Bubba Bear
Just A Good Ole Boy
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2006
- Messages
- 99
- Reaction score
- 13
the story below explains it all...........sitting by and watching all the busts around you and thanking God it hasnt been you yet.....well wont cut it.....come on folks do something...stand for something with others who are in the fight to legalize pot.....in other words Get Off Your Arse....
Medical Marijuana Martyr: Tennessee Senior Targeted by DEA
by Jeff Woods (25 Apr, 2007) Bernie Ellis gave comfort to the sick and dying and for that crime, the government means to take everything he's got
[SIZE=-2]Bernie Ellis[/SIZE]
Life came unglued for Bernie Ellis on the day drug agents raided his farm like it was the fortified villa of a South American cocaine kingpin. Ellis was bush-hogging around his berry patches when two helicopters swept low over the treetops. Then, rumbling in on four-wheelers, came 10 officers of the Tennessee Marijuana Eradication Task Force. The war on drugs had arrived, literally, in Ellis' backyard. It was a major operation to strike a righteous blow against the devil weed.
It must have been a real disappointment. Ellis, a public health epidemiologist, readily acknowledged that he was growing a small amount of medical marijuana to cope with a degenerative condition in his hips and spine. He was giving pot away to a few terminally ill people too. There were only a couple dozen plants of any size scattered around his place -- enough to produce seven or eight pounds of marijuana worth about $7,000.
But for that crime -- growing a little herb to ease his own pain and the agony of a few sick and dying people -- Ellis was prosecuted like an ordinary drug pusher. Actually, if he had been one, he probably would have been treated less harshly. He has mounted $70,000 in debt to his lawyers, lost his livelihood and spent the past 18 months living in a Nashville halfway house. Worst of all, he risks losing his beloved Middle Tennessee farm -- 187 acres of rolling green hills along the Natchez Trace Parkway. Prosecutors are trying to seize the property as a drug-case forfeiture, and Ellis is fighting against the odds to save his home of nearly 40 years.
"If I were a rapist, the government couldn't take my farm," Ellis says. "I grew cannabis and provided it free of charge to sick people, so I run the risk of losing everything I own. That just doesn't compute to me."
But a strange thing has happened while the government has been trying to make an example out of Ellis. Colleagues, friends and neighbors are rallying around him -- along with a whole lot of people who had never heard of him before. The balding, bespectacled 57-year-old with the amiable manner of a favorite uncle has become an improbable cause celebre. National organizations working for the liberalization of drug laws are hailing Ellis as a folk hero and a martyr of the medical marijuana movement.
Here's proof: supporters threw a "Save Bernie's Farm" protest concert starring Jonell Mosser, the Mike Henderson Band and Delicious Blues Stew on Wednesday, April 25, at the Belcourt Theatre. Proceeds go to Ellis' cause, and the emcee of the whole shindig is Allen St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
"Bernie Ellis is a modern revolutionary!" St. Pierre proclaims, and all Ellis' new friends are hoping the publicity surrounding his case might persuade the government to back off. At the same time, no one will mind if outrage over his plight translates into greater public support for changing the nation's marijuana laws -- which would be laughable if not for their Draconian consequences.
"Bernie is fighting his own government for his own freedom -- in this case, the freedom to use cannabis as a therapeutic agent," St. Pierre says. "There's no reason Bernie Ellis should be in this by himself. Because of him, thousands of people are going to join NORML. They are coming out to support one of their own against a malevolent federal government."
Across the country, there have been many victims of the government's overzealous prosecution of medical marijuana users. In Oklahoma, Jimmy Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked pot to relieve severe muscle spasms resulting from paralysis, was caught with 2 ounces in the pouch of his wheelchair. For that, he received a 10-year prison sentence.
In Kentucky, James Burton, a Vietnam vet suffering from hereditary glaucoma, started growing and smoking marijuana to keep from going blind. He was caught with plants and 2 pounds of raw cannabis on his 90-acre farm. A government-approved physician testified at his trial that pot was the only medicine capable of saving his vision. The feds were not moved. Burton got a year's hard time in a maximum-security prison and lost his farm to the feds. The list goes on.
This month, New Mexico became the 12th state to permit the use of medical marijuana. But despite shelves full of scientific studies that show marijuana can provide nausea and pain relief to people with cancer, AIDS and glaucoma, among other ailments (without the detrimental side effects of narcotic painkillers), the rest of the country -- including Tennessee, of course -- bans the use of pot in any situation. And no matter what any state statute or medical study says (who needs science anyway?), the Bush administration maintains a Reefer Madness mentality.
Backed by the Supreme Court, which believes in state's rights only when the justices agree with what the state is doing, the Justice Department holds that medical marijuana use remains illegal everywhere under federal law, even when state law declares it legal. The feds have prosecuted sick people for smoking doobies in states that actually permit medical marijuana.
There's legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly to allow the use of medical marijuana in this state. But even the bill's sponsor -- Sen. Beverly Marrero, a Democrat from Memphis whose son-in-law has cancer -- concedes it has no chance of passage.
"Trying to alleviate suffering seems to me to be the intelligent and logical thing to do," Marrero says. "But legislators are very conservative people. And they only think about an issue if somebody's calling to complain about it. Not many people are calling to discuss this issue because everybody's afraid. We're talking about a society in which they'll come get you and haul you off to jail for smoking marijuana. Anybody who cares about this issue is sick and dying and they might not make it to the next election anyway. That's the way too many legislators think."
Considering what he's going through, which is the kind of stuff that sends people off the deep end, Ellis isn't showing much strain.
"I'm not ashamed of what I was doing," he says. He has provided pot over the years to perhaps a couple dozen terminally ill people -- mostly with AIDS or cancer -- who were referred to him through social workers and others. As he says, "Three things happen to marijuana users. They talk too much, they laugh too much and they eat too much. I don't see a problem with any of those things happening with sick folks." At the time of the raid, he was giving pot to four people. Three of them died within months.
Ellis, who has a proud face and talks in a warm, disarmingly direct manner, explains that he couldn't turn away a person in need. "I've grown marijuana off and on for 20 or more years," he says. He started giving it to sick people in the late 1980s when he was helping establish the AIDS program for the state Department of Health. "I decided back then if I'm going to take the risk to grow this for my own use, I need to at least be willing to help other people if they need help."
But he never sold any of the marijuana that he grew. In one of the story's many ironies, that fact might have led to the raid on his farm in August 2002. A few days before, Ellis had refused to sell to some bubba who came to his place. "Have you ever known me to sell pot to anyone?" Ellis asked him. Ellis has always suspected that this stoner turned him in.
Ellis cooperated completely with drug agents during two hours of interrogation. He allowed them to search the buildings on his farm, which is 40 miles southwest of Nashville near the crossroads community of Fly. As a consultant to public health departments, Ellis had become a national leader in developing alcohol and drug abuse programs (another of his story's ironies). At the time, he was working on a blueprint for then-New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson on how to make medical marijuana available to patients in that state. Ellis even showed the drug agents a copy of his proposal, some of which was eventually incorporated into New Mexico's actual plan.
Medical Marijuana Martyr: Tennessee Senior Targeted by DEA
by Jeff Woods (25 Apr, 2007) Bernie Ellis gave comfort to the sick and dying and for that crime, the government means to take everything he's got
Life came unglued for Bernie Ellis on the day drug agents raided his farm like it was the fortified villa of a South American cocaine kingpin. Ellis was bush-hogging around his berry patches when two helicopters swept low over the treetops. Then, rumbling in on four-wheelers, came 10 officers of the Tennessee Marijuana Eradication Task Force. The war on drugs had arrived, literally, in Ellis' backyard. It was a major operation to strike a righteous blow against the devil weed.
It must have been a real disappointment. Ellis, a public health epidemiologist, readily acknowledged that he was growing a small amount of medical marijuana to cope with a degenerative condition in his hips and spine. He was giving pot away to a few terminally ill people too. There were only a couple dozen plants of any size scattered around his place -- enough to produce seven or eight pounds of marijuana worth about $7,000.
But for that crime -- growing a little herb to ease his own pain and the agony of a few sick and dying people -- Ellis was prosecuted like an ordinary drug pusher. Actually, if he had been one, he probably would have been treated less harshly. He has mounted $70,000 in debt to his lawyers, lost his livelihood and spent the past 18 months living in a Nashville halfway house. Worst of all, he risks losing his beloved Middle Tennessee farm -- 187 acres of rolling green hills along the Natchez Trace Parkway. Prosecutors are trying to seize the property as a drug-case forfeiture, and Ellis is fighting against the odds to save his home of nearly 40 years.
"If I were a rapist, the government couldn't take my farm," Ellis says. "I grew cannabis and provided it free of charge to sick people, so I run the risk of losing everything I own. That just doesn't compute to me."
But a strange thing has happened while the government has been trying to make an example out of Ellis. Colleagues, friends and neighbors are rallying around him -- along with a whole lot of people who had never heard of him before. The balding, bespectacled 57-year-old with the amiable manner of a favorite uncle has become an improbable cause celebre. National organizations working for the liberalization of drug laws are hailing Ellis as a folk hero and a martyr of the medical marijuana movement.
Here's proof: supporters threw a "Save Bernie's Farm" protest concert starring Jonell Mosser, the Mike Henderson Band and Delicious Blues Stew on Wednesday, April 25, at the Belcourt Theatre. Proceeds go to Ellis' cause, and the emcee of the whole shindig is Allen St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
"Bernie Ellis is a modern revolutionary!" St. Pierre proclaims, and all Ellis' new friends are hoping the publicity surrounding his case might persuade the government to back off. At the same time, no one will mind if outrage over his plight translates into greater public support for changing the nation's marijuana laws -- which would be laughable if not for their Draconian consequences.
"Bernie is fighting his own government for his own freedom -- in this case, the freedom to use cannabis as a therapeutic agent," St. Pierre says. "There's no reason Bernie Ellis should be in this by himself. Because of him, thousands of people are going to join NORML. They are coming out to support one of their own against a malevolent federal government."
Across the country, there have been many victims of the government's overzealous prosecution of medical marijuana users. In Oklahoma, Jimmy Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked pot to relieve severe muscle spasms resulting from paralysis, was caught with 2 ounces in the pouch of his wheelchair. For that, he received a 10-year prison sentence.
In Kentucky, James Burton, a Vietnam vet suffering from hereditary glaucoma, started growing and smoking marijuana to keep from going blind. He was caught with plants and 2 pounds of raw cannabis on his 90-acre farm. A government-approved physician testified at his trial that pot was the only medicine capable of saving his vision. The feds were not moved. Burton got a year's hard time in a maximum-security prison and lost his farm to the feds. The list goes on.
This month, New Mexico became the 12th state to permit the use of medical marijuana. But despite shelves full of scientific studies that show marijuana can provide nausea and pain relief to people with cancer, AIDS and glaucoma, among other ailments (without the detrimental side effects of narcotic painkillers), the rest of the country -- including Tennessee, of course -- bans the use of pot in any situation. And no matter what any state statute or medical study says (who needs science anyway?), the Bush administration maintains a Reefer Madness mentality.
Backed by the Supreme Court, which believes in state's rights only when the justices agree with what the state is doing, the Justice Department holds that medical marijuana use remains illegal everywhere under federal law, even when state law declares it legal. The feds have prosecuted sick people for smoking doobies in states that actually permit medical marijuana.
There's legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly to allow the use of medical marijuana in this state. But even the bill's sponsor -- Sen. Beverly Marrero, a Democrat from Memphis whose son-in-law has cancer -- concedes it has no chance of passage.
"Trying to alleviate suffering seems to me to be the intelligent and logical thing to do," Marrero says. "But legislators are very conservative people. And they only think about an issue if somebody's calling to complain about it. Not many people are calling to discuss this issue because everybody's afraid. We're talking about a society in which they'll come get you and haul you off to jail for smoking marijuana. Anybody who cares about this issue is sick and dying and they might not make it to the next election anyway. That's the way too many legislators think."
Considering what he's going through, which is the kind of stuff that sends people off the deep end, Ellis isn't showing much strain.
"I'm not ashamed of what I was doing," he says. He has provided pot over the years to perhaps a couple dozen terminally ill people -- mostly with AIDS or cancer -- who were referred to him through social workers and others. As he says, "Three things happen to marijuana users. They talk too much, they laugh too much and they eat too much. I don't see a problem with any of those things happening with sick folks." At the time of the raid, he was giving pot to four people. Three of them died within months.
Ellis, who has a proud face and talks in a warm, disarmingly direct manner, explains that he couldn't turn away a person in need. "I've grown marijuana off and on for 20 or more years," he says. He started giving it to sick people in the late 1980s when he was helping establish the AIDS program for the state Department of Health. "I decided back then if I'm going to take the risk to grow this for my own use, I need to at least be willing to help other people if they need help."
But he never sold any of the marijuana that he grew. In one of the story's many ironies, that fact might have led to the raid on his farm in August 2002. A few days before, Ellis had refused to sell to some bubba who came to his place. "Have you ever known me to sell pot to anyone?" Ellis asked him. Ellis has always suspected that this stoner turned him in.
Ellis cooperated completely with drug agents during two hours of interrogation. He allowed them to search the buildings on his farm, which is 40 miles southwest of Nashville near the crossroads community of Fly. As a consultant to public health departments, Ellis had become a national leader in developing alcohol and drug abuse programs (another of his story's ironies). At the time, he was working on a blueprint for then-New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson on how to make medical marijuana available to patients in that state. Ellis even showed the drug agents a copy of his proposal, some of which was eventually incorporated into New Mexico's actual plan.
