Death from Michigan Raids: Police Tactics Questioned
Earlier this week, Oakland County authorities raided two medical marijuana businesses and several private homes, arresting 15 people and confiscating what was allegedly $750,000 worth of marijuana and equipment. One of the facilities raided, Clinical Relief, is located in Ferndale, Michigan where the City Council voted just two days earlier to lift a moratorium on such businesses.
Now comes news that one of the individuals whose home was raided, 67-year-old Sal Agro, has died of an apparent heart attack. Agro, who recently had hip replacement surgery, and his two sons ran the Clinical Relief facility in Ferndale prior to this week’s raid. Here’s video of Argo recounting the actions of the officers who carried out the raids. According to Argo, the masked officers destroyed portions of his home, pointed a shotgun at his daughter-in-law, and confiscated 20 marijuana plants (he and his wife are each registered patients; under Michigan law, registered patients may possess up to 12 plants each for medical use). Despite all this, Argo claims he was never placed under arrest and was denied any opportunity to view the search warrant until after the raid.
It’s obviously too early to say whether the raid contributed to Argo’s death (though the stress of the raid and arrest of two family members couldn’t have helped), but in addition to concerns over how such raids are carried out is the question of why? Michigan voters spoke clearly when 63% – and a majority in every county – approved a medical marijuana ballot initiative in 2008. Also, on election day 2008, Ferndale voters approved a local ordinance that would allow medical marijuana dispensing. And as I mentioned earlier, the Ferndale City Council had lifted its moratorium on businesses like Clinical Relief’s. Sheriff Bouchard may have hinted at his long-term goals when he opened a press conference to discuss the raids by saying he and prosecutor Jessica Cooper would use the time to “talk about what we think the legislature needs to do.”
One final wrinkle to the story is whether judges have the ability to deny patients access to physician-recommended medicine during the pendency of their trials. Of those arrested earlier this week, some were arraigned in the 51st District where they were denied access to medical marijuana by Judge Richard Kuhn, who likened the situation to drunk driving suspects who are not allowed to drink while on bond. Others were arraigned in the nearby 43rd district where Judge Joseph Longo took no action to deny access to medical marijuana. “They have every right to use whatever medications” their physicians prescribe, Longo told the Detroit Free Press.
I often wonder, would a judge deny access to much more dangerous medications like opioid painkillers to those with prescriptions from their doctors?
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RE: "would a judge deny access to much more dangerous medications like opioid painkillers to those with prescriptions from their doctors?"
Can you imagine a real doctor telling a patient to pick up some heroin or bootleg whiskey on the black market to treat a medical condition?
One of the more glaring falicies of the whole medical marijuana argument is none of these so called doctors ever seem to prescribe pharmacutical THC to their patients. The drug is called Marinol and is FDA approved for treating pain for certain medical conditions . It has gone through all the testing and regulatory requirements to be approved for such uses. It is manufactured under the same high standards and carefully controlled conditions as any other drug approved for medical use, to ensure its quality and purity.
Imagine, if you will, a badly burned patient arriving at the emergency room of a hospital in terrible pain. Rather than administering FDA approved morphine, the doctor instead tells the patient's family to pick up some heroin from the nearest black market street vendor. Even the most slug nutty marijuana addict would balk at anything so absurd, yet this is the essence of the medical marijuana arguments.
Don Earl probably just doesn't believe marijuana is medicine. Or it isn't the kind of medicine he would take. That's fine. He doesn't have to use it, and can teach his children whatever he likes. This is America.
But if he doesn't like the black market , he can be cheered by the fact that the black market is being eliminated by our medical marijuana laws. That's a good thing. It's the black market that empowers thugs and puts people at risk, even more so than drug use. And asking folks to get their medicine from the black market is absurd, that's why we passed these laws.
But reality is, doctors here in Mi do prescribe marijuana for many conditions . It doesn't come in a pill form. It comes in a plant form. We're ok with that as well.
Patients are getting better, and fast, at finding a caregiver who provides consistent medicine, to control the efficacy of it's dosage. Most I know consume it in food , which works best for pain.
This is traditional medicine, and we like it untouched by pharmacuetical companies. What you call "high standards," has killed diabetes patients because the pharma companies knew it was dangerous and didn't give a rats bottom.
Most medical marijuana patients increase their pills by half, just to deal with the brutal side effects of those pills you think so highly of. They wean themselves off of them in time, preventing internal organ shut down and other brutal side effects of those FDA approved pills and drugs.
You must not be a chronic pain patient, because if you were, you'd be fully educated about the dangers of long term use of narcotics.
You personally shouldn't be able to control other peoples health care . You're in charge of your own, not mine.
And if you're worried about the black market, join LEAP, an organization of cops, judges and prosecutors that are also very worried about how our drug prohibition laws empower the black market, creating police corruption, violence surrounding control of that market and a ridiculous drain on our resources. Not to mention the fact that the drug war has reached none, not one. of it's goals. Its' creating a more problems than it's solved.
Most people who are against the use of marijuana, medical or recreational, see nothing wrong with the consumption of alcohol.
I wonder if they would have been prohibitionists during the 1920's.
As far as I can tell from a lot of personal research, it seems that most anti-marijuana people have NO interest in hearing about the benefits, but are entirely willing to believe any and all statements, studies, surveys, rumours, and imaginings that reinforce their beliefs that marijuana is no different than crack or heroin.
So it's a waste of breath and time to try to convince them differently.
This raid and its aftermath, including the death of Sal Agro, were patently illegal and lie at the feet of L. Brooks Patterson, Oakland County's dictator. He pushed for ordinances banning medical marijuana in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills. He is behind Sheriff Bouchard's push to keep medical marijuana patients from receiving their medicine. Mr. Patterson and his cronies need to be removed from government.