TheAgitator.com
Norm Stamper on Marijuana
Sunday, March 29th, 2009Great piece from former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper on Obama’s derisive dismissal of the marijuana question last week:
Having just returned from Minnesota whose state lawmakers are entertaining a conservative, highly restrictive medical marijuana law, I can tell you what’s not funny to Joni Whiting.Ms. Whiting told the House’s Public Safety Policy and Oversight Committee of her 26-year-old daughter Stephanie’s two-year battle with facial melanoma that surfaced during the young woman’s third pregnancy. The packed hearing room was dead quiet as Ms. Whiting spoke of Stephanie’s face being cut off “one inch at a time, until there was nothing left to cut.” She spoke of her daughter’s severe nausea, her “continuous and uncontrollable pain.”
Stephanie moved back to her family’s home and “bravely began to make plans for the ending of her life.” The tumors continued to grow, invading the inside and outside of her mouth, as well as her throat and chest. Nausea was a constant companion. Zofran and (significantly) Marinol, the synthetic pill version of THC, did nothing to abate the symptoms. Stephanie began wasting away. She lost all hope of relief.
Joni’s other children approached their mother, begged her to let their sister use marijuana. But Ms. Whiting, a Vietnam veteran whose youngest son recently returned from 18 months in Iraq, was a law-abiding woman. And she was afraid of the authorities. There was no way she would allow the illicit substance in her house. As she held her ground, her grownup kids removed Stephanie from the family home.
Three days later, wracked by guilt, Joni welcomed her daughter back. “I called a number of family members and friends…and asked if they knew of anywhere we could purchase marijuana. The next morning someone had placed a package of it on our doorstep. I have never known whom to thank for it but I remain grateful beyond belief.” The marijuana restored Stephanie’s appetite. It allowed her to eat three meals a day, and to keep the food down. She regained energy and, in the words of her mother, “looked better than I had seen her in months.”
Stephanie survived another 89 days, celebrating both Thanksgiving and Christmas with her family.
Shortly after the holidays, Stephanie’s pain became “so severe that when she asked my husband and me to lie down on both sides of her and hold her, she couldn’t stand the pain of us touching her body.”
Stephanie died on January 14, 2003 in the room she grew up in, holding her mother’s hand. A mother who, as she told the legislative committee, would “have no problem going to jail for acquiring medical marijuana for my suffering child.”
This part was interesting, too:
When I finished my testimony, a local police chief, a member of the committee, angrily accused me of disrespecting the police officers in the room–who’d shown up in force, in uniform, to oppose medical marijuana. Wearing a bright yellow tie with the lettering “Police Line, Do Not Cross,” the chief charged me with placing more stock in the opinions of doctors than of Minnesota’s cops. Guilty, as charged. Who are we, I asked him, to substitute our judgment for that of medical professionals and their patients?
The hearing was about the law regarding the medical use of marijuana. You’re damned right we should put more stock in the opinions of doctors than of cops on that question. That the police chief and his cadre of uniformed officers would think otherwise, and that he would chastise a former cop for daring to suggest as much, shows an incredible amount of hubris.
“When I finished my testimony, a local police chief, a member of the committee, angrily accused me of disrespecting the police officers in the room–who’d shown up in force, in uniform, to oppose medical marijuana.”
Please remember this the next time you are in a debate with someone and they give you the old “dont blame the police. they dont make the laws. they just enforce them” line of bs.
Norm Stamper impresses me more all the time. Thanks for posting a good article and hat’s off to Norm!
Good ol’ hubris… the one thing most cops are never in a short supply of.
The thing about wars (drug or other) is that you gotta either win them at some point, call a truce or get the hell off the battlefield.
Thanks to Norm for the piece. I read so many of the same old stories about patients needing cannabis and cops opposing their access to it, but this one was exceptional.
The thing the LEO lobbies don’t seem to be able to grasp is that THIS IS NOT ABOUT EVERYONE GETTING HIGH LEGALLY. Everyone that wants to get high from cannabis is already getting high just fine-legal or not. It’s about the therapeutic use, suggested by a doctor for people who desperately want both to feel better and be in line with the law. You can’t use the law of unintended consequences argument with Medical MJ because those consequences already exist.
I think we all need to make a better effort of disrespecting police officers on a regular basis.
If you mention to someone the witch-burnings of the 16th and 17th century, the holocaust, lynchings of blacks in the U.S., or any number of other human atrocities, whomever you’re talking to is quick to acknowledge the horror and injustice of it. But, at the same time, they are almost universally of the opinion that we are all much more civilized now and such things won’t happen again, especially in the freedom-loving United States.
The problem with persecution is that it never seems like persecution to most people when it’s happening and it’s always endorsed or at least tolerated by the government.
The drug war is persecution just as plain and simple as if we were hanging the addicts from trees or throwing them in concentration camps. Not only that, but the drug war is only one of many institutionalized campaigns of persecution in the U.S. That’s why I find it utterly meaningless to cook up the concept of “hate crimes” as a way of highlighting persecution as a special evil. Hate crimes are really nothing more than those forms of persecution that are no longer in vogue. If the concept of hate crime is to have any meaning at all, then it has to include the drug war, which is the systematic destruction of a whole class of people for no other reason than we don’t like them.
As far as I’m concerned, until we recognize our primitive behavior while it’s happening rather than just in retrospect, we still belong in a cave.
I’m not sure how Obama’s response to the questions of marijuana legalization ties in with Stamper’s other points.
The question he answered wasn’t about approving cannabis for medical use. It was about legalizing it for general use.
the witch-burnings of the 16th and 17th century, the holocaust, lynchings of blacks in the U.S., or any number of other human atrocities…
All of which, it should also be pointed out, occurred with the complicity–if not active participation–of the police or comparable authorities of the relevant times and places.
“That the police chief and his cadre of uniformed officers would think otherwise, and that he would chastise a former cop for daring to suggest as much, shows an incredible amount of hubris.”
That part is particularly disturbing to me. How could you really be that opposed to liberalized medical marijauna? Here’s a possible answer: to much protectionism kills brain cells. Just like when the California prison guards rise up to protest any measures that promote alternatives to incarceration.
Liberalize the drug laws and maybe those cool narc positions will dry up. Fewer doors to kick in. Fuck that! Yup, I think that explains a lot. How sad.
“You can’t use the law of unintended consequences argument with Medical MJ because those consequences already exist.”
I have never before seen the argument put so succinctly in a single sentence. Well done, Ghjost.
And to Obama’s defense, he said legalization wasn’t the answer to the economy. He did not dismiss it out of hand, though he threw a bone to those who be offended by a serious consideration of the topic with his “little joke”.
He’s an excellent politician, so keep the pressure up if you want to see change. He’ll be right there!
Let’s all pose upon our economic iceberg arguing about the narcotic classification of marijuana while pinstriped hucksters light bonfires and chain our ankles to anvils as we sail past palm treed macaques
In #7 above, “users” should be substituted for “addicts”. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that the victims of the drug war were all addicts. I think the overwhelming majority of the victims of the drug war are regular people, not addicts. And, as we see on this blog, some are not even users at all.
pegr # 12
So far, Obama’s changed the words, but the melody is still the same.
That’s a Chief of Police. Wearing a tie that I translate as “I’m a cop, don’t fuck with me!” How is this any different from the colors that motorcycle and urban gangs wear?
Wow. So the cop pretty much tuned out the story the mother recounted to assert his right to showboat drug busts on the nightly news? Essentially?
I wonder if their outrage isn’t so much ‘how dare you take doctors’ opinions over a cop’s!’ as it is a deep sense of betrayal of the ‘police officer brotherhood’ which must always be maintained, even when fellow officers are wrong or even breaking the law. A cop is supposed to stand beside all other cops and support the same side as all the rest, regardless of how abhorrent or wrong their behavior is, JUST BECAUSE.
It’s totally like a gang.
Wow! That’s pretty fucking brazen. The cops are saying they no better than the entire medical profession when it comes to a drug. It’s also mind blowingly stupid.
Ugh, er no=know
“The next morning someone had placed a package of it on our doorstep.”
Thankfully she didn’t live in Prince George’s County.
Does anyone wonder why the police care? Seriously? Their job is to enforce the law. What do they care what the law is?
I live in a state with 65 MPH speed limits. The state next door rarely gets above 55 MPH. Are the cops in my state secretly wishing that we could make our limit more restrictive and therefore give them more laws to enforce?
I fail to understand why a hearing that debates DE-criminalizing ANYTHING would set aside time or space for police. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, we are giving those jerks one LESS thing to worry about … if we were CRIMINALIZING something, forcing them to do MORE work, then I MIGHT want their opinion.
It’s hard to see them as anything other than fascists.
The cops couldn’t care less what the medical pros and cons are. All they care about is their paycheck.
Yes, follow the money. The more pressure there seems to be to change the laws and the cops push back, the more I wonder if this isn’t really about the money. No illegal drugs, no asset forfeiture. In addition the fed money is all tied to drug arrests. No illegal drugs, the fed money would dry up very fast – nothing else has the fed cachet that drugs have. This has nothing to do with right or wrong, this is about the money!
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“I fail to understand why a hearing that debates DE-criminalizing ANYTHING would set aside time or space for police. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, we are giving those jerks one LESS thing to worry about … if we were CRIMINALIZING something, forcing them to do MORE work, then I MIGHT want their opinion” -dsmallwood
It’s because of those nice, fat overtime checks cops get for testifying at pot trials. Then on top of that, there’s the fact that we’d have maybe half the prison population without drug offenders. So then you have the prison guard unions up in arms about losing those warm bodies they need to justify all the employees. Everything, sadly enough, comes down to lazy assholes that want to suck from the taxpayer tit instead of having to hold a real job.
With regard to my comment that Obama was an excellent politician: It wasn’t meant as a compliment.
Here’s the thing — I don’t even care entirely what doctors say (though obviously their word is a hell of a lot more important than cops’), the bottom line is, if you have cancer that requires your face to be cut off slowly, you get to take ANYTHING YOU FUCKING WANT TO MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER.
In a just country, that is.
(But seriously, the idea that anyone should care more about the cops in this situation is laughable.)
Big Chief,
I wonder if the financial part of the argument now goes away. We can stop wondering how cops will fund shit because we just print money, go deeper in debt, and call it stimulus.
I now pray every day that the state doesn’t realize they could print up $2 trillion and give all to cops to beat us over the head every day. I believe that would be the dream state for more than a few fellow Americans.
No illegal drugs, the fed money would dry up very fast – nothing else has the fed cachet that drugs have. This has nothing to do with right or wrong, this is about the money!
To go one step farther, the vast majority of police depts would go back to being Barney-Fife-esque because there are very few crimes going on. And that’s not acceptable. We need tanks to play with.
Perhaps the cops would like to trade? Maybe they’d like to trade MMJ for a Citizen’s Review Board? One that would take offense at police showing up at legislative proceedings wearing taxpayer-funded uniforms as if they were holy vestments, and lecturing their paymasters as to what is permissible and what isn’t?
Those cops and especially their leader are nothing but cowards who prefer to search & destroy rather than protect & serve.
The cops have been thinking they are smarter than, us, doctors for years. Especially when they refer to doctor who use medicine to control pain as “drug dealers in white coats”. Just as Dr Hurwitz, a well known pain management doctor, who spent time in prison because the cops, DEA , prosecutors, and other LE. All of them knew better, than this Harvard graduate, how to treat chronic intractable pain patients. He is just one of many!
Not only do they know the “correct” way to treat our patients, they also can identify diverters and others, who would ruin it for the real pain patients, better than us. The cops think they know better than us, who really needs the medicine. They consider that reason enough, to put us in jail, or ruin our careers!
That is one arrogant SOB! What makes him think he knows better than doctors. Anyone with any common sense knows that pills for nausea don’t usually work. The patient immediately throws them up. But, he is just a cop. He is, obviously, not smart, or wise, enough to realize that! He certainly is not smart enough to be my, or any body else’s, doctor! So why in the hell should he be saying what he said! My blood is boiling!
“Does anyone wonder why the police care? Seriously? Their job is to enforce the law. What do they care what the law is?”
As public servants? They have no right to care. But as private citizens, they have EVERY right to make their voice heard.
… But then they showed up attempting to represent the police and trying to use it to their advantage. And that’s where they effed up. They think their private concerns have anything to do with their job, but they have no idea that they should be mutually exclusive.
The fact that administrative organs of the government try to influence legislation is simply disgusting.
As others have already stated, follow the money. There are likley tens of thousands of jobs that soley exist in the administration of justice at state, local and federal levels due to the WOD. Without a WOD, these positions disappear.
And for many people that do end up committing real crimes, it was their drug arrests and incarceration that put them on their criminal path. Do a little jail time for non-violent drug offenses and gone are all sorts of job and business opportunities. Not to mention, prisons seem to function more as schools for criminal training rather than places for reform. So it’s not a wonder that some people who do real jail time wind up committing real crimes down the road.
Of course, that just makes more work for the police and the crim justice apparatus.
The drug war gins up business for the crim admin folks, like nails thrown in the street by the owner of a tire store. The drum beat of immorality continues….
The definition of “disrespect” that the good chief is using must come from the same dictionary that PDs reference for “Life threatening” after a puppycide.
Dave Kreuger, dsmallwood: ++about a thousand.
And don’t forget that many of these drug convictions rescind ones’ right to vote. So you get a smaller and smaller group of people getting to vote on issue that affect more and more people.
I like this chief. He saves a lot of $$. We can cancel his whole departments health insurance because his officers are better more knowledgeable than Doctors.
Hey Barn, I have this boil that I need you to take a look at…..
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“The chief charged me with placing more stock in the opinions of doctors than of Minnesota’s cops. ”
Can you imagine? That’s like saying a rabbi knows more about Judaism than an SS officer!
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It’s time to end the failed, destructive policy of marijuana prohibition.
Tell Obama and your elected representatives that marijuana should be legalized and taxed:
http://tinyurl.com/LegalizeTaxIt
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[...] The Agitator » Blog Archive » Norm Stamper on Marijuana [...]
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