<70 year old Larry Harvey, Rhonda Firestack-Harvey, Rolland Gregg: Washington state medical marijuana patients who face mandatory 10 year federal prison sentences under A.G. Eric Holder's and President Obama's insane federal drug law prosecution. Credit: Nicholas K. erganios, AP
"This is an outrage. All US citizens should be horrified and protest this treatment of elderly people growing medical marijuana in a state where voters chose to make it legal for medical & recreational use." - Rachael Harralson
This elderly couple is destined to die in prison because of America's cruel mandatory sentencing laws. There is nothing the judge can do to stop it.
Timothy Egan of The New York Times relates this horrifying story, "Lock ’Em Up Nation-Mandatory Sentencing for Medical Marijuana," that should outrage every one here.
Harvey is a former long-haul truck driver with a bad knee, spasms of gout and high blood pressure. He says he has no criminal record, and spends much of his time in a wheelchair. His wife, Rhonda Firestack-Harvey, is a retired hairdresser with arthritis and osteoporosis. Mr. Harvey says he takes his wife’s home-baked marijuana confections when the pain in his knee starts to flare. The Harveys thought they were in the clear, growing 68 marijuana plants on their acreage in northeast Washington, one of 22 states allowing legal medical marijuana. (Federal authorities say they are several plants over the limit.)
Their pot garden was a co-op among the four family members and one friend; the marijuana was not for sale or distribution, Mr. Harvey says. “I think these patients were legitimate,” Dr. Greg Carter, who reviewed medical records after the arrest, told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane. “They are pretty normal people. We’re not talking about thugs."
But the authorities, using all the military tools at their disposal in the exhausted drug war, treated them as big-time narco threats. First, a helicopter spotted the garden from the air. Brilliant, except Harvey himself had painted a huge medical marijuana sign on a plywood board so that his garden, in fact, could be identified as a medical pot plot from the air.
A.G. Eric Holder looks on while DEA Director gives speech while their cruel and insane drug policies savage the lives of millions of average Americans.
Law enforcement agents all over the country have been showered with high tech military equipment and are eager to use it. Harvey had painted a large sign visible from the air that his was as state legal medical marijuana farm, but police used a helicopter, SWAT two SWAT teams, as if they were attacking a major narco-terrorist operation. First eight agents with Kevlar vests, swarmed in, then an army of DEA agents followed. While searching the farm they found, a small amount of cash, but guns - yes, GUNS! - on a farm!
It doesn't matter than nearly everyone on farms has guns. In federal sentencing guidelines which trump state law, possessing a gun while committing a drug crime adds a mandatory 10 year prison sentence to the penalty for the Kettle Falls Five.
Also, judge just ruled that they can not bring up that they are all medical marijuana patients. So all the jury will hear is they were in possession of a gun during a major marijuana crime.
Let’s go further up the government ranks. As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to “immediately review these sentences” — mandatory minimums — “to see how we can be smarter on crime and reduce the ineffective warehousing of nonviolent drug offenders.”
So maybe there is hope. Maybe after Attorney General Eric Holder's and President Obama's Department of Justice puts the Kettle Falls Five in prison for 10 years, they will review their sentences.
Consider for a moment this plot of our prison population which has increased almost 10 fold since Richard Nixon launched the diabolical war on American drug users. 2.2 million American are now in prisons - the largest number of any country in the world, and the largest fraction of population of any country in the world. This is an example of the power of the DEA corrupting the soul of America.
We will be paying $50,000 per person per year to keep this elderly "criminals off the street.
Multiply this by 1 million, and welcome to freedom in America!
The New York Times notes that if they go to prison they will join a federal prison system where half of all the prisoners are incarcerated for drug crimes, many for non-violent marijuana infractions. Same is true at the state level. Our nation has over 2.2 million prisoners more than any other country in the world, and a higher fraction than any other nation in the world.
If Larry Harvey, at the age of 70, with his gout and high blood pressure and bum knee, gets the mandatory 10-year term, he’s likely to die in prison, certainly not the last casualty of the assault on our citizens known as the War on Drugs. For him, freedom is just another word his congresswoman likes to throw around on the Fourth of July.
This is your nation kogs! This is your nation on Attorney General Eric Holder's and President Barack Obama federal drug law prosecution strategy.
Failing to take action to end the ongoing daily atrocities caused by our nation's insane drug laws is creating self inflicted damage to our Democratic Party and undermining our ability to galvanize voters to help us throw out the Republicans and regain control of the House and maintain the Senate, and is creating an unnecessary opening for the Libertarians. Some cynical people, especially younger voters are concluding there is less difference between Republicans and Democrats than we like to claim when it comes to hypocrisy.
Please write to President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and DEA Director Michele Michele Leonhart and ask that they stop their insane, cruel, heartless, destructive, and unwise prosecution of non-violent marijuana offenses.
Stop the prosecution of the Kettle Falls Five.
End the war on American drug users.
Just say no to drug war racism.
First they came for Larry Harvey, and I did nothing ...
Leave no American behind, free the American prisoners of the the drug war!
6:11 PM PT: