[I'm stealing this post from MrSpof because I just gotta give my dos centavos on this one. -- "R"R]
The family of a woman who used marijuana to ease the pain of a spinal injury had their house raided and ransacked by RCMP last week after the police received an anonymous tip about a “smell” emanating from the home. Although the authorities found only a few marijuana plants, they have condemned the home and placed the children in foster care under family child protection services.
On Thursday, February 19, Kim MacNearney, a human resources manager for the government of the North West Territories (NWT), her husband Craig and their two boys (age 1 and 3), were shocked when the RCMP burst into their Yellowknife home without a search warrant, knocked holes in walls, sliced open new baby mattresses, and took both children away.
MacNearney says she had previously visited her doctor about legal medical cannabis use regarding a spinal injury and the Health Canada program, but the doctor refused to discuss it with her.
After trashing their house, police then called the Fire Marshal who arrived and condemned their home as a grow-op for their small personal medical closet garden.
via – Cannabis Culture “Yellowknife Couple Lose Children Over Medical Marijuana Garden In Closet”
When people blithely say, “Oh, nobody goes to prison for marijuana”, like our former Drug Czar John Walters, I point them to cases like this. Imagine body armored black booted police, knocking down your door, setting off flash-bang grenades, zip-tying you and your spouse and children in your own home, and holding automatic assault rifles to your head while they go about destroying your home and property, all because of your house plants. Whether you spend a day in jail or not, whether you are arrested or charged with any crime or not, your life is forever changed.
The tactics during these raids include destroying personal property and even killing family pets in order to terrorize and intimidate the citizens being raided. They might be tactics to consider if you are raiding Scarface‘s cocaine-and-firearms-laden Miami estate, but we’re talking about a young family with toddlers; a teenaged government clerk, for Pete’s sake!
This prohibition even intimidates the doctors who have the perfectly legal option of recommending government-supplied medicinal cannabis all across the country. Canada has ten times the population of my home state of Oregon, yet Oregon has ten times as many registered medical marijuana patients… and we don’t even have government-backed universal health care like Canada! People here actually have to pay doctors out of their own pocket to become patients! If only Mrs. MacNearney’s doctor had helped become a registered Canadian patient, we wouldn’t be writing this commentary today.
man just gotta keep on going, but stories like this make me want to hide, with my family. Im so sorry for this innocent family.
The brutal nearly unregulated violence inflicted on the masses from these SWAT style raids has become the norm. This type of response is now what police do out of supposed fear for the public safety. It’s easy to see how dangerous these people were. What if there had been a brick of hash in the baby crib? There is no telling how many patients could have been helped let alone these 2 people.
This is a so called ‘war’ and these people are treated as if they have no rights.
We as activists need to jump on this with both boots. [sic] Our problem is how? Will anything I do here in America help them? I don’t know. Most probably not. But what I do know is Russ and Mr Spof are doing their best to get the REAL story out….the hypocrisy of the WoD
Thanks Russ
Very true Russ!
..and what justifies condemning a house due to the presence of a few Cannabis plants when the presence of house plants of any other type is totally ignored?
People have Ficuses, Hoyas, Cordylines, Cycads and god only knows what else in their homes without fire marshals paying the slightest bit of interest. Does the Cannabis genus contain some magical quality that instantly contaminates a house to such a degree that it has to be condemned?