In a story appearing in the New York Times National, on November 30, 2007, journalist Rebecca Cathcart reported that a California Appeals Court had ordered police in Garden Grove, California, to return marijuana it had taken from a gentleman named Felix Kha. The marijuana (about a quarter of an ounce), which was given under prescription (the young man suffers from chronic pain), was taken away from Mr. Kha in 2005. California law allows a person to have in his/her possession up to 8 ounces of marijuana, if a doctor has decreed that the person is in need of such substance.
But police in Garden Grove, obviously suffering from some kind of sick bias, cited federal law of the United States, which makes it illegal for anyone to have marijuana in his/her possession. The three-judge Appeals Court ruled that federal law in the US does not supercede that state’s “allowance of marijuana for medicinal purposes.” The court ordered the poor, suffering man, returned his medicinal weed.
There are many salt of the earth Belizeans, who, for medical reasons, depend on marijuana. There are so many Granny Jayni and Grampa Jaaj who use marijuana in medicinal rubs for their excruciating arthritis. And there are so many brothers and sisters who use marijuana to help them get God’s precious oxygen when stifling asthma threatens to snuff out their sacred lives. They all live in fear of overzealous cops breaking down their doors, shackling them like common crooks, and dragging them off to magistrate’s court and certain jail.
While Kolbe can be advocating speedy parole to set murderers back on the street (recently Kolbe couldn’t even wait until the case came up. They usurped society’s right and “paroled” accused murderers in broad daylight), no one from behind those walls has come proposing special treatment for benign weed smokers, victims of a warped system.
We know that Jesus changed water into wine. There are so many things we don’t know about the private life of our favorite Rasta.