May 26, 2009

• Sgt. Northcutt

  Fred Gardner has a series of articles detailing the story of one Sgt. Northcutt which I think reveals some interesting elements of the Medical Marijuana struggle California and the rest of the US.  The articles are published on counterpunch.org, a website that I frequently peruse and which posts articles from a wide variety of perspectives. Many of its articles are extremely critical of both Democrats and Republicans (and sometimes it seems just about everybody else too) but they post a lot of articles that don’t get a lot of press in any other major news outlet.

  Here are the relevant articles detailing Sgt Northcutt’s case:

  Sgt. Northcutt’s Homecoming

  “War on Pot” Overrides “Support Our Troops”

  The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

  The second article contains the bulk of the story.

  Sgt. Northcutt came home from the war riddled with numerous issues. He was experiencing extreme back pains due to his L-4 and L-5 disks bulging and pinching his sciatic nerve.  He was also experiencing PTSD insomnia, nightmares and severe anxiety.  He would experience waking nightmares and would sleep with a gun under his pillow. In his words:

   ”A lot of people haven’t been exposed to severe stress and don’t understand that severe stress makes your brain do weird shit. I knew something was wrong with my head but I couldn’t get help.”

  He did try to get help, receiving antidepressants and numerous other kinds of medications. He was on a regiment of ten pills that would often leave him virtually knocked out in bed most days. “The help I needed was not pills but fucking counseling.” Unfortunately at the time the help was not available for PTSD that exists today. “Nobody there knew. We were like the first bunch of guys to really come back from heavy combat in Iraq.”

  When the pills weren’t helping, Sgt. Northcutt tried to self medicate himself in other ways.  He would spend days on the road, racking up speeding tickets, went to Vegas, Drank heavily, and using hydrocordone to suppress his back pain in the process.

  What got him out of this self destructive course was the discovery of Marijuana. The Sgt. got a recommendation from a Doctor Eidelman who told him to quit drinking and smoking cigarettes and warned him against some of the side effects of the other drugs he was taking. Northcutt found pot to be more effective at helping him sleep than any other drug he’d been prescribed as well as dealing with his other issues.

  “I started realizing, “Of all the crap they’re giving me, I feel the best when I’m smoking herb. Hmmm… That’s weird. When I just smoke herb I feel kind of relaxed, I don’t feel so stressed out, I don’t feel the depression, I don’t feel the guilt…” Eventually I realized: “this is real medicine.””

  So Sgt. Northcutt together with 4-5 other patients began growing marijuana in a warehouse he had from when he had previously been in the screen printing business. The grew the weed as a co-op using it to supply weed to 10-12 other medical marijuana patients.

  The story from there gets sordid. From what Northcutt describes, it appears he was setup and arrested in a rather sickeningly display of police bias and then charged with multiple crimes several of which were later dropped.  Then due to a number of other sordid affairs he ended up spending a year in prison and giving up all of his military benefits. During his trial his Jury was not informed that it was in fact legal under California Law for Sgt. Northcutt to produce the amount of marijuana he was producing since he was producing it under a collective.

  Only now over a year later is California’s Second Appellate Court overturning Sgt. Northcutt’s unjust conviction.

  It’s an interesting story largely because it shows how extreme the anti-marijuana bias remains in this country and how extremely dangerous it remains to grow it or use it even if a state where it is nominally legal. If an Iraq veteran who has more of a legitimate reason to use it than most can still get into such extreme trouble even in California it seems we are clearly a long ways away from real legalization.

  But Sgt. Northcutt’s story should I think serve as one of many that illustrate quite clearly the utility of marijuana as a very effective medical aid that can often exceed in effectiveness other conventional treatments available.

  In President Obama’s online town hall meeting, legalization of marijuana was the first question, highest rated amongst all the internet contributors. He laughed it off and scoffingly seemed to suggest that the internet is filled with a bunch of Stoners even while promising to do little or nothing in that direction.  But marijuana legalization is no laughing matter. Especially not to people suffering under severe physical and mental conditions who could be greatly helped by its legalization. It’s decidedly odd that the President who wants the people to support him and wants to use the internet as a galvanizing platform to that end should so readily snub the very people he is trying to organize.

  Since marijuana is virtually non-addictive and has no known substantive negative long term side effects, (certainly less than cigarettes and alcohol) why isn’t it legal everywhere at the very least for medical use? And why even if in the places where it IS legal should growers risk arrest and long term imprisonment? Even if Sgt. Northcutt HAD just barely gone over some wholly arbitrary amount limit, surely this is a victimless crime if there ever was one?  He was doing what he did to help people. Himself and others. No kids were exposed to pot because of his actions. No community was harmed by the existence of his pot growing co-op. If anything it only brought people together and made them happier. In the words of Sgt. Northcutt:

  “I became a gardener for the first time in my life. I was developing a love of plants and an appreciation of nature. And I was developing a relationship with God. Instead of killing and maiming I was making things grow. “

  I, personally have never used marijuana. I’ve never even seen pot with my own eyes. And I have no idea what the experience is like. So this is not an article I am writing out of some ulterior motive to feed my own habit.

  But I feel that the very idea that marijuana is illegal is a travesty of Justice of the highest order. How can we lock up citizens for what our last three Presidents have admitted to having done? How can we say that 42.4% of our adult population could have been charged with a crime but for a small bit of luck keeping them from having been caught? How many people are in jail now or have had their lives and employment prospects damaged because they weren’t amongst the lucky ones?

  How can we deny people a substance that seems to actually help people at least as well as most available alternatives?

  I should think that this is something that people should have the freedom to choose if they want. We certainly seem to have no problem with people making all kinds of other far worse decisions with their lives without government interference, like racking up credit card debts or taking out sub prime mortgages.

  At the very least these should be issues worth thinking about.

  • 4:23 pm
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