For Cathy Jordan it began as a banner day. A hearing was just held unveiling the “Cathy Jordan Medical Cannabis Act,” legislation to legalize medical marijuana for people like Cathy Jordan who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s Disease and is wheelchair-bound. Hours after a news account of the hearing was published, officers raided her home with drawn guns and seized their marijuana plants used for her illness. The police from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office insist it was a coincidence.
Cathy and Robert Jordan were home when the police arrived. Robert, 64, was asleep on this easy chair at 2 pm when the police appeared with their guns drawn.
The police say that a real estate agent saw an extension cord that “looked funny” and proceeded to look through the fence and saw the marijuana plants.
Dave Bristow, sheriff’s office spokesman, insisted that the deputies saw the plants, had probable cause, and seized the property.
Twenty-three plants were confiscated. The plants were valued between $1,200 and $1,500.
Putting aside the coincidence, the case reaffirms the lunacy of our marijuana policies that take away resources from more serious criminal matters. Here officers raid a home of a sick person and take away a drug that she says relieves her pain. Here is my view: if someone is dying from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, I am not horrified by her using pot to relieve her pain. Call me crazy but that appears to be the overwhelming view of most citizens. Yet, our politicians continue to feed a mass drug enforcement complex that arrests citizens and seizes property. While this case did not involve a greater seizure of property, many of these units are now the source of revenue streams associated with drug forfeiture.
The only good aspect of this case is that local police have proven the dire need for the “Cathy Jordan Medical Cannabis Act.”
Source: Bradenton
So now she still has pain with no means of relief and will probably not be able to obtain any which means she’ll still die but with greater suffering.
But hey, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office personnel got to dress up in their spiffy uniforms and wield their beloved firearms in the woman’s face so all is right in the gun culture world! Bet George Zimmerman is jealous as he!!
What’s horrifying is the lying and the criminality on the part of the police in situations like this. Coincidence? Don’t we always hear about coincidence as an explanation by defendants for how things happened? Nobody believes in coincidences. These cops decided to pull off a raid and they pulled it off; when some bad publicity came down the pike they made up a transparent lie to cover their a55es.
Marijuana is not crack. There is not reason to be “horrified” by the use of marijuana by anyone who is of age.
AY,
your choice of the word “lunacy” is an appropriate one!
64 year old snoozing hubby and an ALS victim, yep very dangerous, gotta draw those guns on em or they might….what exactly?
Sure sounds like a coinicidence (not) to me.,
Even worse, IMHO, is the erosion of civil liberties resulting from this drug war. -Michael Val
Yep. Between Nixon’s “war on drugs” and what began as Bush’s “war on terror”, we’re on one long, downward slide to hell.
10 Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free
by Jonathan Turley
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/15/10-reasons-the-u-s-is-no-longer-the-land-of-the-free/
Just a huge waste of police and court resources (i.e. taxpayer money), not to mention the problems inflicted on the arrestees. Even worse, IMHO, is the erosion of civil liberties resulting from this drug war.
why don’t the police find some real crime to deal with and leave people alone. our country is turning to communists. They tell us what time our kids have to come in and at what age they have to wear a helmet to bike ride..milk you out the ying yang for a dui…I am a baby boomer and rode a bike all the time without a helmet and survived…we smoked pot and didn’t hurt anyone and we had a drink or two …what is wrong with the world does everyone need someone to blame for their misery?
This is just plain lunacy…..
Jose
I overlooked that only two of the plants were fully grown. Thanks for pointing that out to me, I stand corrected.
Darren, the police always wildly overestimate the value of the drugs they seized. They routinely price drug seizures by the per gram/eighth ounce price instead of the price per kilo/pound in order to make it look like they seized a lot more.
Also, $1200-1500 of pot isn’t really that much. I’m not sure what this lady’s pain is like or how often/how much she is using, but I definitely know people who routinely spend $120-250/week on medical marijuana here in Colorado.
It also sounds like this lady was growing her plants outside, which is terrible for yield/efficacy. I would imagine that her 23 plants look absolutely nothing like the type of medical quality plants that are grown here (indoors & on timers).
Darren.. which part of this article did it say that she was selling to others? not only that.if you did a little more research on this subject, you would have learned that only 2 of the plants were matured and were the ones she was using for treatment.. you see your whole post was an assumption… you assumed.. oh 23 plants.. 41,200 , = full grown.. nope…., you have to have a number of plants to be able to cycle them throught out the year…. . the value of a plant does not correlate to the maturity of the plant… please do a little research before talking on a topic you clearly don’t know all your facts about.
I feel for this woman, and I am one to support legalization, but it is a little hard for me to swallow that she was just using these plants for her own personal use.
I only have the information that is presented here and in the link to the source but from my experience the value (if it is between $1200 and $1500 per plant) of these plants indicates they are nearly full grown or are full grown, probably between five and six feet high. That is far in excess of what a person would grow for personal use, orders of magnitude more.
Medical marijuana states that allowed a person to grow their own prohibited this amount of a grow operation. Washington State’s medical and general marijuana legalization prohibits a person from growing this amount unless they have a license to do so as a producer.
Person use or personal profit. I know she suffers from a terrible disease but should that provide her enough deferrence to sell this much to others if that is the case?
“I only have the information that is presented here and in the link to the source but from my experience the value (if it is between $1200 and $1500 per plant) of these plants indicates they are nearly full grown or are full grown, probably between five and six feet high. That is far in excess of what a person would grow for personal use, orders of magnitude more.”
Darren,
I disagree. Back in my hippie days in the 70’s I actually grew a couple of pot plants that went about 5 or 6 feet. The yield from that size plant is perhaps about 3 ounces, The reason that is so is that you have to dry the marijuana out to make it smokable and you would be surprised how much volume was lost in that process. Back then in the early 70’s pot went for about $25 an ounce, Hardly a drug dealing incentive. Not having “smoked” for many years because of my heart, I’m not up with current prices per ounce, but I understand they’re considerably higher.today. I look at marijuana as being a relatively mild intoxicant and it had now effect on my performance save for a euphoric feeling. Now with the stuff heading for legality, it does annoy me that I couldn’t take it up again, because there are studies that show it interferes with the anti-rejection medications required by my heart transplant. So in order to extend my life I have to give up rare steak, sushi and grass, actually not a bad deal at all. 🙂
Great one, Mike!
Professor,
You missed the point in that people dying of ALS are quite dangerous in their wheelchairs and the police were using proper procedures in drawing their guns. We all know how wild and crazy these pot smokers are, especially those concealing lethal weapons in their wheelchairs.
If they drew a gun in my mother’s house during her illness they would not be drawing breath.
Big Brother is watching.
ALS is a horrible disease. It robs you one muscle at a time over the course of a few years. You slowly lose the use of your muscles due to nerve damage, first you cannot walk, then you lose the ability to use your arms, and then speech and finally you are intubated and using a ventilator in the last months of your life. A truly dreadful disease.
Guns drawn.
Says more about the police need to make a show (small penises?) than the danger that the cops faced.
Once a gun is drawn, the probability of an accident goes up exponentially (that is why we have laws about brandishing); time to rein in the cops.
You are right Professor. This ridiculous raid may bring light upon the need for just such a treatment. I have a close friend and fellow attorney who is suffering from ALS and anything that could help him would be appreciated.