Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Standard Podcast Feed (27.5MB 64Kbps) | High-Def Podcast Feed (82.5MB 192Kbps)
Download audio file (NORML_SHOW_LIVE_2011-11-17.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. San Diego tunnel yields 17 tons of marijuana
2. DEA raids Montana caregivers again
3. Colorado lowers medical marijuana program fees
4. Transplant denied to legal medical marijuana patient
5. DEA can judge illness by sight at a distance!

Daily Toker Tunes

Groovin’ Thursday: Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Mighty High Coup – “Revolution”

Southern California Scene with Hollywood Hemptress Tere Joyce

• Heather Schafer, daughter of Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer, imprisoned for five year mandatory minimum for medical marijuana

Radical Rant

• Visit with the crew of Mighty High Coup

Video streaming by Ustream
Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_SHOW_LIVE_2011-09-29.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Arizona’s AG still refusing to process dispensary applications
2. UFC Fighter claims positive pot test “impossible”
3. Montana’s effort to repeal dispensary-killing law will likely make ballot
4. USA Today: Reaction to BATFE No Guns for MedMJ memo

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday: Grath – “Stoned”

Southern California Scene with Hollywood Hemptress Tere Joyce

• Discussion of the case of Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer, sentenced to five years for medical marijuana grow approved by city

Radical Rant

• NORML’s legalization petition number one at the White House… again!

This little girl disappeared, was later found dead, and this mother didn't report that for a month. This mother, despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence against her, was found not guilty and walks free today.

Monday, a young woman named Casey Anthony was freed from a jail cell.  She was the subject of the most controversial homicide trial since O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown.  TV talking heads dissected the case day and night: Caylee Anthony, a toddler, was last seen on June 16, 2008, and wasn’t reported missing until a month later.  The child’s remains were found that December.

Casey was charged with killing her daughter and the death penalty was sought.  During the trial, we learned Casey had searched “chloroform” on the internet and there was chloroform found in Casey’s car trunk, where experts also detected the chemical signs of human decomposition.  Similar bags and duct tape from the crime scene were found in Casey’s possession.  Casey was caught in lies about a nanny who’d supposedly been taking care of Caylee during her disappearance and multiple lies about another babysitter, about working at and reporting the disappearance of Caylee to employees at Universal Studios, and about speaking to Caylee by telephone on the day she was reported missing.

A majority of Americans found the defense’s explanations unconvincing.  The idea that a mother would react as she did, that a child could go missing a month without report, that all the circumstantial evidence was mere coincidence, and that all the lies the mother told were just panic, not premeditation, was too much to accept.  However, twelve Americans on a jury were convinced, finding Casey Anthony not guilty on all of the homicide charges.  She was convicted of four counts of lying to police, but her time served awaiting trial fulfilled that sentence and she walked out of jail a free woman this week.

It’s a good thing Casey Anthony wasn’t caught growing or selling marijuana or she’d still be in prison today.

This grandmother, a cancer survivor, grew marijuana plants for sick people according to California law. She is serving five years in federal prison.

Dr. Mollie Fry is another mother, though her children are grown and have their own children.  She and her husband, attorney Dale Schafer, were convicted in a federal court of growing medical marijuana in California.  Fry & Schafer had worked with local law enforcement in their small town of Cool to ensure they were legitimate medical marijuana providers in accordance with state law.  Fry is a breast cancer survivor and Schafer suffers chronic pain from hemophilia; both use cannabis medically under state law and dedicated their time and expertise to organize and help other legal patients acquire their medicine.  By all accounts, Fry & Schafer were the model of legitimate medical practice the people of California approved of with Prop 215 in 1996.

The federal government didn’t agree, as it steadfastly maintains that cannabis has no accepted medical use in America and anyone who grows it is a felon deserving of prison.  In 2001 the DEA raided their property and seized 34 pot plants.  Both were stripped of their professional licenses, unable to provide for themselves and their family.  However, no prosecutions came until after the 2005 Raich Supreme Court decision that gave the feds the green light to prosecute medical marijuana cases.

During the trial, the key prosecution witness was an informant who got almost four years knocked off his prison term for cooperating, an informant who had a lengthy criminal record and was, ironically, serving time for cultivation of about 900 marijuana plants.  Another prosecution witness (an informant with a robbery record) testified to buying cannabis from Dr. Fry and her daughter on a day when the pair had an iron-clad alibi: Dr. Fry was by her daughter’s side at the hospital following the birth of her newest grandchild.

While Casey Anthony was convicted of lying to police to avoid prison, police and prosecution lied to put Fry & Schafer in prison.  The county sheriff who had been telling Fry & Schafer their medical marijuana grow was perfectly legal under state law was actually working with DEA to entrap them.  He had counted the plants from 1999 and 2000 on Fry & Schafer’s invitation and the prosecution added those to the 34 seized in the 2001 raid to make a count of plants greater than 100, in order to trip the federal mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

In Casey Anthony’s trial, her defense was allowed to enter all manner of theories to explain Caylee’s death.  Caylee accidentally drowned in the pool, they explained.  Casey was a sexual abuse survivor and her abuser was coercing her to keep the child’s death a secret.  Any theory was open for exploration.

However, in the case of Fry & Schafer, they were forbidden from offering their compliance with the state’s medical marijuana law as a defense.  The assurances by local law enforcement that they were in compliance with the law could not be uttered.  They could not even mention their own medical conditions that led to their own personal use of cannabis as medicine.  The only question to the jury was whether these grandparents, a doctor and a lawyer, were criminals who manufactured drugs, and the only possible answer was “yes”.

Casey Anthony walks free today.  Dr. Mollie Fry is two months into a five year federal prison sentence, she and her husband bankrupted from court costs, lawyer fees, and appeals.  Upon release in 2016, they’ll be approaching age 60 with a felony record and forbidden to work in the professions they’ve worked all their lives.  (For more information on the Dr. Fry case and to make a donation or purchase a t-shirt to help support the family, please visit FreeDocFry.com)  Caylee Anthony is dead, her killer unpunished, while two fifty-something grandparents are punished for following a state law in order to help severely ill people.

Patricia Spottedcrow got ten years for selling $31 worth of marijuana. Her children are all alive and doing fine. (Photo by Adam Wisneski | Tulsa World)

Another young mother, Patricia Spottedcrow, lives in Oklahoma.  She has four children, aged 9, 4, 3, and 1, none of which have ever gone missing or turned up dead.  By all accounts, Spottedcrow is a caring mother.  Nevertheless, she was between jobs when she sold two small bags of marijuana – one for $20 and another for $11 – to an undercover informant.  She is now behind bars, serving a decade in prison without her children while Casey Anthony walks free from prison without her child.

Patricia and Mollie are just a couple of the mothers I’ve profiled on this blog who’ve seen their families broken apart while they serve prison sentences for selling cannabis to other adults who willingly purchase it.  Whether it was ounces provided under state law for medical purposes or grams sold illegally under state law for personal purposes, these two women will spend more time in prison than Casey Anthony did for four convictions of lying to police during an investigation of her disappeared and murdered child.

I guess those of you who feel that little Caylee Anthony deserved some justice should have hoped they had found cannabis and not chloroform in her car’s trunk.

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2011-05-03.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer surrendered yesterday to face five years in federal prison for medical marijuana distribution
2. Washington Democrats seek the opinions of Republican Attorney General on medical marijuana laws
3. More information on Hemp History Week

Daily Toker Tunes

• Electric Tuesday: My Velcroe – “Drug Therapy”

NORML Newsmakers

• A replay of our March 21 interview with Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer prior to 5-year federal prison time

Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2011-03-21.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. Montana Bar Association claims need to clamp down on medical marijuana “abuses”
2. Washington’s Scott Shupe convicted in dispensary case
3. Maine decriminalization bills will increase amount to 5 ounces, will decrim six plants

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

• Roots Monday: Holly Golightly – Getting High for Jesus

NORML Newsmakers

• Dr. Mollie Fry MD and Dale Schafer, fresh from court where they were ordered to surrender for five years in federal prison on May 2, 2011, for providing medical marijuana in California

This press release begins by explaining the trial and conviction of Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer in California.  Dr. Fry has been helping medical marijuana patients in California by writing recommendations for the therapeutic use of the herb, and Mr. Schafer has been growing the plants and providing the buds to patients.  Let’s take a look at how our federal law enforcers view the plight of these compassionate caregivers, (and note how they always use quotation marks around “medicinal”, because in the bizarro world of the DEA, a plant found to be medicinal by the American College of Physicians and the Institutes of Medicine and twelve US states isn’t medicinal):

News from DEA, Domestic Field Divisions, San Franciso News Releases, 03/20/08
These recommendations enabled the holder to avoid arrest under California’s “medicinal” marijuana law, Proposition 215. The proposition provides a legal defense to state (not federal) criminal charges when marijuana is possessed for treatment of a serious medical condition.

Evidence introduced at trial, however, showed that FRY sold these recommendation statements to people for diagnoses such as asthma, alcoholism, and sore elbow.

California’s law allows a doctor to recommend marijuana for any condition for which he or she believes marijuana will help.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but vaporized marijuana is a bronchodialator that helps some asthmatics, it can definitely help as an analgesic for a chronically sore elbow, and yours truly will testify that without marijuana, I’d have been in some severe trouble with the alcoholism of my youth.

This is just the DEA’s way of trying to blunt the criticism of the judge who didn’t want to hand out a five year mandatory minimum to a couple who aren’t drug lords, they’re just a compassionate pair of people who help the sick and disabled.  I wonder if they bothered to count all of the people with cancer, AIDS, MS, epilepsy, wasting syndrome, or any other serious ailment suffered by patients of Dr. Fry?

On cross-examination, SCHAFER admitted that by 2001, the couple had made approximately $750,000 to $1,000,000 selling these recommendation statements to over 5,000 customers who had visited their office in Cool.

Let’s see, Prop 215 was passed in 1996, so since 1996 – in five years – a doctor and a lawyer each made about $75,000 to $100,000 per year?  You know, that’s a lot for a podcaster like me, but in doctor and lawyer terms, that’s slumming.  Not exactly Medellin cartel / drug kingpin numbers there.

It was to these customers the defendants sold dried marijuana in plastic bags and as marijuana plants. Some of the customers testified at trial the hand-to-hand sales took place in the fire station parking lot near their office. Other customers signed up at the office for home delivery of dried marijuana or plants. The couple also employed a delivery man who drove to customers’ homes and delivered bags of marijuana and marijuana plants.

Egads!  You mean these compassionate caregivers were making it easier for some of their severely disabled to acquire their medicine, instead of forcing them to drive across the busy Southern California freeway system?

The trial exhibits included photos of SCHAFER and the couple’s minor children harvesting marijuana plants from this garden area and “trimming” marijuana bud inside the residence.

Well, it’s not a good drug war scare story without a “what about the children?” appeal.  Oh my god, the kiddies saw a pot plant!  And they touched it!  Why, they might grow up to think all the propaganda fed to them by the DEA and ONDCP about that plant are just lies!

The court released the defendants on bail pending their anticipated appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As a condition of her release, the court prohibited Dr. FRY from directly or indirectly recommending “medicinal” marijuana.

Having met Dr. Fry, this to me is the saddest aspect of the case.  Why in the world would there need to be a gag order on Dr. Fry’s opinion on medical marijuana?  Is it because the government knows they’re on the wrong side of public opinion here?  Why does she lose her free speech right and her right as a doctor to recommend treatment simply because she was caught with a federally controlled substance?  Crack is federally controlled, but nobody sentences crackheads to never talk about how great crack is, and it’s not even a medicine.

[Updated from previous post -- "R"R]

News – Pair get prison in pot case – sacbee.com
An El Dorado County couple – a physician and an attorney – were sentenced Wednesday in Sacramento federal court to five years in prison for conspiring to grow and distribute marijuana.

U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. said federal law left him with no choice but to impose on both Dr. Marion “Mollie” Fry and attorney Dale Schafer the mandatory minimum sentence.

But, to the delight of supporters who packed the courtroom, the judge allowed the pair to remain free on bail until their appeals have been decided.

The statutory minimum applied because of the number of plants – at least 100 – found by a jury in August to be the crux of a conspiracy to grow and distribute pot from their offices in Cool and their home in Greenwood.

Were it left up to him, the judge said, the punishment would be less. “It is a sad day, a terrible day,” he said.

At the conclusion of a grueling, emotional hearing, Damrell ruled the couple could remain free on $25,000 bail each pending the outcome of their appeals.

Mandatory minimum sentencing seems to me to be against the intent of the Framers of our Constitution. They wanted a government with checks and balances – Congress makes laws, but the President can check that with a veto. Presidents can sign laws, but courts can check that against constitutionality. But to take away the discretion of the judge to impose a sentence she feels is appropriate to the facts and circumstances of the case, and instead vest that authority in the statutes passed by Congress and signed by the President, makes the judge merely a rubber stamp for the judgment-free minimums passed by a Congress trying to appear to be “tough on crime”. (Visit Families Against Mandatory Minimums for more info.)

But there is one last check – the jury. Juries have the right of nullification – they can check any bad law by simply refusing to convict, regardless of the facts, evidence, or circumstances. A jury can simply say, “We refuse to convict this couple because the law itself is unjust,” even if they were caught growing a billion marijuana plants. Learn more about jury nullification at the Fully Informed Jury Association.

Medical Marijuana Activists Get 5 Years Each – KCRA 3 News Story – KQCA Sacramento
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An El Dorado County couple were sentenced to five years in federal prison Wednesday for growing and selling marijuana, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said.

Dr. Marion “Mollie” Fry, and her husband, Dale Schafer, were convicted in August.

Fry and Schafer were charged with growing and selling in their hometown of Cool.

They claim they were acting under state law.

Schafer said his wife was targeted by the federal government after she prescribed marijuana to patients under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.

Fry, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, said she used marijuana to treat the side effects that were a result of her chemotherapy sessions.

Keep in mind that during these federal trials, defendants are forbidden from even saying the words “medical marijuana”.  They are not allowed to present the evidence of their medical needs, their patients’ medical needs, or the fact that they were dutifully following the laws of California.  This is a travesty of justice.