Medical cannabis patients in California are under attack from petty local bureaucrats, ever since their legal and medical protection were wiped out by recreational legalization.
Journalist R.V. Scheide reveals the plight of a Redding man persecuted for growing his own cancer medicine. The article is here “Redding Fines Cancer Patient $40,000 For Growing Cannabis“. This is indicative of the freefall of patients' rights in the wake of “legalization”. The article reports on Mike Rubin, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2010. He has endured brutal chemotherapy, only to have the tumors in his neck and shoulders return. Seeking hope, he moved West, eventually settling in Redding, to use medical cannabis to treat his condition.
Cannabis has been legal medicine in California since 1996. Not long ago, it was law enforcement and prosecutors who made up, or clumsily interpreted, cannabis laws. Today, in the era of the Prop 64 Adult Use of Marijuana Act, medical protections are gone, and it is the local code enforcement staff that “wing it” to arbitrarily and subjectively enforce in the absence of State legal protections for patients.
As you can read in the article, code enforcement acts willy-nilly in their fines and enforcement. The Redding code enforcement officer named Willkomm actually brags that he could have fined Rubin $40,000 PER DAY, rather than just $40,000. The total fine would have been $840,000, nearly $1 million. Redding's code enforcement have the swagger of judge, jury, and executioner.
What are we doing when, as a society, we find something that helps treat cancer, and we mercilessly penalize it to the point of choking it to death? I've seen first-hand accounts of many people that have used cannabis to successfully treat their very serious medical conditions, yet these people have been persecuted by the law rather than supported so that new methods of treatment can be developed and/or our medical knowledge can be expanded. While reasonable regulation can and should be weighed against unfettered growing of cannabis by anyone, anywhere, we need to examine our guiding principles. Why are we treating something that helps people with serious medical conditions in this way?
Redding Criminal Defense Attorney Joseph Tully
Author and Lawyer Joseph Tully brings a passion to law practice rarely seen among criminal defense lawyers and it drives his extraordinary record of positive outcomes. From his criminal law office in Redding he has experience in Shasta County and surrounding areas, where he outworks and out-prepares prosecutors to combat the State's massive law enforcement and judicial advantages over an individual. Joseph Tully is a Certified Criminal Law Specialist, an elite certification awarded to less than 1% of California lawyers by the California Board of Legal Specialization. Also, Joseph Tully has been listed among National Trial Lawyers' “Top 100 Trial Lawyers” multiple years. He has an extraordinary record of victories in high profile cannabis trials from Redding to Contra Costa County and a precedent-setting win in a hotly contested Stand Your Ground murder trial. His diligence and meticulous preparation has resulted in scores of great outcomes for cases others declared impossible.
Contact Tully & Weiss here for legal help statewide. Or in Northern California call our Redding office at (530) 776-0840
