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FREE THE WEED 12
A Column by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from New Orleans, the cradle of American civilization as we
know it, where I’ve been celebrating the Mardi Gras and visiting with my daughter
Celia and hundreds of friends I made when I lived here from 1991-2003.
I touched down in Detroit for a night on my way from Amsterdam to New Orleans,
long enough to see my daughter Sunny and my granddaughter Beyonce on
Valentine’s Day and pick up some much-needed medication to begin my stay in
the States.
It’s exciting to look forward to April 7th and the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor, the talk-
fest on the Diag and the Monroe Street Music & Art Fair nearby in the afternoon,
then the festivities at the Blind Pig with the Macpodz, one of my favorite
ensembles.
I’m also looking forward to joining the campaign to end marijuana prohibition in
Michigan while I’m in Detroit during April, and to the 8th
Annual John Sinclair 420 Music & Art Fair on the 20th of April. I’ll have all the
details for my next column, but I don’t have to tell you to enter 4/20 into your
personal calendars.
I’ll be in Flint in the afternoon of 4/20 to participate in the festivities at the
Genesee 3C establishment and look forward to meeting more readers of my
favorite magazine in Michigan, MMM Report. This column marks my first year as
a contributor to the magazine and I’m hoping there’ll be more year to come.
For those readers who may also have enjoyed my HIGHER GROUND column
for the Detroit Metro Times during the same time frame, I’m sorry to report that
my writing won’t be appearing there any longer due to budgetary considerations
on both sides. In this case I’m sort of a secondary victim of the crackdown on
medical marijuana dispensaries directed by Attorney General Schuette, of whose
atrocious behavior I’ve been a relentless critic since I started writing about
medical marijuana in 2010.
Putting the dispensaries out of business in Michigan has a whole range
of secondary effects, including an alarming decrease in advertising pages
purchased by medical marijuana purveyors in alternative newspapers and
publications like this one. The marijuana advertisements in the Metro Times were
paying my extremely modest writing fees, and when the ads were cut so was my
column.
My loss is a small one compared to the costs paid by the persecuted
dispensaries and the patients who have now been deprived of their steady and
reliable sources of medicine—not to mention the loss of their right to medication
which was established by the direct endorsement of almost two of every three
Michigan voters four years ago.
Although marijuana smokers—even legally registered medical marijuana
patients—are still being demonized as criminals by Michigan law enforcement
agencies led by the Attorney General, the real criminality now is attributable
to these very forces who persist in defying the will of the electorate in order to
perpetuate the lucrative piracy that they call the War On Drugs.
All their moral bluster is finally just so much bullshit. There’s nothing criminal
about smoking marijuana, there’s no harm done, there are no victims of
marijuana use except those smokers who are attacked and persecuted by the
forces of so-called law and order.
Law and ordure is more like it, because they’re using this bullshit to invade our
lives, deprive us of the sources of our medicine, and seize our money, assets
and, in the case of the shuttered dispensaries, the proceeds of our legitimate
businesses.
There’s no social, medical nor moral purpose in the persecution of marijuana
smokers, nor indeed of recreational drug users of any stripe. It’s all about the
money they make on us and the repressive empire they’ve constructed on the
backs of recreational drug users in this country.
Billions of dollars are realized by the wagers of the War On Drugs—the
multitudinous police forces, the courts and prosecutors, the wardens and
jailers, the legions of attorneys and courtroom personnel and law enforcement
employees, the purveyors of drug treatment programs, the drug counselors, the
probation officers, and all of the thousands and thousands of minions who labor
in the multifarious armies of the War On Drugs.
They’re just a bunch of robbers and thieves operating under the cloak of
authority, determined to maintain their power over our lives and our resources
without a shred of respect for the serious changes we have wrought in their laws.
Attorney General Shuette is a shameless defier of the law that was enacted
by direct vote with a winning margin of nearly 2 to 1 despite his relentless
opposition.
Not only is this criminal defying the law in his own office, but he ranges around
the state indoctrinating local law enforcement officials with his poisonous outlook.
Toward the end of last year he mounted a series of events titled Clearing the
Air: Implementing and Enforcing Michigan's Medical Marijuana Law, billed
as “a seminar for law enforcement professionals and local government officials”
featuring sessions with:
• Celeste Clarkson, Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs: Overview of the
Michigan Medical Marijuana Program
• Ken Stecker, Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan: Overview of recent
court rulings and pending issues
• Heather Meingast, Michigan Department of Attorney General: Review of recent
Attorney General Opinions and amicus curiae briefs
• Professor Gerry Fisher, Thomas M. Cooley Law School: Local Zoning Issues and
the Medical Marijuana Act
• D/F/Lt. Tim Gill or D/Lt. Robyn Lynde, Michigan State Police: Law Enforcement
Challenges and the Medical Marijuana Act
• Alan Cropsey, Michigan Department of Attorney General: Legislative Corrections
to the Medical Marijuana Act
•And Dr. William Morrone, D.O speaking at lunch on "Marijuana: Medical miracle?
Or more snake oil?"
Following such a session in Traverse City early in December, dozens of police
and a gang of detectives from the Traverse Narcotics Team swarmed the
Collective Inc. shops in TC and Acme and the M-22 Collective in Elmwood
Township. The police seized marijuana, transaction records, money and
computers from the three medical marijuana collectives but made no arrests.
Evidently, they had used undercover informants to make marijuana purchases at
the three outlets to establish probable cause for search warrants that led to the
raids of the marijuana businesses on December 13.
According to the Traverse City Record-Eagle, Michigan State Police Detective
Lt. Patrick Boyd is leading the “investigation” (or may we say ripoff operation)
and confessed that the police took a “few thousand” dollars and an unidentified
amount of processed marijuana that police couldn’t connect to any patient-
caregiver relationship.
The M-22 Collective was a double winner in the Michigan Medical Cannabis Cup
competition in Detroit last October, and reports indicate that other Cup-winning
dispensaries around the state were also raided at or near the same time inspired
by the Attorney General’s direction.
I’m trying to track down this story and talk with some of the affected dispensaries
and their principals, but it basically seems to be a case of the state’s chief law
enforcement officer concocting means to avoid enforcing the laws he doesn’t like
and to continue reaping the financial benefits of the War On Drugs despite the
citizens’ mandate to end the persecution of medical marijuana patients.
Speaking of which, as we approach the Hash Bash in April, I want to send a big
shout out to my friend and comrade Adam Brook, organizer of the Hash Bash
for the past 20 years or so who’s now doing two years in prison in Michigan as a
result of the medical marijuana persecution campaign in Oakland County.
Adam is a man with some severe medical problems who is authorized to use
marijuana as a registered medical marijuana patient. Oakland County authorities
raided his home in Royal Oak under the pretext of suspicion of possession and
dispensation of marijuana in quantity.
In the course of their raid the police discovered firearms in proximity to Adam’s
person and brought charges which resulted in Adam’s incarceration for the
minimum mandatory two-year sentence prescribed for such offenses, and he’s
doing the time now.
We wish he were out here with us to celebrate the Hash Bash, 4/20 and life in
general, and as long as he’s in there, let our thoughts and prayers be with Adam
Brook every day until his release. Amen.
—New Orleans
February 24-25, 2012
© 2012 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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