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Now
On the day before Thanksgiving, 12 federal
jurors from Fresno took a little more than two hours to convict
Dustin Costa of manufacture of marijuana, possession for distribution,
and possession of a firearm ("in furtherance of drug-trafficking").
Given a prior marijuana conviction, the Modesto activist --a
Vietnam-era Marine Corps vet-- faces a mandatory minimum sentence
of 15 years. He turned 59 and 60 while spending the past 16 months
in the Fresno County jail awaiting trial.
Costa had been growing some
900 plants. He was arrested in February 2004 and charged by Merced
County prosecutors. He was planning to defend himself as growing
for others under California law, but then the U.S. Attorney took
over the case, ruling out a reality-based defense. Costa was
represented by public defender Robert Rainwater. Another federal
PD will handle his appeal to the 9th Circuit Court, which Costa
hopes will focus on the introduction of blatantly false evidence
by the prosecution.
This happened while expert
witness Chris Conrad was testifying about the potency of cannabis.
(Rainwater was trying to make the impossible case that Costa
had been growing for personal medical use.) As Conrad recounts,
"After I had said that
cannabis is essentially non-toxic and people can consume large
amounts without serious health risk, prosecutor Karen Escobar
asked if I'd heard of the Merck Index, and I said I was familiar
with Merck and the Merck Manual. Then she showed me a page downloaded
from a website alleging that the Merck Index indicates that for
a human the THC in approximately 21 grams of 12% THC is the estimated
lethal dose. [A typical joint is about one gram.] It was not
a copy of the Index, as I pointed out, and I immediately said
that this information is simply not true, citing Judge Young
and other sources showing use of 50 grams per day without negative
effects. I commented that it was rather sad to see a document
produced by a large drug manufacturer, ostensibly interested
in science, publishing a blatantly false statement with a clear
financial motive, i.e., Merck produces drugs that compete with
medical marijuana for a market. Then I went home, looked into
the Merck Manual and contacted John Morgan asking him if Merck
has the position that 21 grams of cannabis is the lethal dose,
and he of course said no, and contacted the current editor of
the Manual who concurred that 21 grams is not the lethal dose.
Upon review of the page she had downloaded, it is not clear
what exactly the Merck Index says because it was just a web page
with a reference to a lethal dose for mice and one for rats and
some extrapolation. It's not clear where the Index data ended
and the author's opinions or calculations began. I don't have
a copy of the Index and it is not available online without paying
a major fee."
So there are two possibilities:
either Merck generated the disinformation (readers with access
to the Merck Index are invited to pursue this), or the government
is lying about its source. It was sharp of Conrad to point out
that Merck has a vested interested in the marijuana prohibition.
The government's reference to a 21-gram lethal dose is Reefer
Madness in a federal courtroom with a man's life on the line.
It was not some minor, inconsequential point that the prosecution
was re-enforcing with its "Merck Index" ploy. The core
assumption of the Controlled Substances Act -the statute Dustin
Costa was convicted of violating- is that marijuana is a very
dangerous drug.
Modesto
Misery
A note about the Costa verdict
from Modesto dispensary worker Luke Scarmazzo sheds light on
how big the medical marijuana industry is becoming (as the DEA
picks off clubs here and there).
"I am one of nine patient
employees arrested by the DEA in raids conducted on California
Healthcare Collective 9/27/06," writes Scarmazzo. "I,
too, will stand trial before Judge Ishii. My colleagues and I
face a mandatory minimum of 20-to-life. We followed California
law to the letter and even went beyond that, self-regulating
ourselves to ensure we ran an effective legal cannabis dispensary.
We paid taxes on time ($93k in federal IRS quarterlies, 25k in
state quarterlies, and approximately 50-60k per MONTH in sales
tax) and followed all local ordinances. The city of Modesto led
us to believe we were 'ok' to operate and then called in the
DEA to raid and arrest us. They claim we dispensed cannabis to
undercover agents with false doctor recommendations. What happened
is they had the verification phone number routed to police personnel
that in turn verified the doctor's recommendation as being valid.
I learned this after reading our discovery. Our process of verifying
patients was one of the best in the state. I spent a month in
the Fresno federal holding facility while my bail was repeatedly
appealed by the US attorney_s office. After four and a half weeks
of this circus I was finally allowed to bail. I now sit on house
arrest and ankle monitor, awaiting trial, restricted from my
right to use the only medication that works for me. Where is
the public outcry? The people of California should be outraged
and pouring in with support for these trials.
Houston, We Have a Solution!
Breast cancer rates are falling
as women quit hormone replacement therapy, according to a report
last week from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The
breast cancer rate that had been rising slowly for decades plunged
by seven percent in 2003, and the incidence of estrogen-positive
breast cancers fell by 12%! This is excellent news in and of
itself, with tremendous implications: eliminating the cause of
the disease is more efficient than "the search for a cure."
In July 2002 the Women's Health Initiative had published its
finding that women taking Wyeth's Prempro had a higher incidence
of breast cancer. Millions of women stopped taking their HRT,
despite a valiant attempt by the drug companies and their friends
in the medical establishment to question the WHI conclusions.
Somewhere I have a manila folder
with articles pushing HRT despite the WHI findings. I thought
I had filed it under "Dream Dies Hard." I could have
added to it this week the Wall St. Journal's begrudging response
to the HRT news. They played it in the "Marketplace"
section, where stories about health rightly belong. "What
Made Breast Cancer Decline in 2003?" was the headline.
Tara Parker-Pope wrote, "The reasons behind the steep drop
-which translates to about 14,000 women who didn't get breast
cancer that year- aren't entirely clear. Changes in medication
use, including a sharp decline in women taking menopause hormones
and increased use of calcium supplements and anti-inflammatory
drugs, may all have played a role. A 3% drop in mammography screening
among menopausal women in the same year could also explain why
fewer breast cancers were found. The real meaning of the data
probably won't be known until government breast-cancer numbers
for 2004 and additional years can be analyzed."
Parker-Pope reviews all the
reasons other than women quitting HRT en masse that might explain
the falling breast cancer rate. She even suggests that increased
use of other drugs, notably Eli Lilly's Evista, might be the
real causal factor. Indeed, the dream dies hard.
The new data solve the longstanding mystery of inordinately high
breast cancer rates in affluent Marin County. It's the result
of more and better "health care."
Fred Gardner is a former Public Information Officer
for the District Attorney of San Francisco. He can be reached
at fred@plebesite.com
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