Time: Mon Sep 15 07:51:03 1997
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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 10:49:12 EDT
Originator: drctalk@drcnet.org
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
To: Multiple recipients of list <drctalk@drcnet.org>
Subject: SLS: Good Housekeeping and medical marijuana
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

If you live in California, for example,
and if you are a Citizen of California state,
as opposed to a  citizen of the United States,
you break no law unless you to damage or 
injury to another human being, or to their
property.  Look up the meaning of "obligation"
in the California Civil Code ("CCC").  There you will
find the law which says that the ONLY obligation
which is imposed upon you by the operation of law
is to avoid injuring the person or property of
another.  This is the ONLY OBLIGATION which is
imposed upon you by the operation of law;  all
other obligations derive from the contract of
the parties.  This is, happily, a re-statement
of the common law, which requires a corpus
delicti, i.e. a damaged party, for a crime 
to have been committed.  Confer at "Corpus delicti"
in Black's Law Dictionary, any edition.

For authority, see California Civil Code ("CCC")
Sections 1427, 1428, 1708:

"The only obligation that arises from the operation
 of law is to abstain from injuring the person or
 property of another."

/s/ Paul Mitchell
http://supremelaw.com

copy:  Supreme Law School



At 10:24 AM 9/15/97 EDT, you wrote:
>"I Broke the Law to Save My Son"
>Article in Good Housekeeping Magazine
>September 1997 Issue, Page No. 82 & 84
>
>
>Simon suffers from an incurable illness.  And I know that the marijuana he
>takes with our blessing is helping him to stay alive.
>
>by Cheryl Johnson* as told to Steve Rubenstein
>
>We're the most normal family you could imagine. We mail in our taxes on
>time, and we always stop at red lights.  We never take more than ten items
>through the express checkout lane.  We've got a basketball hoop out front
>and a swimming pool in back.  I'm a troop leader for the Girl Scouts.  And
>every morning, I send my 17-year-old son to school with marijuana in his
>backpack.
>
>Never in a million years would I have chosen to do this.  But in my heart
>I know that marijuana is helping Simon get on with his life.  You see, he
>has Crohn's disease, an  incurable and painful inflammation of the
>intestinal tract that can cause life-threatening complications.  Simon is
>plagued with nausea and vomiting, and the only thing that relieves them is
>marijuana.
>
>So, Simon uses marijuana with our blessing.  I even bought him a lipstick
>holder in which to keep his daily supply—though he has to be careful no one
>sees him using it.  A law was recently passed here in California permitting
>the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but federal law still forbids
>its sale or use under any circumstances.
>
>I think it's important for people to know that my husband, Dave, and I
>aren't weird, or overly permissive parents.  In addition to Simon, our
>middle child, we have two daughters—Marie, 19, and Julie, 11.  We live in a
>middle-class neighborhood in San Jose.  Dave is a manager for a computer
>company, where he's worked for 16 years, and I've been a radiology
>supervisor at a hospital for 21 years.
>
>The first time Simon got sick, he was 6 years old.  His first-grade
>teacher told us he was trying to avoid doing homework by faking
>stomachaches.  But then he started throwing up so often that his doctor had
>him admitted to the hospital.  After three weeks of tests, the results were
>inconclusive.
>
>Simon spontaneously recovered, and went on just fine.  He was an outgoing
>kid—quick with clever one-liners, someone who cheered you up just by being
>around him.  His medical ordeal seemed over, and we gratefully put it
>behind us.
>
>It wasn't until he was 13 that he began complaining of severe stomachaches
>again.  Over a couple of months, I'd begun to notice that he was getting
>really pale and lethargic.  Then he started throwing up, and I took him to
>the doctor, determined to get a definite diagnosis.
>
>Simon's condition worsened, and he was hospitalized—this time for a
>month.  Finally, we were told he had Crohn's Disease.  We'll never know if
>he had the illness when he was 6 and his doctors simply missed it or if he
>had ulcers, which was their best guess at the time.  In any case, we now
>know for sure that he had a devastating disease, and we were very worried. 
>The doctors said they didn't know if the disease was hereditary; as fas as
>we can trace, there's no history of it in our family.  Simon was put on
>Prednisone, a powerful steroid that controls the inflammation but can be
>taken for only a limited time.
>
>He would improve while on the drug, then get sick when he had to stop
>taking it.  When Simon was 15, he developed other symptoms—a high fever,
>pancreatitis, anemia, internal bleeding—any of which could have been fatal.
> For two months, he lay in a hospital bed being fed intravenously.  Dave,
>Marie, and Julie would come to see him every afternoon.  I rarely left the
>hospital.  All I could think about was how unfair it was that my sweet,
>funny boy was going to have to deal with this cruel disease for the rest of
>his life.
>
>Finally, the doctors put him on a drug that seemed to control the
>disease—the immune-suppressant 6-Mercaptopurine.  Unfortunately, it
>exacerbated the nausea and vomiting.  Simon tried a number of prescription
>antinausea remedies, but they either didn't help or made him groggy.  After
>his release from the hospital, he had to stay home from school for a month,
>and was so sick and depressed he didn't want to be around anyone.  Who
>could blame him?
>
>On his own, Simon found a way out of his misery.  While still in the
>hospital, he'd heard that some cancer patients smoke marijuana to relieve
>their pain.  It's not hard for a high school kid to get marijuana —it's
>everywhere.  He bought some from  a schoolmate, and tried it.
>
>We began to notice that he seemed to feel better at times, yet we didn't
>understand why.  But Simon didn't want to answer our questions; in fact, he
>started to withdraw from us more and more.  He became secretive, someone we
>hardly recognized—sneaking out of the house at odd hours, barely talking to
>us at all.  He was also hanging out with kids we suspected were drug users,
>and his grades dropped drastically.
>
>Dave and I found out what was going on in the worst possible way:  A
>school counselor found Simon sneaking a puff behind the tennis court and
>called the police, who came and arrested him.  He was immediately expelled
>and reassigned to another school in the district.
>
>The moment I found out about the marijuana, I went ballistic.  I screamed
>and yelled and lectured Simon, without giving him a chance to explain.  All
>I knew was that we'd always taught our children that it's stupid to use
>drugs, and here, I thought, was my son getting stoned!
>
>My reaction scared him so much that he couldn't tell us the truth: that he
> needed the marijuana and feared we'd take it away and start watching his
>every move.  In a calmer mood, Dave sat down with him and told him he had
>to give it up.  At that, Simon cried and said he couldn't — and why.
>
>We changed our minds once we saw that the marijuana really helped to
>control his nausea and vomiting.  And Simon didn't have to get high—he
>could keep the dosage at a relatively low level.
>
>Simon's troubles were hardly over.  He was afraid to take the marijuana to
>his new school, where he often felt so sick he'd have to put his head down
>on his desk.  He tried to explain why he couldn't raise his head, but the
>teacher thought he was just being disrespectful.  And because he'd entered
>the school on probation, it took only these minor incidents for him to be
>expelled again.  I was furious, and decided we had to make school officials
>understand what Simon was up against.  Together, Dave, Simon, and I called
>on the principal at Simon's first school and explained his illness.  He was
>accepted back.  Soon his grades improved, he got a part-time job, his
>friends changed.  He was our Simon again, the boy we've always loved.
>
>We limited how much marijuana Simon had at any given time because we
>didn't want him to get into trouble or give any to his friends.  He started
>keeping a small amount in a plastic baggie in his room, and that's the only
>place in the house that he's allowed to use it.  He takes a few puffs in
>the morning, another dose midday—always off school premises—and a final one
>at night.  I keep a larger bag in my room.  He knows where it is, and he's
>proven to us that this is something we can trust him with.
>
>Now that our family is pulling together, we've become a tighter, tougher
>unit.  We've made every Tuesday evening family night, no matter what.  We
>either go out to dinner or a movie or just sit around playing a game.  We
>know we can count on each other when it matters.
>
>Dave and I have explained to our daughters what Simon is doing and why,
>and they've been very supportive.  Simon's older sister, Marie, used to
>drive him to school every morning and would have to stop on the way so he
>could throw up.  When he was in the hospital a couple of years ago, she
>answered questions about his health from teachers and kids—which was tough
>because she was scared he was going to die.  Now, she's become his
>champion; in her last year of high school she wrote a paper explaining why
>she believes that marijuana should be legalized for medicinal purposes.
>
>Because we hated the idea of Simon having to buy marijuana on his own, we
>started taking him to the Cannabis Cultivators Club in San Francisco.  It's
>a 90 minute drive each way from our home, so it takes the whole day just to
>get his medicine—the kind of errand most people can do by just popping into
>the corner drugstore.  We take the girls along on these monthly trips and
>make a day of it by going shopping in the city or taking in the sights. 
>The club requires a doctor's letter, which we got from Simon's
>gastroenterologist.
>
>We got scared early last year when state drug-enforcement officers raided
>the club and shut it down.  For awhile, we thought we'd be forced to buy
>Simon's marijuana on the street, risking arrest and God knows what else. 
>When I told my friends and coworkers about his problem, a number of them
>came up and whispered that they could get marijuana for me.  It seemed as
>if everyone knew how to put their hands on it but me!	 
>
>But in November 1996, after California residents approved Proposition 
>215 allowing the medicinal use of marijuana, in a catch-22:  Though a
>doctor in California can now "recommend" marijuana as a health-care regimen
>for a specific illness, the American Medical Association warns that a
>doctor who does so risks having his license to prescribe any drug revoked
>by the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Agency.
>
>I have to say, when I look at Simon's plastic bag, I don't see something
>legal or illegal.  I see medicine—medicine my son needs to live a full
>life.  And that's what he's trying to do, under tough circumstances.
>
>Simon has a special gift for understanding other people's pain.  Recently,
>he heard about the wife of a friend of mine who was suffering from nausea
>brought on by chemotherapy.  Her doctor had recommended marijuana, but she
>didn't know where to get it.  Simon knew what this woman was going through,
>so he divided his supply and gave half to her.  I was proud of him.
>
>The idea of any of us being arrested by federal drug agents and going to
>jail is terrifying.  But if there are options out there that we haven't
>tried, I'd like to know what they are.
>
>These days, we're just happy that Simon is busy with the same things as
>other boys his age.  He's starting his senior year in high school now.  He
>likes to dunk basketballs on the court out front.  Even though Simon has
>tried to explain the situation to his friends, they don't always get it. 
>Sometimes they tease him and say, "You're so lucky.  Your mom lets you
>smoke pot."  He has mood swings like most teenagers—days when he seems to
>need his family and day's when he doesn't like his parents telling him what
>to wear or hanging around when his friends are over—which sounds like your
>typical 17-year-old.  He loves computers and plans to attend a computer
>training school after he graduates.  Hopefully, he will have a normal life
>span—most Crohn's patients do.
>
>Simon still has serious medical problems.  The 6-Mercaptopurine can cause
>liver damage, so he has to have his blood tested monthly.  The current plan
>is to keep him on the drug for as long as it continues to be effective and
>doesn't harm him.  We're keeping our fingers crossed.  We do a lot of that
>in our house.
>
>I've never thought of myself as a crusader.   But I know I'm not crazy,
>and I'm not a criminal either.  I'm just a mom who's doing the best she can
>for her family.  Because that's what moms do.*
>
>
>___________________________________________________________________
>
>Posted by:
>Arthur Livermore
>LIVERMORE CONSULTANTS    alive@pacifier.com
>P.O. Box 36              http://www.pacifier.com/~alive/
>Arch Cape, OR 97102 USA  Copyright (c) 1997 by Arthur Livermore
>503-436-1882             All rights reserved
>
>
>

========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell                 : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA;  M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine

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