James Burton - Victim Of The War Against Cannabis

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James Burton, a Vietnam veteran and master electrical technician, faced a stark choice after he was diagnosed with a congenital form of glaucoma: He could either use marijuana and save his vision or he could continue to take the conventional but ineffective prescription drugs his doctors prescribed and slowly go blind. He chose marijuana and began growing his medicine on his Kentucky farm.

After local law enforcement officers discovered his garden, he was arrested and charged with cultivation with intent to sell. At his trial, ophthalmologist Dr. John Merritt testified that marijuana was the only medicine that could keep Burton from going blind. The jury convicted him of simple possession of marijuana, and he was sentenced to one year in a maximum security prison.

While incarcerated, Burton was deprived of his medicine. As his sight worsened over that year, he had to fight to keep prison doctors from performing a risky surgical procedure.

When Burton was released, he and his wife, Linda, were homeless. Despite the jury's finding that he was growing marijuana solely for his own use, on March 27, 1989, U.S. District Judge Ronald Meredith had ordered his house and 90-acre farm confiscated without allowing Burton to testify in his own behalf to save it.

Burton and his wife said good-bye to their families and left the country. Today, they live in the Netherlands, where Burton has a marijuana prescription from a doctor, allowing him to receive his marijuana from pharmacies there. His glaucoma is finally under control.

To send a man trying to save his vision to prison, and steal the home and land that he and his wife had worked decades for, should have the authors of the Constitution spinning in their graves," said Burton's attorney Donald Heavrin.

Burton is now helping other patients obtain marijuana for their medical needs. He is a founder and manager of the Institute of Medical Marijuana, a non-profit organization that supplies the Dutch Health Ministry with marijuana to be legally distributed through pharmacies by prescription, paid for by the Dutch government.