A Family Searches for Answers in the Strange Death of a DEA Agent Known As 'Rubberneck' And 'Buckles' The grieving father crushes a cigarette into a crowded ashtray on the kitchen counter and stares blankly at a tiny TV screen next to the sink. It's 11 a.m. on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, exactly one year since he last saw his son, Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Jeffrey T. Bockelkamp, alive. Today the father, thin and expressionless, is drinking in the family home in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, a blue-collar suburb of Scranton. [continues 4493 words]
Scott Imler decided to starve himself to death this summer to protest federal drug enforcement action against a cannabis club. After five days, he decided his death wouldn't provide an answer to his problems. Neither, so far, have the courts or law enforcement, which are locked in a death grip over the right of terminally or chronically ill patients to smoke marijuana, as provided by a state law and prohibited by the federal government. Federal agents raided the West Hollywood headquarters of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center on Oct. 25, 2001. They seized the club's computers, medical files, bank accounts and inventory -- 400 plants and 10 pounds of harvested pot to serve the palliative needs of more than 900 medical patients, 90 percent of who suffer from cancer or AIDS. Imler uses medical marijuana to diminish his suffering from post-traumatic epileptic seizures. He had worked closely with city officials to set up the center and had earned a reputation among advocates as a stickler for detail who closely adhered to the mandates of local law enforcers. [continues 3037 words]