Police Take Man's Medical Marijuana; Rules to be Laid out Saturday

[Ms. RedEye]

Madison Heights, MI - Bob Redden thought he was doing the right thing when he went to a medical clinic in Southfield to get paperwork to qualify himself for medical marijuana.

Redden, 59, said he suffers from bone disease and two deteriorating hips, and was told medical marijuana would ease his pain. But on Monday, when Madison Heights police smashed open the front door of his Madison Heights house with a battering ram and seized 21 marijuana plants from a back room, Redden wondered what he had done wrong.

"They stole my plants and my money," Redden said. "We are devastated. The door is torn up. They treated me like I was a criminal. I can't believe this is happening to me. I was assured by my doctor this medical marijuana was going to help and they assured me this is legal."

Police in this Oakland County suburb acknowledged Wednesday they don't know whether Redden broke the law, since rules for marijuana possession in Michigan under the state's new medical marijuana have not been laid out yet by health officials. The state is expected to lay out a medical marijuana program on Saturday.

"We did execute a search warrant and we did confiscate marijuana plants," Police Chief Kevin Sagan said. "The dilemma for law enforcement is we don't have those rules yet."

Sagan said the suspect provided paperwork to officers with the name of a doctor whom police are attempting to verify.

"We are coordinating with the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office and based on what we learn from those rules, we will proceed," Sagan said. "The way the law is written it doesn't provide users carte blanche. They have to follow the rules. If we don't know what the rules are, it's in limbo."

Redden said some of the plants belong to his girlfriend, who suffers from cancer and also has the proper paperwork to possess medical marijuana. He said he was using the marijuana for medical use and is not a drug dealer and does not own a scale. The $531 taken by police was to be used to pay utility bills, buy food and put gas in the car, he said.

Redden said he planned to contact police today to obtain the return of all his items, including a personal notebook with account passwords.

Redden, who said he is on Social Security and disability for his health problems, said he obtained his documents from the nonprofit Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, which opened its first clinic in Michigan in Southfield in December. A doctor there qualified Redden, gave him a document to use medical marijuana and from there he started plants from seeds in early March.

"It has helped me tremendously," Redden said of the marijuana. "It helps my girlfriend eat because she has no appetite. I don't know what we are going to do. We have no medicine now."


News Hawk: MsRedEye: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: The Detroit News
Author: Jennifer Chambers
Copyright: 2009 The Detroit News
Contact: Contact The Detroit News | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Website: Police take man's medical marijuana; rules to be laid out Saturday | detnews.com | The Detroit News

 

[Weed420]

The cops are unsure of the law? Then maybe they should just wait for clarification by the legislature. Its not loke the world is going to detonate if somebody's growing a few plants.lol

 

[McBudz]

What reason of suspicion did they have to execute a search warrant?

 

[Herb Fellow]

"We did execute a search warrant and we did confiscate marijuana plants," Police Chief Kevin Sagan said. "The dilemma for law enforcement is we don't have those rules yet so we do whatever in hell we want to do. After all, we are the popo."

When you don't know the rules, just make something up?

 

[TorturedSoul]

Generally if laws are changed but the specifics are still murky, LEO will continue to follow procedures as they have done in the past and let the judicial system sort things out.

I can't really blame them for doing so - although the people affected by such a strategy DO have my sympathies.

I just blame the legislative bodies that will pass a law without having firm language in place. That just isn't right, although it is common. Figuring out what constitutes what, how to word laws, drawing the line between a (legally-defined) criminal act and something that is not, and - in the case of laws that concern medical issues - questioning doctors & others in the healthcare fields (along with possibly a few renowned MJ growers for what is and is not a realistic expectation as far as yields/harvests go lol)... All of this should have been part of the legislative process so that when the law was decided everything would have been ready at that point in time.

 

[TorturedSoul]

When you don't know the rules, just make something up?

Funny and all, but some folks can get rather upset when you change something and still attribute (quote) it as if it came from them.

 

[Herb Fellow]

Just using my psychic abilities to state what they were thinking, not what they were saying. And I don't think they should have continued to follow procedures from the past when THEY KNOW THE RULES HAVE CHANGED! No crimes to take up their time?

 

[McBudz]

What pisses me off the most and I'm sure as it does the victims here, is the potentially innocent guy just trying to medicate himself is going to have to pay ridiculous lawyer fees to help "lay out the rules" he wasn't breaking. You know the court appointed jerkoff isn't going to be of help there.

let that be a lesson to those in states that are still transitioning into legal MMJ. Be very careful. Wait until the rule book is written then follow it to a T. LEO will be circling like sharks waiting to snatch up the easy prey.

 

[TorturedSoul]

What pisses me off the most and I'm sure as it does the victims here, is the potentially innocent guy just trying to medicate himself is going to have to pay ridiculous lawyer fees to help "lay out the rules" he wasn't breaking. You know the court appointed jerkoff isn't going to be of help there.

Sad, but true.

let that be a lesson to those in states that are still transitioning into legal MMJ. Be very careful. Wait until the rule book is written then follow it to a T. LEO will be circling like sharks waiting to snatch up the easy prey.

Yup, why must there even BE a "transitional stage?" If you're going to enact a law, have sense enough (I know, we're talking about politicians here, but still lol) to have the process finished and everything spelled out in concrete language by the date the law comes into effect.

Oh wait, I said that already. Blame my state legislature and the feds - MMJ is not an option for my treatment and I must rely on things with many more side-affects just because my government has decided to play doctor with me. Hey, they might as well, they routinely play hooker and screw me (and charge quite a bit for doing so).

Sorry, I'm on a tear tonight. Might be time for me to quietly back away from the computer for the evening lol.

 

[Ms. RedEye]

What pisses me off the most and I'm sure as it does the victims here, is the potentially innocent guy just trying to medicate himself is going to have to pay ridiculous lawyer fees to help "lay out the rules" he wasn't breaking. You know the court appointed jerkoff isn't going to be of help there.

let that be a lesson to those in states that are still transitioning into legal MMJ. Be very careful. Wait until the rule book is written then follow it to a T. LEO will be circling like sharks waiting to snatch up the easy prey.

Excellent point, McBudz. To me, this is a very sad story. Sick people think they are legally growing and using Cannabis to treat pain, without having filed the necessary paperwork. I hope the best for this couple, but I suspect they have a hefty legal fight ahead of them--if they can even afford competent legal representation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see this law has passed. But I can't for the life of me understand why a sick person has to ask the government for permission to take their medicine. What a sad state of affairs that a cancer patient is arrested because she opts to medicate herself with something other than what is sold by a large pharmaceutical company.

Pretty soon we'll have to ask them when we can go to the bathroom.

 

[TorturedSoul]

But I can't for the life of me understand why a sick person has to ask the government for permission to take their medicine.

Decades of both unintentional and intentional misinformation, perhaps?

I'm certain that I once read a statement by one of the doctors who testified when they were originally in the process of making it illegal in this country that had he known that the product he was being asked to testify against was in actuality "HEMP" he would have never done so.

I'm fairly sure that I also read that he had been presented with many pages of "scary stories" as to how bad it was, how useless, how evil, etc. and therefore he never made the connection to something that he knew to be (generally) harmless and very beneficial for medical and many other things.

I have looked through my bookmarks and a few boxes of misc. things that I have but I couldn't find the article that I read it in or I would have scanned or cut/pasted it and posted it here. If I ever come across it I will as it was very interesting reading and rather enlightening as to the force that business interests play in determining "we the people's" laws.

In a truly educated democracy, all laws would only be for the purposes of protecting and benefiting both the individual and society in general - but in a nation where there is less than 100% education, laws would be used to control them instead.