Pubdate: Wed, 02 Oct 2013
Source: City Pulse (Lansing, MI)
Copyright: 2013 City Pulse
Contact:  http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4532
Author: Charmie Gholson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?275 (Cannabis - Michigan)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis - Medicinal - U.S.)

MICHIGAN DRUG WAR VICTIMS: THE GREEN FAMILY

On Monday, Steve and Maria Green -- both medical marijuana patients 
- -- go before a jury trial in Ingham County Probate Court in an 
attempt to regain custody of their 7-month-old daughter, Brielle. She 
was removed from the Greens' home by Child Protective Services last 
month because marijuana was being grown, legally, in the home. 
Charmie Gholson is the founder of Michigan Moms United. She can be 
reached at  yahoo.com.

I've been looking for Steve and Maria Green for a long time.

The drug war is an abysmal, abject failure. We've poured a trillion 
dollars down the rat hole since 1971 in a failed attempt to eradicate 
drugs from society. The effect has been the exact opposite. We 
haven't slowed the flow of drugs into society. Arresting people for 
manufacturing, distributing and consuming drugs has filled our 
prisons and clogged our judicial system, prevented people from 
obtaining education, housing and employment, escalated police 
corruption and black market violence surrounding drugs, and it has 
done absolutely nothing to save lives or prevent illness and death.

What does this have to do with the Green family?

When the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act was passed with overwhelming 
support in 2008, it included specific protections from police 
encounters, including removing children from the homes of caregivers 
and patients who register with the state and comply with the act.

However, a coordinated effort to undermine these protections has been 
playing out in Michigan courts and homes since the act was passed. 
Grand Rapids City Attorney Catherine Mish spelled out the strategy at 
a Michigan Municipal League seminar in September 2010. Mish 
repeatedly called for arrests and prosecution of medical marijuana 
patients and caregivers under both state and federal law, and urged 
the some 75 municipal leaders in that room to join in a lawsuit to 
challenge the act base on federal supremacy -- that federal law 
supersedes our state laws. She instructed prosecutors to appeal 
medical marijuana cases when dismissed in order to work these cases 
to the highest courts, with hopes that the courts would redefine the 
act in accordance with their narrow interpretation.

Mish gave suggestions as to what types of offenses police can write 
in order to create test cases -- such as when a caregiver's spouse 
lives in the house where medicine is grown and has access to the 
plants, even if they are in a closed, locked facility.

It's been an effective campaign. Case after case has reached the 
higher courts and law enforcement continues to arrest, raid, 
incarcerate and extract thousands of dollars from Michigan families 
who thought they were protected by the law.

It's incredibly difficult to publicize these systemic attacks. Most 
victims can't tell their story to the media because, when they do, 
the criminal justice system retaliates.

Back to the Greens. Maria and Steve Green are a disabled Lansing 
couple who have been prosecuted by the state for the last several 
years. Maria, who has multiple sclerosis, left her job as a 
pre-school teacher to work in a grow store so she could learn how to 
grow medical cannabis for her husband. Steve Green has suffered over 
300 Grand Mal seizers from epilepsy, a condition that was completely 
put into remission only with the use of oral, concentrated cannabis 
oil -- something the 12 anti-epileptic, anticonvulsants prescribed to 
Steve were not able to achieve.

That is, the seizures were stopped completely until Oakland County 
Judge Leo Bowman in June ordered both Maria and Steve to not use 
medical marijuana as conditions of bond while they are prosecuted for 
growing medical marijuana. Now Steve is forced to take 
pharmaceuticals that don't stop the life-threatening seizures and 
Bowman has ordered Maria to stop caregiving after he saw her on the 
news over the past few weeks discussing her case.

Maria is a domestic violence survivor and her ex-husband has 
continued abusing her through the willing criminal justice system. He 
initiated a Child Protective Services investigation that led to the 
removal of the Green's then 6-month-old infant Brielle from their 
custody on Sept. 13 by an Ingham County attorney referee. That 
referee, Rod Porter, said the reports that they smoke marijuana in 
their home -- which is refuted by the Greens, as Steve takes his 
cannabis capsules orally -- and the possibility of someone breaking 
into their home to steal their medicine put the infant in immediate 
and imminent danger.

If you're struggling to understand this logic, you're not alone. I've 
been doing media interviews with the Greens since Bree was taken from 
them. Every reporter we've talked to is confused and angry. Thank 
God. Thank God for Steve and Maria, who openly discuss their case 
with the media. Thank God they refuse to take a plea deal and have 
requested a jury trail in the custody case that begins Monday because 
prosecutors work very hard to prevent medical marijuana cases from 
going before a jury.

The Greens know CPS had no right to take their baby. They know they 
are protected under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, and that the 
entire act is on trial in that courtroom. It's rare that a family 
being persecuted takes such a strong, ethical stance. I honor and 
uphold the Greens for their strength, courage and absolute adherence 
to the values that built America: our Constitutional rights.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom