 9 marijuana plants. Praven contacted Seattle Police and then attempted to get guidance from a supervisor, identified as Todd Johnson in an email written a week later by Field Administrator Donta Harper [1:125].
When Seattle Police arrived, according to Cole, they determined that Cole’s small grow operation was completely legal, apologized to Cole for bothering her, and took no actions other than filing a report. After that, a third Corrections Officer from the DOC, Michael Schemnitzer, arrived at Cole’s residence. Referring to both the initial contact from Praven and his partner and the later arrival of Schemnitzer, this is how Cole described what happened in an email complaint sent to the DOC on May 22, 2008, the day after the arrest [1:134]:
While the CCO’s were in my home, one very young man said to me, a retiree in my 60’s, and poor Kathy who is visibily pained and stressed, “I don’t care about her and I don’t care about her problems and I don’t care about you and I don’t care about your problems.”
…
Then your guys came back with a new guy who chose to speak to Kathy SO RUDELY and with such contempt I just had to add “Please” to his command for her to descend the stairs. This was in my home, and I naturally feel a right to ask people to behave in a civil way there.
Then, he said that because I said “please” he was going to take her in, which he did. I told him his cruelty does not become him and I’m telling you the cruelty of your staff does not become you. To make me feel like I sent my friend to prison because I asked her to be treated with kindness in my home – someone who has committed no real crime at all – is just so mean I’m speechless.
After being arrested by Schemnitzer, Parkins spent the next week in King County Jail without charges or a hearing. Her health deteriorated (as it had while locked up in Arizona as well) as she tried unsuccessfully to get information about her case. Throughout that week, Cole sent several frantic emails to elected officials in Olympia and folks within the DOC, trying to find out what was happening. Two separate Deputy Secretary Correspondence Logs were opened for the case [1:124][1:133]. On the evening of May 27, a full six days after the initial arrest, Cole sent her correspondence to several people in the media [1:130]. The next day, folks in the DOC began looking into the situation, and at 7pm on May 28, Parkins was finally released from custody. In making the decision to release her, Field Administrator Donta Harper conceded in an internal email that the CCOs had no authority to detain her in the first place [1:652]:
A review of the case and of DOC 380.605 Interstate Compact policy indicates that assigned CCO did not have jurisdiction to detain as the Interstate Placement had not been approved and the case had yet been gained whereabouts we agreed to assume supervision responsibilities. The CCO was in the investigation process of which he could have denied based on current behavior. The CCO had also further involved local law enforcement regarding the suspected illegal behavior of which she has not been yet charged.
Harper also followed up the next day by sending a letter to Governor Gregoire’s office admitting fault in the arrest [1:374-375].
It’s important to note that the reason that Praven and Schemnitzer didn’t have the authority to detain her wasn’t because they overreacted to the presence of a legal medical marijuana grow, but because it was up to Arizona officials to make the decision to detain her. At this point, Parkins was still largely unaware of the Washington DOC’s policy towards medical marijuana, which she assumed would be legal for her to use while under probation here. Upon leaving Arizona, she was told that during her probation, the restriction was that she was not allowed to use illegal drugs. As Parkins understood it, medical marijuana is not an illegal drug in Washington if authorized by a doctor. But less than a week before Parkins was arrested, however, the DOC released an Administrative Bulletin [1:156-157] that outlined a new process for people on probation who have authorizations to use medical marijuana. I’ll cover this in more detail later in the post, but the process was set up as little more than a formal way of preventing just about anyone from using medical marijuana while under probation.
Despite being let out of jail, Parkins was still understandably worried that she’d be sent back to Arizona for violating her probation. After several attempts to follow up with officials in both Arizona and Washington, Parkins discovered that a nationwide arrest warrant had been posted for her from Arizona, based upon a denial of the Interstate Compact agreement filled out by Praven. On June 20, 2009, an official in Arizona read Kathy the Interstate Compact paperwork that Praven had filled out after her arrest and sent to Arizona [2:20-22]. It contained a number of things that were completely made up out of thin air. On the same day, Kimberly Pearson of the Washington DOC notified Arizona probation officials to cancel the warrant and that they were rescinding the Interstate Compact denial. Parkins could now stay in Washington and apply to use medical marijuana while here on probation.
Despite numerous attempts, Parkins was never able to obtain a copy of that Interstate Compact denial filled out by Praven (she claims to have been told that it was lost). In fact, she didn’t see it until a few weeks ago, when it was released as part of the second document dump from the DOC. The report contains the following claims [2:20-22]:
Ms. Parkins has no family ties in Washington. She stated that she wanted to live in Washington because of the Marijuana laws.
This is complete fiction. Parkins was born and raised in Washington, has two grown kids in the state, a grandchild who had just been born in Wenatchee while she was in an Arizona courtroom, and 9 aunts and uncles all living in Washington state. On top of that, Parkins insists that she never said anything about wanting to living in Washington because of the marijuana laws.
Ms. Parkins was living with individuals from the Marijuana’s Growers Association of Washington.
Neither Cole nor Parkins has any idea where Praven came up with this. No such organization exists.
She stated that she had a physicians prescription for medical marijuana. Per information received from Interstate, there is a Physicians Statement from Medicann. Per this statement, marijuana is appropriate for her serious medical condition. This document has no validity in the state of Washington.
This part is more misleading than untrue. Parkins’ file from Arizona (which is not in the document dump) contained medical marijuana authorizations from both Washington and California. It’s true that she also had a Medicann card from California, and that it’s not valid in the state of Washington, but Praven appears to have ignored the authorization from Washington in order to write this. Parkins also claims that she offered to show the officers the updated Washington authorization that she’d received earlier that day, but they weren’t interested.
With all of this information now public, there’s no ambiguity to what occurred on May 21, 2008. CCOs Jeremy Praven and Michael Schemnitzer improperly arrested Parkins and then Praven filed a report with several things completely made up or intentionally misleading in an attempt to have her sent back to Arizona – a state where she has no family and has never lived in – to serve out her probation.
Even after the arrest and the discovery that her CCO lied about her case to officials in Arizona, Parkins still believed that once her doctor filed the necessary paperwork to certify her as a medical marijuana patient, everything would be taken care of. On July 23, 2008, two months after her arrest, that hopefulness bumped up against the reality of the DOC, as they denied her request to use the medicine that she’d been using for years – legally – before her arrest.
Without going too far into the details of the process that the DOC put into place earlier that year for handling medical marijuana requests, the official intent was to separate out valid medical marijuana users from addicts and others who were getting authorizations from shady doctors. In reality, the physician they put in charge of approving or denying the requests, Dr. Steve Hammond, considered any doctor who recommended medical marijuana a phony doctor. In fact, his animosity towards medical marijuana was so extreme, it extended to Marinol, the completely legal THC substitute medication that works just as well as the plant itself for a percentage of medical marijuana users. He even asserted in an email exchange from March 2009 [2:458-459] that the DOC had the right to overrule a doctor who prescribed Marinol to a terminal cancer patient unless they could confirm that the patient was going through chemotherapy at the time. Unlike the loophole that the Attorney General’s office found regarding medical marijuana, what Hammond suggested the DOC do in that email thread (prevent a probationer from taking a prescribed medication) is completely illegal. Fortunately, he was overruled internally and the DOC doesn’t appear to have crossed that line (although that’s something I hope to explore in a later post).
The entire situation had become surreal. A person who broke a law in Arizona – for something that’s completely legal here – was now being harassed for engaging in that legal activity, despite the fact that even the officials in Arizona seemed indifferent to her medical marijuana use while she was back in Washington. Whatever justification the DOC may have had to overrule certain people’s rights to use a medicine recommended to them by their doctor, it’s hard to fathom how they could justify denying it for a longtime medical marijuana user who only ended up on probation because she was arrested for it in a non-medical marijuana state. At this point, it’s clear that the DOC was denying medical marijuana use based upon an open hostility towards the voter-approved law rather than for any genuine attempt to weed out the people just cynically trying to get high while on probation.
Following the denial of Parkins’ request to use medical marijuana, Praven once again sent the partially fictional Interstate Compact denial to Arizona. Her Corrections Officer from Arizona, Susan Huntzinger, confirmed to me that they only had one denial document, so it appears that Praven just re-sent his previous report – with none of the false claims corrected. At this point, the protocol for dealing with her case started to become even more confusing. The appeal process for those who’d been denied wasn’t fully established, so it wasn’t clear whether she would need approval from Arizona for her appeal, or if she could just submit it herself. By the end of the summer, Parkins was concerned enough for her ability to stay in Washington that she moved out of Cole’s house and in with her son and his girlfriend.
Cole, however, remained furious over the way Parkins was treated and demanded that the CCO’s involved in her arrest be reprimanded for their behavior during and after the arrest. After several failed attempts, she decided to send a letter directly to the head of the DOC, Eldon Vail, who was appointed by Governor Gregoire to lead the agency at the beginning of 2008. On December 3, 2008, she wrote [2:450-451]:
This past May a recent tenant and friendly acquaintance who, like me, is authorized in Washington to use marijuana medicinally, was visited here by your Community Corrections Officers. The friend, [Kathy Parkins] is on an interstate compact probation from Arizona, which she thought was also a medical marijuana state, but isn’t.
She was roughly and unfairly removed from my home to the county jail downtown where she spent a truly miserable week with no contact from you whatsoever. The paperwork was filled with inaccuracies, and further moves by her CCO, Jeremy Praven in West Seattle, seem also to be filled with fabrications and are utterly unworthy of any decent government.
Nearly three months later, on February 20, 2009, Vail finally replied to Cole. At the time, the DOC was still refusing to release the falsified report to Parkins, and Vail attempted to cover up what his officer had done:
A review of jail records and discussion with staff indicates that Ms. Merry-Perkins [sic] was booked into King County Jail without any appearance of physical injury. Through a review of her field file, discussion with the assigned CCO and the unit supervisor, there is no evidence to support your statements that the CCOs inaccurately filled out paperwork or fabricated her supervision paperwork from Arizona.
Vail studied this case so thoroughly that he misspelled Parkins’ last name throughout the letter.
Ten months later, in December 2009, the second document dump from the DOC finally revealed the document that they’d been trying to hide the entire time – and it proves that Vail lied to cover up for the actions of CCO Jeremy Praven. Cole has since sent another letter to Vail asking for an explanation, but has yet to receive a reply. I attempted to interview folks still within the DOC to find out if Praven or Schemnitzer were ever reprimanded internally, but after initially saying that they would set up an interview for me, they failed to follow-up.
Parkins is currently finishing up her probation and searching for a lawyer to look into her case. After filing an appeal of her initial rejection, she was eventually cleared to use medical marijuana in January 2009. She’s one of only two people who have been allowed to do so, but it’s not clear what separated her case from the others, as there are dozens – including at least one person with AIDS, another who was paralyzed in a car accident – who were denied the use of medical marijuana, even with physician authorizations. This is a topic I hope to cover in a later post.
“While the CCO’s were in my home, one very young man said to me, a retiree in my 60’s, and poor Kathy who is visibily pained and stressed, “I don’t care about her and I don’t care about her problems and I don’t care about you and I don’t care about your problems.”…
“Then, he said that because I said “please” he was going to take her in, which he did.”
Oh, yes, this is that ‘new professionalism’ Supreme Court Judge Scalia said all law enforcement organizations subscribed to.
This is exactly the kind of attitude that has been allowed to fester under the aegis of the DrugWar, the kind of attitude author Richard Miller warned about in his book Drug Warriors and Their Prey, wherein condescension leads to contempt to dehumanization to elimination.
Needless to say, along the way, little trifles like due process and civil rights gets swished around in a dirty toilet, people’s lives are needlessly endangered, and supposed civil servants display contempt for those paying for their upkeep.
Yessir, gotta admire that ‘new professionalism’ at work.
This is the sort of thing that every last corner of the WA news media needs to highlight. People like McKenna have no place in our government.
Interesting post and a troubling situation.
I’d like to suggest, however, that the “lies” in Secretary Vail’s reply to Ms. Coles letter were most likely limited to his signing a letter that a subordinate wrote without looking into the issue very deeply.
I had a situation like this about 20 years ago. I do forensic evaluations and counseling work in the community. I found that my evaluations of men who ended up in prison were getting shredded by clerks at the intake prison, at Shelton.
When I wrote the secretary at the time, I received a letter from the secretary’s office, dismissing my “allegation.” It seems that DOC gets many, many complaints from friends and family members of inmates and the (almost) automatic response is to dismiss them out of hand. Not encouraging news but this suggests the fault lies with the system rather than the person.
For more on this phenomen, see Tavris & Elliott, 2007, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). Harcouurt.
longest. blog. post. ever.
As a former probationer in the state of Washington who also was and is a medical marijuana patient, I can reaffirm for you that the Washington DOC is completely hostile to medical marijuana, even when all the paperwork is in order with a doctor’s signature.
After showing up positive for cannabis metabolites in a urinalysis screening, I was forced to stop using my legal medicine and to attend Narcotics Anonymous classes, of all things.
I was the only one in the group who was there for anything besides cocaine and meth.
Maybe Arizona should just put dangerous offenders like Parkins on a bus to Washington and let us deal with them as Mike Huckabee’s Arkansas did with Maurice Clemmons. What’s good for Arkansas ought to be good for Arizona, too!
@3: Michael, what do you suppose Secretary Vail’s signature on a letter is supposed to indicate? Your comment suggests that you think we should not assume that Vail was familiar with the details of a letter he signed.
This is all very say but interesting.
Nemo moronically ties this into ASCJ Scalia. Recently Puddy tied some local moronic mayoral hiring activity to Odumba and some fool got upset. So now a fool does the same thing and nothing from the other fools? McKenna was doing the will of the peeps as the law of the land. Of course this all happened on the WA Dummocrapts watch. This is not lost on Puddy!
@4
Yes it was. And probably a good example of a story that a major daily should be breaking but don’t.
Excellent work Lee and HA. Another Brownie moment maybe?
Very nice work, Lee.
There is an awful lot of hype here and maybe even slander.
What seems to have happened is that a woman broke the MJ law in another state, AZ, and was caught and sentenced. She was released to WA state with the assumption that she would follow Arizona’s laws. She did not do so. She was caught and punished.
Lee feels the WA state authorities were too aggressive. He may be right, but the implications in his post go way beyond that, perhaps even to slander in some instances.
For example, the patient/victim in this case was smoking pot to treat “fibromyalgia.” This creates credibility problems of its own since the diagnosis is controversial and at most appears to be psychosomatic. Give that sort of diagnosis, inhaling carcinogens is likely NOT agood medical practice. Is she someday gets lung cancer how would Lee feel about her suing the providers of MJ?If a physician was consulted by the WA state authorities, I suspect many would have said this is not an appropriate therapy.
There are also a number of charges made here by Lee against WA authorities that may be true but if not he seems all to willing to take one side of the argument.
Personally , though I believe in decriminalization (to the same level as tobacco), this sort of hype hurts Lee’s case.
@10 Geov
WADR,
How is this good work?
The woman broke a law. perhaps a stupid law. As far as I know, in America you can not seek asylum by going to a state without that law.
Since the central issue was enforcing an AZ law, WA state was overly aggressive?
The case for legalizing THC and for allowing folks to inhale benzpyrene (one carcinogen in MJ smoke) is fine by me. What I see is that this sort of psuedojournalism on the left discredits us as much as the tea party jounralists’ passion for defending creationism.
sj @11,
What don’t you get about this? Medical marijuana is legal in WA state, and the woman in question had a legal prescription. Yet DOC had her arrested and jailed for using legal medication.
One of us must not have read what Lee wrote.
As I read Lee’s lengthy manuscript, she was arrested for violating the terms of her probation from Az.
The only hole here may be, as Lee argues, that Az and WA had not fulfilled the law on the agreement allowing her to live here. If so, she gets away on a technicality but the idea that she is being persecuted by some pot-hating cop appears to be a fantasy.
Personally, one very good reason for legalizing THC would be to get rid of the medical marijuana laws themselves. At worst THC does no harm so making it easliy available as a prescription drug or even over the counter would obviate the false issues created by pot fanatics.
Hell if we let people buy thye rest fo the useless crap in the health food stores, we might as well let them buy a drug they can enjoy.
Goldy
Frankly, I would also suspect that a number of the individuals in Lee’s post may have a legitimate gripe with Lee and HA over postings that have a malicious and possibly slanderous intent.
a few examples
So, is Lee claiming Mr. Praven perjured himself?
Has Dr. Hammond referred to other doctors as “phony doctors?” That is a pretty serous charge. It seems more likley that Dr. Hammond is saying that physicians in the DOC can make medical judgments that may not agree with those on the outside.
Now L ee is claiming that a state official has falsified a report, “and it proves that Vail lied to cover up for the actions of CCO Jeremy Praven. ”
That strikes me as slander.
It is enough to drive me to drink!
Thanks for bringing this up! She’s still under DOC supervision, thanks for the tip, you’re a real swell fella!!!! I assure you AZ was not aware of this!!!!
How about the murderers and pedofyles the we engage… maybe we should just all give up let you run the show!!!
How much marijuana was seized? Why was she coming to AZ? ( Bruce Margolin’s Medical Marijuana guide states AZ has passed medical marijuana laws. NO fed charges, yet a fed Border Patrol run Homeland security checkpoint.Sounds like she got a pretty sweet PLEA(admits guilt) deal and YOU look like the horsesass!!! Come to Maricopa County, I can’t wait to meet you!!!
I’m trying to figure out which of this cast of characters is the scariest.
Clean it up, you’re working for us.
Look like everyone MISSED this point of Lees reporting.
Harper also followed up the next day by sending a letter to Governor Gregoire’s office admitting fault in the arrest [1:374-375].What is left to argue? ADMITTING FAULT TO THE GOVERNOR!!!!
Did we all read the whole story or just get caught up in the beginning.
SJ; if you don’t know anything about a topic its wise to not say anything at all. MMJ need not be smoked, has never been linked to lung cancer, and has in fact demonstrated a capacity to reduce the chance for lung cancer.
Kathy was illegally detained, and specifically harassed for her legal medical marijuana use. I’m sure you’re a doctor though and can educate us all about fibromyalgia.
How you you just pipe down about things you’ve obviously got no clue about.
Poor lil stoner Lee and Co. Take an extra bong hit you piece of shit and sad excuse of a parent. :)
http://www.bellinghamherald.co.....83371.html
@19
Did we all read the whole story or just get caught up in the beginning.
None of them read the story. The trolls here are pretty entertaining, but no one actually takes them seriously.
@20
SJ; if you don’t know anything about a topic its wise to not say anything at all.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
@20 anonymous and Lee
My statements are pretty clear. Unless you are Sara Palin’s good cousin, you ought to be able to understand them.
The bottom line is that advising anyone to get their cannabis effect (medicinal or otherwise) by inhaling smoke is irresponsible or stupid. That does not make it something that should be illegal anymore than chocolate, St. John’s wart, Chiropractic, eating fugo, or faith healing need to be illegal.
The simple facts are that when you smoke marijuana a chemical reaction occurs that creates very scary compounds known to cause cancer. That is why I believe the management of Hempfest is very wrong to allow kids inside the fences.
As for this lady, the sad thing is that she got caught for something that should not be a legal offence. That does not justify broad claims of corruption and malice. What it does do is the demean the case for legalization.
Calling the WA state officials “corrupt” is worthy of Glen Beck.
SJ;
I thought I used small enough words before but apparently not. Trying reading the next sentence here 4 or 5 times;
MEDICAL MARIJUANA NEED NOT BE SMOKED. EVEN WITH SMOKED MARIJUANA STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THEY REDUCE RISK FOR LUNG CANCERS.
Holy crap ding dong, this isn’t that complicated. Until you know wtf you are talking about just pipe down squeaky.
@24
It should be fairly obvious by now, but SJ is not (and has never been) interested in the facts when it comes to this topic. At this point, even someone trying to parody him couldn’t be more ridiculous than he’s already become on his own.
When it gets really entertaining though is whenever I try to correct him and then he accuses me of being obsessed. :)
Couple of questions.
What were the original charges of both ladies that put them on probation. Hopefully it was not drug related.
What conditions were imposed on her by Arizona and which she agreed to which would ensure that Arizona felt comfortable with releasing her on Interstate Compact to Washington? They could have kept her in Arizona if they felt she could not comply with conditions.
If medicinal marijuana is recommended care for fibromyalgia will it be allowed inside institutions for those still incarcerated?
I think the writer should have addressed this in this post.
@24
Yes I KNOW that one can get cannabanoids from MJ w/o smoking. You can also get your nicotine fix withoy smoking tobacco,
BTW. OTOH chewing tobacco causes cancer of the mouth. The bad effects of tobacco, BTW are NOIT form nicotine. The bad effects are form polycyclic hydrocarbons that are MORE abundant in MJ. Personally I think it is fine for you to inhale carcinogens, who am I to stop anyone from taking a risk? Just don’t promote that risk to others for a profit and never allow kids tom take a risk.
As for your second point, you are either wrong, know of something I have not been able to find, or know something aout statistics that I do not know.
The facts, AFIK, is that there is a limited study form LA that failed to find an effect of MJ in causing lung cancer. That is an interesting result and if it were to hold up would be a huge incentive for someone to look into MJ for a miracle drug that prevents the effects of carcinogens. A discovery like that would make a drug company very, very wealthy. If you believe this I suggest you find someone willing to do the work and invest your money!
Unfortunately, a negative result can not be proven in this sort of study. As designed the study was an effort to find a correlation not a cause. FWIW even a positive result, ie a correlation of MJ with cancer, would not have proven that MJ causes cancer. Exactly that statistical issue was used by the tobacco companies to argue that smoking their weed could not be proven to cause cancer.
The result of that sort of argument by tobacco companies resulted in 100s of thousands of needed, painful deaths.
In case you are interested here are some FAQ and answers:
1. Is there any evidence that the cannabinoids in MJ are hamrful. Not that I can find.
2. Is inhaling MJ smoke safe? Probably not because the composition of MJ smoke is very high in known carcinogens.
3, Is use of MJ by hookah safe? I really do not know. One way of finding out is by looking for literature on tobacco smoke via hookah. If that is safe then MJ is probably safe too.
4. What about MJ in brownies or THC in any form. Should be safe, esp. THC.
As for Lee’s bon mot, he is welcome anytime to set up a debate on the facts. I am interested enough to have read a stack of rather papers he claimed proved smoking MJ was safe. None of the papers, with the exception of the study I cited above, proved anything of the sort .. but hell I just have a PhD in molecular pathology, obviously Lee is far more qualified than I.
I leave the issues of possession by demons and obsession to Lee’s shaman or therapist. My therapist tells me I am OK so I must be so! … don’t have a shaman!
@26 Tom
Good questions.
Obviousy Lee knows a lot more abouyt this case, since I have only read his post. Based on that, however ..
I do not think the owner of the house was on probation. AFIK Lee’s victim was only on probation here because she had been sentenced and remanded by AZ.
Hell, sending her here saved AZ the costs of incarceration or managing probation there. It seems reading between the lines of Lee’s posts, that the agreement between AZ and WA was so fuzzy, the DOC did not understand the process very well. Hardly the stuff of corruption though!
I suspect that this would be up to the judgment of the prison doctor responsible for the patients care. Like fibromyalgia, many of the indications for MJ are NOT widely accepted by the medical community. Often the claims made for “medical” marijuana are more like cult than science.
So, the doc would need to decide, based on his or her judgment, whether the prisoner needed MJ. BTW this would be exactly the same for other drugs a prisoner may want. many vitamins, for example, have no useful effect. Lots of doc prescribe growth hormone or thyroid hormone when it is not needed. Some pills docs prescribe are really placeboes.
But then there is the corrupt and hate filled Dr. Hammond. whose “animosity towards medical marijuana was so extreme, it extended to Marinol, the completely legal THC substitute medication that works just as well as the plant itself.” Froim a therapeutic POV, the ONLY justification for smoking MJ is THC and yes, as the prison doc, Dr. Hammond should have that authority.
Lee knows much more medicine than Dr. Hammond!
Color me skeptical. I’m to believe that Ms Cole was possibly at Trader Joe’s looking for some free range chicken when she overheard someone say that this convict from Arizona needed a place to stay. Being the good samaritan that she is she interrupted so that she could offer this convict a place to live. Once residing together this problem arose and magically the militant pro-advocacy group, Cannabis Defense Coalition, hearing of their plight, (I guess they shop at Trader Joe’s too) offered assistance and legal help.
Spare me.
@29: Tom Scott: Cannabis Defense Coalition does not offer or provide legal assistance. We requested, received, and published information from the Washington State Department of Corrections that Lee cited. I don’t understand your comments about Trader Joe.
SJ;
Studies have demonstrated those in high lung cancer risk groups who also use marijuana see a lowered instance of lung cancers. If marijuana is carcinogenic how do you account for the reduction of lung cancer rates for those in high risk groups, like tobacco smokers?
For the last time, you don’t even have to smoke marijuana for the medicinal effects. Are you now fabricating a story that marijuana causes stomach cancer when eaten? Or was the analogy to tobacco just totally false?
@26
What were the original charges of both ladies that put them on probation. Hopefully it was not drug related.
Both ladies? Ms. Cole was never charged with anything. Parkins was charged with marijuana-related counts (possession of less than 1/4 ounce and possession of paraphernalia).
What conditions were imposed on her by Arizona and which she agreed to which would ensure that Arizona felt comfortable with releasing her on Interstate Compact to Washington? They could have kept her in Arizona if they felt she could not comply with conditions.
The conditions were not to use illegal drugs. I had the Arizona CCO read me the specific statute. It’s conceivable that the Arizona folks could make an issue of it, but they haven’t so far, and I don’t expect them to. I don’t think there’s any interest by the Arizona officials to keep her in a state where she has no family and no place to stay.
If medicinal marijuana is recommended care for fibromyalgia will it be allowed inside institutions for those still incarcerated?
No, medical marijuana is not allowed for those who are currently incarcerated.
@29
Color me skeptical. I’m to believe that Ms Cole was possibly at Trader Joe’s looking for some free range chicken when she overheard someone say that this convict from Arizona needed a place to stay.
I don’t know how Ms. Cole heard about the case, but the community of patients in this state have a number of email and online forums that keep people up-to-date on things.
Being the good samaritan that she is she interrupted so that she could offer this convict a place to live.
She took pity on Kathy for her situation. That’s correct.
Once residing together this problem arose and magically the militant pro-advocacy group, Cannabis Defense Coalition, hearing of their plight, (I guess they shop at Trader Joe’s too) offered assistance and legal help.
At the time of their “plight”, the CDC didn’t even exist yet. Part of the reason the CDC does exist now is because there were a number of patients like Parkins having ordeals with the DOC.
Spare me.
Do you have a point, or are you just here for the same reason as SJ – to lay the groundwork for an insanity plea at future criminal trial?
@31 Pothead
As I have offered Lee before, if you know of such studies cite them. You may also want to read something about the statistical analysis iof such data. I recommend Judea Pearl’s “Causality.” The appendix is written for a non expert and actually addresses issues in the analysis of tobacco as a carcinogen.
I said nothing about stomach cancer, what I said is that the presence of carcinogens in MJ smoke is worrisome.
I have nothing against making THC fully available.
I have no more objection to your or Lee’s inhaling benzpyrene from MJ than I do to either of you smoking cigarettes.
@32 Lee and Tom
Is there any reason Lee can’t be polite to folks who ask him real questions?
Lee
Tom seems to want to have a discussion of facts. Isn’t that the idea of HA? Or are you just another Troll?
Kathy Kathy, you obviously didn’t get the memo. The best treatment for fibromyalgia (as everyone knows) is not cannabis, but GHB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.....dical_uses
Nice work on this post! I just don;t get why in these here United States of Amerika this kind of behavior from police is tolerated – this officer Pavin is nothing but a thug and a bully, so cowardly and weak to abuse two sick old ladies. Then he lies – this scum belongs in jail or in Afghanistan- his highest and best use is as cannon fodder.
This is the real issue here, IMHO – why is this pig (yes he is a swine – cowardly, bullying, lying, sack of pig excrement), who is sworn to serve and protect, still employed?
And the “cancer-causing compounds” in MJ smoke is a prohibitionist red herring – this is the best these liars can come up with to try and smear and belittle MJ as a medicine.
Prohibitionists hate America – they are tories and counter-revolutionary (as in they would have been on the side of the British) authoritarians.
MJ will be legal this year in California and perhaps in WA – one more step in ending the reign of evil fascist prohibition, still hanging around from the thirties. What a corrupt waste, what an abomination, what does this say about our federal government that oppresses and disposesses the innocent. Babylon falls. Babylon must fall.
I’m reading all this from the safety of The Netherlands.
How on earth have you people been able to put up with so much oppression is a mystery to me and most of my fellow compatriots. Let us all hope, that when this is all over, the monsters who have been responsible for such cruelty and oppression are not quickly forgotten by those they have so badly treated.
Don’t worry James; their names can be found all over the internet. Prohibition’s days are numbered, and it’s fascist supporters will soon have nowhere to hide.
SJ:
The black stuff on chicken that gets a little burned is carcinogenic, does that mean chicken causes cancer?
No, it doesn’t. You should be able to easily locate the studies showing marijuana lowers many different cancer rates, especially among those in high risk groups, try google.
SJ spews: “to treat “fibromyalgia.” This creates credibility problems of its own since the diagnosis is controversial and at most appears to be psychosomatic”
Do you even follow the medical work in this area? You may have an MD, but do you treat patients? If the FDA has approved drugs for the condition AND the disease has an ICD9 classification, who has the real credibility problem here?
Fibromyalgia: A Disorder of the Brain?
PETRA SCHWEINHARDT, KHARA M. SAURO, and M. CATHERINE BUSHNELL
This article presents evidence that fibromyalgia patients have alterations in CNS anatomy, physiology, and chemistry that potentially contribute to the symptoms experienced by these patients. There is substantial psychophysical evidence that fibromyalgia patients perceive pain and other noxious stimuli differently than healthy
individuals and that normal pain modulatory systems, such as diffuse noxious inhibitory control mechanisms, are compromised in fibromyalgia. Furthermore, functional brain imaging studies revealing enhanced painrelated
activations corroborate the patients’ reports of increased pain. Neurotransmitter studies show that fibromyalgia patients have abnormalities in dopaminergic, opioidergic, and serotoninergic systems. Finally, studies of brain anatomy show structural differences between the brains of fibromyalgia patients and healthy individuals. The cerebral alterations offer a compelling explanation for the multiple symptoms of fibromyalgia, including widespread pain and affective disturbances. The frequent comorbidity of fibromyalgia with stressrelated
disorders, such as chronic fatigue, posttraumatic stress disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, and depression, as well as the similarity of many CNS abnormalities, suggests at least a partial common substrate for these
disorders. Despite the numerous cerebral alterations, fibromyalgia might not be a primary disorder of the brain but may be a consequence of early life stress or prolonged or severe stress, affecting brain modulatory circuitry of pain and emotions in genetically susceptible individuals. NEUROSCIENTIST 14(5):415–421, 2008. DOI: 10.1177/1073858407312521
I just checked. SJ, you are not licensed to practice medicine in Washington State.
I need to comment on this comment:
“For example, the patient/victim in this case was smoking pot to treat “fibromyalgia.” This creates credibility problems of its own since the diagnosis is controversial and at most appears to be psychosomatic. Give that sort of diagnosis, inhaling carcinogens is likely NOT agood medical practice. Is she someday gets lung cancer how would Lee feel about her suing the providers of MJ?If a physician was consulted by the WA state authorities, I suspect many would have said this is not an appropriate therapy. ”
To this person, you certainly do not do your research! Marijuana is NOT psycosomatic (but then a false doctor like a psychiatrist pushing lots of pills would say that)and it is understood Marijuana is a great therapy for this condition. Dr. Melemede and I have had a few discussions about this.
As for smoking. Though it may not be as good as vaporizing or eating methods of treatment, there aren’t and never have been a bunch of reports of people who only smoking pot to have black lung or anything else like that. In fact research is leaning to being beneficial over those who don’t smoke anything!