Why Won't The Government Let James Stacy Tell The Truth?

[David1946]

Greetings Everyone

Here's something we can do from the warmth of our home that could quite possibly benefit us all one day. I've signed the on-line petition and I hope some of our community do to, after all we are all in this together.

 

Peace

 

 

 

http://criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/the_government_wont_let_james_stacy_tell_the_truth?me=nl

 

James Dean Stacy wants to tell the truth during his upcoming federal trial. Too bad the government won’t let him.

 

Last September, Stacy, founder of the “Movement in Action” medical marijuana collective in San Diego county, had his shop raided just weeks after opening by agents with the DEA, who discovered dozens of cannabis plants. He's facing federal drug charges as a result.

 

The arrest and prosecution have come despite pledges from President Obama, echoed by Attorney General Eric Holder, to respect state rules on medical marijuana -- a fact Stacy took to mean he was safe operating his collective so long as he was complying with California law. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical purposes.

 

But marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug by the federal government -- alongside heroin and cocaine -- meaning it is officially considered to have no medicinal value (the government’s own studies aside) possession is held to be illegal in all cases.

 

Over the summer federal District Court Judge Barry Moskowitz ruled that Stacy’s assumption Obama would put a stop to the controversial federal raids on pot dispensaries was “unreasonable” -- and inadmissible as evidence in his defense; an admission, perhaps, that one should never take a politician's words at face value. As for that law overwhelmingly passed by California voters in 1996 legalizing the use of marijuana for medicinal use? Stacy can’t mention that either. But he doesn’t hold it against Moskowitz.

 

“I kinda think the judge is pretty fair,” Stacy says in an interview with Change.org. “He’s done what the law has allowed him to do.” Indeed, medical marijuana patients have routinely been denied the opportunity to present the truth as evidence in their federal trials: that they were complying with a state law that explicitly legalized what they were doing.

 

The real disappointment, Stacy says, is that “the president and the attorney general haven’t stuck up for what they said they were going to do, and that they’re continuing to allow the DEA to keep raiding people.”