Taking a woman’s child because she needs medical marijuana to live a normal productive life, is beyond outrageous. The STATE has become far too powerful. The STATE is evil. The STATE must be stopped. It looks like I need to repost the Hangman poem. The sheep are asleep , mesmerized by their iGadgets and the latest Kardashian/Jenner degradation. The STATE grows ever more powerful and interventionist in our lives. The STATE is spying on you. The STATE is taxing and regulating you to death. The STATE is controlled by corporate and banking interests who despise you. The STATE wants more power and control over you. They will stop at nothing unless WE THE PEOPLE stop them.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Shona Banda says she had a clear choice: Live in misery or use medical marijuana to ease her Crohn’s disease and risk going to jail.Turned out to be an easy call for the Garden City, Kan., woman. She said her symptoms eased to the point where she could return to work and once again play with her young son.
But she didn’t count on that same son, now 11, speaking out in school recently about the benefits of medical marijuana, including saying that it had saved his mother’s life. School officials contacted police, who searched her house and found marijuana and cannabis oil.
That’s where her old choice took a new turn. Police didn’t take her to jail. Authorities took her son away and put him in protective state custody.
A month ago, Banda, 37, was a massage therapist eking out a living in the back room of a health food store.
Today, her story has gone global. More than 84,000 people have signed an online petition supporting her. Signatures have come from across the country as well as Spain, France, India, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Slovenia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.
As prosecutors in Finney County consider charges against Banda, a GoFundMe account has produced nearly $40,000 in donations for her possible legal fight.Part of the outrage is that had she lived an hour to the west, in Colorado, she would have been perfectly fine having marijuana in the house.
“Them taking her son made Shona the perfect storm,” said Sarah Swain, Banda’s attorney.
Even conservative radio commentator Glenn Beck chimed in, criticizing the “smugness” of the police officers who responded to Banda’s house and even questioning the merit of prosecuting marijuana cases.
Hold on, says Eric Voth, a Topeka physician and longtime marijuana opponent.
“Until all the reports are in, I would urge people to take pause,” Voth said. “I can’t presume to know what happened in this case. I know a lot of people are trying to voice compassion, but when police and child agencies take a kid out of a home, they do so with serious consideration.”
Voth says marijuana has serious toxic and long-term effects, and causes domestic and spousal violence.
Lisa Sublett, who heads the patient advocacy group Bleeding Kansas, thinks charges against Banda could lead to a case that changes Kansas law, perhaps even going to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sounds expensive for a Garden City single mom and massage therapist.
“I think the cannabis movement will make sure she has the money,” Sublett said.
On March 24, Banda arrived home and found two Garden City police officers and two child social workers on her porch. Two more officers were elsewhere on her property.
Banda recorded with her cellphone as she approached the group.
“What are you doing?” she asked the officers. “Why are you on my porch and in my backyard?”
“We got a call from the Department for Children and Families and we need to speak with you,” a female officer said. “Will you give us consent to search your home?”
“No,” Banda answered. She again asked why officers were in her backyard.
“We have a right to be where the public has a right to be,” the female officer said.
“The public does not have a right to be in my backyard,” Banda said.
Police eventually got a warrant, and their search of the house turned up marijuana. They referred the case to the Finney County attorney for possible charges of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of drug paraphernalia and child endangerment.
Finney County Attorney Susan H. Richmeier did not return a call seeking comment.
Banda said she started using medical marijuana about five years ago for Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that causes abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition. The condition can lead to life-threatening complications.
Before starting with the marijuana, she said, she walked with a cane and often couldn’t get off the couch.
Banda does not say marijuana can help everyone, but in her case the pain greatly diminished, allowing her to return to work and ride bikes with her son.
“Sure, I talked to him about it (marijuana),” Banda said.
Authorities talked to the boy after the incident at school. Swain says they interrogated the fifth-grader without parental consent, which she contends is unconstitutional.
“They talked to him for more than an hour,” Banda said.
There’s no question that public sentiment toward marijuana has changed greatly in recent years.
Voters in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and the District of Columbia approved recreational marijuana. Another 20 or so states have medical marijuana.
More states, including California, are expected to put issues on the ballot this year.
Also, many health and medical organizations, such as the American College of Physicians and the American Medical Association, have softened views on marijuana and called for more research. A derivative called “Charlotte’s Web” is increasingly being used for child seizure disorder.
The Epilepsy Foundation “supports the rights of patients and families living with seizures and epilepsy to access physician directed care, including medical marijuana.”
But the federal government still lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, the same as heroin and LSD. The designation means it has no medical benefit and a high potential for abuse.
President Barack Obama recently voiced support for medical marijuana. And, according to the Pew Institute, 53 percent of Americans now favor medical marijuana.
Sublett said, the Banda case would almost be funny if it was not so traumatizing to a family.
“The question to Kansans is, ‘Are you OK with your tax dollars being spent on this?'” Sublett said. “This woman goes to bed at night without her son because she had some marijuana in her house when it’s legal in half the country — are you OK with that?”
Voth rejects all the recent developments as misguided. He says the push for legal pot overlooks health risks in favor of money. Medical marijuana has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“The public has been heavily manipulated into approving these measures,” Voth said. “I’m very worried about the real science being overlooked.”
For now, Banda waits for news from Finney County. She said her business is off because people are afraid to come for a massage. Especially, she said, after two men barged in one day and quickly left.
“I had an 80-year-old naked Mennonite woman on the table,” Banda said. “She could have had a heart attack.”
Banda and Swain do not know who the men were.
Swain, of Lawrence, said life is tough right now on Banda.
“She’s giving her life to this and we’re going to fight this until we win,” she said.
For Banda, happiness won’t come with winning a court case.
“I’ll be happy when I get my son back,” she said.
When policies change, the interim period creates lots of victims.
While I sympathize with this woman (I’d rather 10 children remain with abusive parents than 1 child be removed to foster “care” for even partly political reasons), I also sympathize with millions of people whose lives were destroyed because they ran afoul of anti-drug laws.
Nature has a way of fixing bad decisions. Smoke too much weed, or pop too many pills, or slide down any number of possible self-destructive paths and you end up in a bad place. It is not, however, a better system to impose via coercion a different set of punishments.
Drug laws took a vice and made it a crime, turning one form of possible self-harm into a much worse version of it. Vice will always exist. But drug laws can’t tell vice from wisdom (esp. when you look at self-medication. Using weed for “medicinal” purposes is only illegal because the Medical field has been subsumed by the state.)
I’m so tired of this kind of shit. Why was the constitution amended to ban alcohol and then again amended to reverse that ban, once upon a time?
How has it come now where they just ban something, without going through an amendment process?
I read some stuff many years ago by https://adask.wordpress.com/
He was going off about the definition of “drug” in the U.S. Code.
The main text of his ire was “The term “drug” means… articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals; and”. Found here among many other places: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/321
The short of it is, they (the gov) treat us as though we are animals. Man OR other animals? Formulating a religious defense on this point he was able to repel an attack on something to do with colloidal silver by the State of Texas. His point was that animals have no rights. Whereas man created by god in Genesis stated that man had dominion of the animals of the Earth. How can you be an animal and have dominion over animals?
Read about it here if you really want to get into the weeds. I find it very interesting, even though the guy is a bit eccentric but many of those who have the best minds for picking apart this shit are.
https://adask.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/man-or-other-animals-1/
The state exists to give the Mass Mind a means of exercising its member’s basest desires.
Envy your neighbor’s prosperity? Vote to tax him out of it, to take some of his wealth and shower it on people like yourself. No need to go next door with a gun and take it directly.
Think “everyone” should be doing something you think everyone should do? Vote for a politician who will make it mandatory. No need to pull a gun to force someone to do your bidding if you can get a law passed to do the same thing.
Of course there will always be people lusting to tell others what to do, so people clamor to obtain elected office, or get hired to enforce the endless vomit of new laws each year (added to the ocean of prior years’ vomit.)
The state is “organization of society via political action.” It is PURELY evil, always has been, always will be. It is the elevation of the WORST human urges, and the WORST humans among us, to the position of organizing our society.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Voth…“The public has been heavily manipulated into approving these measures,”
I agree that the public has been manipulated…with the “War on Drugs”, which is a complete failure; as is the War on Poverty. These are nothing but liberal increases in power and control and expansion of gov’t.
The vast majority of inmates are incarcerated for non-violent violations of the ‘law’, to serve the Prison Industrial Complex.
This Woman’s plight is an outrage! What we have is a bunch of redneck SOB’s who don’t know the first thing about Cannabis enforcing to the letter laws which should NEVER have been enacted in the first place.
It’s high time we de-classify Cannabis as a scheduled drug. For God’s sake it’s a plant, and a whole helluva lot less harmful than the chemical cocktails dished out by big Pharma.
We had a legislator here in S C that was on a local radio show,he was telling the audience why he was against medical marijuana. I called in and asked him if he’d ever been on the floor of the bathroom puking his guts out for the 4th time that day. Had he ever watched 60 pounds disappear from his body in 5 weeks. I asked him if he ever asked God to stop the pain ? He asnswered no to all of my questions. I told him that when he could answer yes to all of those questions his stance on medical marijuana would probably change.
Pot is a personal freedom issue for me. What is the harm? Crime? I figured the politicians would jump and a new source of revenue. But now i think people should just have the freedom to grow their own if they want.
Don’t be a disbeliever, a radical, or an apostate. Don’t undermine the United States, our nation, or our government.
Remember that your rights are those that the government gives you. Don’t squander what you have.
The happiest people, and those who have the most successful lives, are the ones who accept their situation and make the most of it.
Those most satisfied with their lives don’t challenge authority, their leaders, and the good life given to them.
Remember, if you’re an American, your GOD is the United States of America; your RITUAL LEADER is our President; your HIGH PRIESTS are the Justices of the USSC; the GUARDIANS OF OUR FAITH are the military; the PROFESSION OF YOUR FAITH is the Pledge of Allegiance; your SACRIFICE is war; your TITHES are taxes; and your SACRED MYTHS are the Civil War against slavery, the saintliness of Lincoln, Wilson’s war to end all wars, FDR’s rescuing us from the depression, Hirohito, and HItler, our crusade against communism, and now our defense of democracy against Putin and the totalitarian Chinese communists.
Believe in the United States, America’s mission, our leaders, and truth, justice, and the American way. Our way of life is worth defending and it’s worth you dying for.
Irak….What I gather from your post is that we should all be obedient, non-thinking, and accepting of whatever the government dictates. If so, there would never have been a Revolutionary War. Jefferson, Adams, Washington, etc. should all have been stoics and ignored tyranny and injustice.
We have tyranny today and injustice. Maybe you like the two Two Rules of Law that exist today.
Your rant is a POS.
Had a discussion with a guy that believed pot should stay illegal and that alcohol should be legal. I asked him how many have died due to pot – nor he or I knew the answer, so while he was chugging a beer I asked him how many people were killed due to alcohol.
Needless to say I gave him an answer: based on auto deaths alone, it is about 650,000 in the last 55 years.
I then told him that smoking pot makes me laugh a lot, then get the munchies, then sleepy. No desire to drive a vehicle; no desire to get macho and fight, stab, or shoot someone.
I think the choice is clear.
kokoda, IRAK is our resident troll. He doesn’t believe any of the shit he writes, but is just in it for the shits and giggles when somebody bites and gets irate over his comments.
Those who know her know that those idiotic Kansas morons don’t know what kind of a barrel of whoop-ass they just handed the can opener to: an honest, VERY intelligent, and genuinely decent human being, who will not stand for lies and deceit and fraud.
Since anyone who’s done even the most cursory research into prohibition, they already know it doesn’t work. It actually makes things far, far worse, on all possible fronts.
Anyone who’s taken more than 30 seconds to look into cannabis prohibition knows that it was mainly created as a “make-work project” for the alcohol prohibition agents who would otherwise have been out of a job–and no longer paid for by taxpayers–if they couldn’t come up with some new bullshit story to use against the people who pay their salaries. (The links to Hurst Paper, Dow Chemical, Standard Oil, and many others are also true, but I still think that the core reason was to keep wasting the people’s money, so YOUR EMPLOYEES were only too happy to oblige the corporations…as they are today.)
For more information on the TRUE history of, and the need to REPEAL Cannabis Prohbition WORLDWIDE, visit these sites:
http://PhoenixTears.ca
http://JackHerer.com/thebook
Feel free to google “Granny Storm Crow’s List” and find a few thousand medical and scientific studies which also support this…or just look up “US Patent 6630507”, and find out how many DECADES the US government has held multiple medicinal use patents on cannabis, while regularly and repeatedly LYING that cannabis “has no accepted medical uses.”
It’s time to REPEAL CANNABIS PROHIBITION!
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ElectroPig Von Fökkengrüüven
AWESOME name!
I assume this is you?
Zarathrustra….
Re IraK being the resident troll….
OK, as Irak and *R*O*D*N*E*Y* too, I guess I am.
But as for me enjoying “the shits and giggles when somebody bites, ” WrongO!
IraK, is a moniiker and identity I took from the unconstitutional NeoCon Iraq War.
IraK, near as I can figure it and write entertainly, is how the NeoCons think and believe.
IraK’s been my (dis)alter ego TBP poster name for years.
IraK is where I tell about or suggest how our handlers (“They own you” – George Carlin) manipulate unthinking Americans.
I don’t comment on TBP to trick or fool readers.
I just want people to wake up to what’s going on in America.
Rebuttals:
Yo, don’ listen ta that honkey Jackson…. be happy Ya’ know what I’m sayin’? — *R*O*D*N*E*Y*
Stand Up For America, and God’s Chosen People. – IraK
Jackson says:
Zarathrustra….
I don’t comment on TBP to trick or fool readers.
I just want people to wake up to what’s going on in America.
____________________
Fair enough, but why don’t you take your act to the Ann Coulter or Hannity forums? There are very few with neoconnish views here.
I think IraK’s comment was entirely ironic, folks.