The Death Penalty for Saving a Life?

Charlotte Figi is a beautiful, bright young girl. These days, her eyes sparkle with vibrancy. These days, her light brown hair bounces playfully around cherubic cheeks and reflects the sheen of the sunlight as she enjoys the outdoors. 

But that's now. Before "these days," it was very different. 

Charlie was born with Dravet Syndrome, a form of chronic childhood epilepsy characterized by severe seizures and impaired development starting at the age of around two years. It is violent, indiscriminate, and incurable. For the Figi family, the ordeal of their daughter experiencing 300 seizures a week was a norm. On more than one occasion, the convulsions caused her heart to stop. 

Skip ahead to today, and not only is Charlotte thriving, but she also has the distinguished honor of having a strain of pot named after her. "Charlotte's Web" is a form of cannabis plant in development that, hopefully, could save the lives and spirits of other afflicted children in the future. 

That's because marijuana was the Figis' savior, being the only medicine that had ever succeeded in effectively managing Charlie's symptoms. Her place of healing was Harborside Health Center, which is one of the top ten taxpayers in the city of Oakland, CA, largely based on their sale of medical marijuana. At Harborside, a vast variety of marijuana is painstakingly tested and then sold. According to the center's director, Steve DeAngelo, the regulated drug has been used to help people with such issues as cerebral palsy, certain cancers, and HIV. And now one little girl with Dravet Syndrome. 

The problem? The director could technically be executed for his work. 

Of course, what he's doing is perfectly legal in California, along with the nineteen other states that permit the use of medical cannabis. However, according to federal law, he could be subject to capital punishment. According to the federal government, if one is in possession of exorbitant amounts of pot--60,000 plants, to be exact--he or she may be subject to the death penalty. DeAngelo, in his mission of healing, has distributed far more than that. 

So why isn't he in rotting in jail already? For that matter, considering the fact that pot is still illegal according to federal law, why haven't the police arrested any of those drug users that you saw smoking on TV after legalization occured in Washington and Colorado? After all, we still have Clause 2 of Article VI of the US Constitution, the famous Supremacy Clause decreeing that the federal law is the "supreme law of the land." In other words, state laws should not be in violation of the legislation made in D.C. 

This, as you can see, is an issue that goes beyond the life of one suffering girl or the freedom of one supposedly law-abiding man. It affects all of us, though certainly some more directly in others. If the greatest world superpower cannot even abide by one of the core concepts of its own Constitution, what does such a thing say about the nation's integrity? What kind of precedent does this set for the independent actions of the states in the future. 

Given all this, it seems to me that the US has three choices in order to redeem itself and stay honest:

1) Arrest all those delinquent pot users in the states in which their actions are perfectly legal according to local law. Execute a few medical professionals while you're at it. 

2) Change the Constitution and cut out that pesky Supremacy Clause. 

3) Legalize marijuana. 

I think you know what my vote is. How about you?

Constitution USA video--> http://www.pbs.org/tpt/constitution-usa-peter-sagal/watch/a-more-perfect-union/

Harborside Health Center--> http://www.harborsidehealthcenter.com

Charlotte Figi-->http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/how-pot-helped-charlotte-figi-5-with-her-seizures-and-inspired-charlottes-web/story-fneuz9ev-1226831059660

Words, Words, Words

Hemp. Cannabis. Weed. Marijuana. Pot. Narcotics. Grass. Bud. 

The drug in question has a plethora of aliases, and in today's society, all of them conjure images of ill health, delinquency, and hallucinatory effects. However, the truth is that many of these words once had very different connotations, and it was in fact the English language itself that played a part in the prohibition of cannabis sativa. 

First, let's go back in time. You are back behind the little wooden desk, finely adorned in hideously scrawled curse words and pencil doodlings of questionable decency--it's high school history class once again, and maybe your spiral is filled with carefully organizes notes, or maybe that notebook of yours is a wordy whirlwind of notes that you slipped to friends during the lecture. Regardless, a few facts have been relentlessly pounded into your adolescent brain over the years. You know that the Pilgrims came in 1620. You know that they cultivated a land of plenty. You know that over a decade and a half later, the Founding Fathers--Washington, Jefferson, the works--set forth a new nation conceived in liberty. And you know that they were all high as a kite the whole time. 

Wait, what? 

Well, that may be an exaggeration, and one would hope that the documents on which our nation is founded aren't just some psychedelic musings. It is true, however, that hemp was a highly successful and cash crop in the colonies, helping many of the earliest settlers pay back their debts established by King James I. In other words, for quite some time, there was very little backlash against pot and its users. (Of course, that didn't make the drug any less healthy. The same could be said for the even more important cash crop of tobacco at the time, and we all know now the medical ramifications that the colonists were subjecting themselves to--but that's a blogging topic for another day.)

So what exactly happened? Most of the trouble began in the 1900s, and this is where the problem of connotations in the English language came in. With the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906--which prohibited misleading labels on drugs--came the use of the word "poison" to describe cannabis, naturally frightening the consumer public. Shortly afterward came a surge of nativism and "anti-Mexicanism" spurred by an influx of immigrants from across the border. At this point, the term "marijuana" became used extensively to emphasize the drug's origins, implying that it originated from "immoral" and "dirty" people. Marijuana would also become associated with African Americans, prostitutes, and organized crime during the "Reefer Madness" Era, named after a 1936 film that exposed the apparent depravity of users. By the end of the 1950s, mandatory sentences for possession and usage of certain drugs were in place, with the arrival of such laws as the 1952 Boggs Act. 

And it started with words. 

So now we know how and why it became illegal. What about the history of ending the prohibition? It will probably come as a surprise to few people that the campaign for legalizing the drug began in the '70s. The first bill campaigning for approval of marijuana to be used in life-threatening medical situations was presented by the 97th Congress in 1981, and in the last decade there has been a litany of bills advocating for states' rights in deciding whether or not to legalize medical marijuana. However, these proposals have largely failed. 

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still advocate for the passage of the H. 499 bill. If prohibition started with words, maybe legalization can start the same way, right here. 

Sources: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr499#summary

http://www.policymic.com/articles/78685/a-brief-history-of-how-marijuana-became-illegal-in-the-u-s

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-bloom/legalization-or-bust-a-br_b_775684.html