Medical marijuana activist loses refuge

Medical marijuana activist loses refuge

January 8, 2006

AUBURN – An internationally known medical marijuana activist has been ordered to leave Canada, where he sought refuge after he was convicted in Placer County of possessing peyote button and magic mushroom in 2000.

Steve Kubby helped write and pass California's Proposition 215 medical marijuana law approved by voters in 1996 and served as national director of the American Medical Marijuana Association.

Kubby said he will suffer and may die of a rare form of adrenal cancer if he returns to Placer County and isn't allowed to smoke marijuana daily while serving a 120-day jail sentence.

The conviction came after deputies said they found small amounts of mescaline and psilocybin, along with 265 marijuana plants, while raiding Kubby's home in 1999.

Associated Press

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060108/news_1n8region.html

I know the government has approved synthetic THC for the treatment of some conditions. Is there evidence that this or a similar legal product wouldn't help him? He's claiming that he will die if he's not allowed to smoke for 120 days...is that factually true or is there a legal alternative substance that he could use? Hell, I've never heard of a form of cancer that will kill you UNLESS you smoke marijuana, but I'm no medical expert.

It is one of the strangest things in the cannabis story of how Marinol is Schedule 3 yet the same THC molecule from natural cannabis is Schedule 1. Even stranger still is how all the cannabinoids are Schedule 1 when they have no addictive qualities or anything that would make them harmful with or without a doctors supervision.

It will be interesting to see what is done to try to keep Steve Kubby alive and it seems the best shot the U.S. has is Marinol. Marinol is cited by people that use it to be defective compared to real medicinal marijuana, which is not the swag that dominates recreational use. Steve Tuck who was recently extradited with the same attitude towards Kubby and recently freed of all charges, was an expert at growing cannabis by strain and furnished over 15,000 seeds to Health Canada so that they might start their medical cannabis program. When he was brought back to the US recently he was given Marinol, which he denounced as being inferior to his preferred strains of cannabis. It also came at a pricetag of like $18,000 a month, which goes a long way in explaining why cannabis is a Schedule 1 subtance despite all reasoning.

But one thing about Marinol is that it is the pure psychoactive substance released against the cannabinoid receptors without any other cannabinoid to bind to them to moderate the effect. This could be quite scary to even a long time recreational user and sure scares the hell out of many people that have no experience with the cannabis high.

It will be interesting to see if pure THC can keep Kubby alive, but my feeling is that Steve Tuck would know and that Steve Tuck would also say that the inferior status of THC alone will not work to keep Steve Kubby alive. But we will see. Steve Kubby is about to be a datum.

Richard Cowan wrote a good piece when Steve Tuck was freed of his charges. It is dated December 20, 2005- http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=871

Richard Cowan has written several pieces on the Kubbys lately- http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=874 and http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=872

One of the best pieces Richard Cowan has ever written is here- http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=717 He is explaining new research that explains why cannabis is responsible for keeping Steve Kubby alive. It starts with this as the opening paragraph - "In layman’s terms, medicinal substances and treatments generally fall into three categories, palliative, therapeutic and curative."

Cannabis has two keywords that link it to fighting cancer. It prevents angiogenesis which means a cancer tumor does not develop a blood supply. The other keyword besides angiogenesis is apoptosis. A cancer cell should find itself defective and self-destruct, but of course if they self-destructed properly you would not have cancer. Research has already shown that cannabis triggers the proper self-destruction (programmed cell death)known as apoptosis and now that the medical world is beating on the truth of cannabis as medicine after decades of prohibitionist obstruction it will all be made more clear.

But the punchline is this in relation to Kubby and cancer and cannabis- Cannabis cures death. Of course it is more accurate to say it prevents it in Kubby's case and when he was arrested in Canada and thrown in the slammer his health deteriorated rapidly without cannabis. In all seriousness, I do not see how the US can keep him alive if they jail him and do not give him cannabis. One of the bullshit statements the prohibitionist like to give for denying cannabis as medicine is that there is already something for everything that cannabis can do although cannabis is no better than dirt for helping with anything. To be medicine by FDA standards it only has to be more helpful than a placebo for only one thing such as going to sleep, but of course cannabis will not help you sleep any more than dirt will. But the whole thing fights the great mantra of medicine that says "First, do no harm." If the great mantra of medicine were followed cannabis would be used first as it is all but benign which is not true of most pharmaceuticals, including the addictive opiates. In the link at the bottom of this piece the doctor will say that 15 years of use did no harm to Kubby.

Well, cannabis does things that nothing else can as seen with Steve Tuck and his back injuries. There is also nothing that is going to keep Steve Kubby alive when they take his cannabis away from him, and you would think that somebody is really making a big mistake if they are trying to preserve the fraud of prohibition. But then again, prohibition is all one big mistake to start with.

Steve Kubby ran for governor of California as a Libertarian. His college roommate was Tommy Chong. He had a young wife that fought like all hell to defend them in Canada representing them in court herself with a little help from an old man that was a legal assistant. She presented the case that the possession and cultivation laws are dead in Canada before the highest appeal court in British Columbia herself. I wish I knew how the court answered that as I believe the same as her that the courts ruled them unconstitutional, but the response has not surfaced at the medpot yahoodiscuss forums. They have two young children.

A person interested in this should also read these writings by Richard Cowan- http://www.marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/prominent_cancer_specialist_says.htm and http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=412

http://www.medpot.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=30782 It has two comments at medpot.net which is a Canadian website.

The same article is up atCannabisNews today and it now has 13 comments- http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread21463.shtml Steve Tuck says in comment12 as herbdoc215 that he fears Kubby will not survive the ordeal. News came that the last chance for stopping the deportation was denied. Kubby will be coming to jail in America and it could easily be a death sentence.

effort to avoid deportation. I haven't heard how that went, but if it didn't work, they have to leave the country by midnight Wednesday.

Marc Paquette that does and owns medpot.net put up three more links at the medpotdiscuss forums at yahoo- http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/MedPot-discuss/message/10615