California appeals court affirms judge’s right to make patient choose between medical marijuana and prison

(San Francisco Chronicle) A judge who wanted a gun-toting youth to clean up his act was acting within his power by forbidding him to use the medical marijuana he took for migraine headaches as part of a probation sentence that kept him out of prison, a state appeals court in San Francisco has ruled.

The First District Court of Appeal said the Solano County judge reasonably decided that becoming drug-free would help the youth turn his life around. But a dissenting justice said the 2-1 ruling undermines the medical marijuana law that California voters approved in 1996.

The initiative, Proposition 215, allows marijuana use with a doctor’s approval. In a lengthy dissent, Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said a judge’s order to forgo pot or face prison, for a crime unrelated to drugs, violated Prop. 215′s ban on criminal punishment for medical marijuana users.

Kline, in dissent, said an ID card is all the proof a patient needs under state law, and the sentencing judge could have held a hearing if he doubted the card’s legitimacy. A defendant’s coerced acceptance does not legalize probation restrictions that are unrelated to the crime or future rehabilitation and prohibit otherwise-legal conduct, Kline said.

Moret’s trial lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Stephanie Grogan, said Tuesday she has no information on how the ban on medical marijuana has affected Moret for the last year. But she said he should not have been required to “choose between his liberty and his medication.”

Once again, the medical use of marijuana for migraine is not taken seriously.  The original judge in this case thinks the kid is faking a headache to get a legal high.  The prejudice against marijuana users makes this judge think it’s reasonable to deny a person pain-relieving medicine as a way to “clean up his act”.

This infuriates me especially as my wife uses medical marijuana for exactly that purpose.  Have you ever held your wife’s hair as she dry heaves over a toilet during hour three of a mind-shattering migraine headache, judge?  Have you ever sat helpless in a darkened quiet room listening to the love of your life sobbing in misery, unable to touch her because every nerve in her body is a direct path to searing pain in the brain, judge?  Have you ever taken your shaking, dehydrated wife to the emergency room for a shot of the only legal drug that alleviates the agony, Demerol, only to babysit her for the next two days as that heavy opioid renders her unresponsive and drugged, judge?

My mother and brother also both suffer from migraine.  My mom’s attacks are very infrequent now and my brother’s were brought on by playing middle linebacker in high school.  He had to give up playing the sport he loves because of migraine.

Can you imagine any judge sentencing someone to choose between prison and insulin, statins, NSAIDs, or painkillers?  This is nothing but a cruel and unusual punishment to force this young man to suffer migraine pain just to stay out of prison.  The appeals court and the original judge should be ashamed.