Medical Marijuana Misdemeanors: Rapacious Expensive Punishment You Too Pay for This

The cost of putting someone in jail is about $40,000 per year. Talk about a crazy system with about one million busted users in jail. That is several billion dollars better spent on schools.

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - Of all of the horror stories about the corrupt legal system against marijuana users, this one takes the cake but I’m sure there are worse cases, if so, send them in. I have already posted about Marijuana Addiction and Fraudulent Therapy. This does it in spades.

The criminal was a 20 year old male college student with a totally alcoholic mother and baaaad home environment. He usually smoked grass in his college dorm room on weekends to simmer down. One time the campus cop caught him, gave him a ticket and a court date.

In court, the judge told him to pay a $1000 fine or do the “treatment program”. He innocently chose the program! He went to the “drug expert”. He was told to fill out a questionnaire which indicated his mother was an alcoholic. Ah ha, an addictive family. He was told to pay $90 for this evaluation which determined he was a marijuana addict (from mother’s alcoholism) and he was to go to the “drug clinic” for 3 months for urine testing once a week. He was charged $400 for the pee tests and $150 for the clinic visits.

If you didn’t think this is rapaciously punitive, I would like to know what to call it.

I have read the above scenario occurs about 60% of the time for people busted on a marijuana charge and it usually costs much more. MARIJUANA ADDICTION THERAPY IS A GROSS MONEY MAKING FRAUD. About 70,000 people are busted each year and about 1,000,000 are in jail for using safe, much needed medicine.

In my state, Oregon, about 7000 persons are busted each year and this has turned into a very profitable but fraudulent industry. The success rate of this highway robbery is only about 50%.

Despite this horror, in Oregon we have about 30,000 patients who are protected by legal marijuana cards and if they stay inside the law they will be O.K.

The cost of putting someone in jail is about $40,000 per year. Talk about a crazy system with about one million busted users in jail. That is several billion dollars better spent on schools.

I guess the DEA and the policing forces want to keep it illegal so they can keep their high paying jobs and drink scotch (a real killer) on their off time. This goes for the politicians also.

Before any of that, Phil Leveque was a Combat Infantryman in the U.S. Army in WWII. He suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder more than 60 years after the war, and specialized in treating Veterans with PTSD during his years as a doctor in Molalla, Oregon. Do you have a question, comment or story to share with Dr. Leveque?
Email him: ASK DR. LEVEQUE

More information on the history of Dr. Leveque can be found in his book, General Patton's Dogface Soldier of WWII about his own experiences "from a foxhole". Order the book by mail by following this link: DOGFACE SOLDIER OF WWII If you are a World War II history buff, you don't want to miss it.

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douglas benson February 12, 2010 6:45 am (Pacific time)

Obama has done at least one thing halfway right when he directed the AG to stop the fedral madness against medical users .I think your stat at 30,000 is a little old .Now that the fear of the fedral goverment is gone or mostly anyway there are so many people getting thier cards that the OMMP office is getting backlogged .Canada is a great example of how powerfull we can become lets start our own GREEN PARTY . Political power is the key to ending the madness more so than Canada because thier top officials are appointed not voted for .

johnny1 February 11, 2010 7:04 pm (Pacific time)

30,000 votes vote out the hypocrates

DamianN February 11, 2010 1:07 pm (Pacific time)

Dr. Leveque, I live on the island of Oahu in Hawaii and our Boys in Blue often bost that only .4% of all cannabis possession charges result in jail time. My workplace is directly below a for proffit "testing" facility. I see a steady stream(so to speak) of clients avoinding jail time by peeing clean. Young teen first offenders to chronic hard drugs addicts. Thats all well and good, but the truly bitter taste is the $150/pop fee charged to the "offender". Most are on a 10 week test period. This I call abusive. Most of these folks cant afford a pot to pizz in, much less a plastic test cup on top of whatever fines and court costs were incurred. These faciclites have a vested interest in maintaining the status-quo. Not for care or concern of public health but the thousands of dollars a day for 10 minute "appointments". Shameful and abusive.

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