STOP HARSH FEDERAL DRUG SENTENCING FOR HALLUCINOGENS THAT BENEFIT CANCER PATIENTS

Cary Grant: On Mushrooms & LSD  

Should outlawed drugs be legalized for medical use? New studies indicate that marijuana is not the only federally outlawed drug that has legitimate medical uses. 

Psilocybin is a natural hallucinogenic found in magic mushrooms, that was once used by native Americans in ancient mystical healing and hunting rituals. A stunning New Yorker article analyzes current medical studies at teaching hospitals such as John Hopkins that have found that psilocybin - one of the harshest penalized schedule one drugs under federal law - is very beneficial for many cancer patients facing death.

The drug temporarily reduces time and space while widening empathy thus allowing the user to forget his or her existence while expanding the definition of self as part of the universe absolved from the indignity of death. When administered by therapists patients unburden their minds of the dread of death and separation from those they love. Those given the drugs often find that it was one of the most comprehensive, important and memorable episodes of their lives on a par with the birth of a child. 

Patients make their way thru a classic 'psychedelic drug trip' not unlike those described by groups such as the Beatles in the turbulent sixties before psilocybin and other drugs such as LSD were designated as unlawful. During the sixties it wasn't only Lennon and McCartney who found that the drugs opened up their feelings, to love and to life, but so too many Hollywood elites such as the graying middle aged Cary Grant. He noted that taking LSD helped him understand that he was merely a child of the universe, albeit a debonair one, forever lifting the fear of death from his shoulders, even as Alfred Hitchcock's crop dusting plane flew closer.

So why were these drugs designated by Richard Nixon as unlawful federal schedule one drugs - the most dangerous category - on a par with trafficking in heroin under harsh federal sentencing guidelines? Peace, love, and conscience raising combined with licentiousness was feared as socially explosive. 

The tragic solution was to outlaw the drugs to dampen the cultural rebellion of the sixties. The world of Woodstock would become a crime. Those who delved into these chemicals would become criminals filling our prisons with the most nonviolent, antiwar members of society. It's time for the federal government to right these wrongs and legalize every drug that helps people.

TREATMENT NOT PUNISHMENT IS THE BEST SOLUTION FOR DRUG ADDICTION IN FLORIDA FEDERAL COURTS

Your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney often tries to persuade prosecutors to allow Defendants with addictions into Florida Drug Court. The Drug Court is run in a manner similar to the Pretrial Intervention Program in that prosecutors determine who gets in, though once a Defendant is safely in the program, a Judge has much more leeway to prevent a life destroying drug sentence. 

A Van Gogh Addiction

It's clear those addicted to drugs benefit more from drug treatment than punishment in Tampa Bay. Drug Court allows Defendants to demonstrate over time to a Judge that their addictions will no longer lead them to break the law.


Yet the power of addiction should never be forgotten. Here is a haunting article from the British Spectator by a heroin addict describing the overwhelming desire to go back to the drug and the need for constant vigilance to stay clean:

I cannot accurately convey to you the efficiency of heroin in neutralising pain. It transforms a tight white fist into a gentle brown wave, and from my first inhalation 15 years ago it fumigated my private hell. A bathroom floor in Hackney embraced me like a womb, and now whenever I am dislodged from comfort my focus falls there.
It is ten years since I used drugs or drank alcohol and my life has immeasurably improved. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and generally a bright outlook.
But the price of this is constant vigilance, because the disease of addiction is not rational....
I looked to drugs and booze to fill up a hole in me. Unchecked, the call of the wild is too strong. I still survey streets for signs of the subterranean escapes that used to provide my sanctuary. I still eye the shuffling subclass of junkies and dealers, invisibly gliding between doorways through the gutters. I see the abundantly wealthy with destitution in their stare. I have a friend so beautiful, so haunted by talent that you can barely look away from her, whose smile is such a treasure that I have often squandered my sanity for a moment in its glow. Her story is so galling that no one would condemn her for her dependency on illegal anaesthesia, but now, even though her life is trying to turn around despite her, even though she has genuine opportunities for a new start, the gutter will not release its prey. The gutter is within.

 The last somber part about the talented addict with the treasured smile reminds me of a federal client I represented. The tattooed tear on her left eye fed some deep hidden sorrow, yet she never failed to smile. 
Despite being a mere mule for heroin she faced harsh Federal Drug sentencing. 

A Department of Justice Report on the Feasibility of Federal Drug Courts found many advantages to Federal drug courts noting that:

Drug court programs are a potentially effective means of addressing substance abuse by low-level, nonviolent offenders, and thereby reducing recidivism.

Yet it concluded that Federal Drug Court would be too cumbersome for the DOC to administer, so Federal Judges in progressive districts did it themselves. It's not surprising that progressive states like Oregon or Massachusetts created Federal Drug Courts, but so did South Carolina. 
Why not Florida? Why not now? Florida Federal Judges should create alternatives to harsh punishment for drug Defendants by providing treatment rather than punishment thru Florida Federal Drug Courts, giving Tampa Bay Defense Lawyers the opportunity of helping clients receive the best possible outcome in their drug cases.

SURPRISED FLORIDA THIEVES SNORT CREMATION URN ASHES BELIEVING IT WAS COCAINE OR CRUSHED PILLS

Your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney isn't surprised that one may choose to spend a rebellious youth seeking ever greater risks and ever higher highs. 
But let me give some unsolicited advice. 

Monet, Feral Florida Youth, 1886

If you happen to find yourself in another person's home uninvited, say while committing the crime of burglary, it's very unlikely that those fancy gilt urns up on the mantle next to the flowers over the marble fireplace really contain cocaine, heroin or crushed oxycodone. 


Yet three feral youth of Florida made some bad decisions after burglarizing an Ocala home by taking the cremated ashes of the victim's father and two Great Danes, then optimistically mistaking the ashes for drugs and ingesting them. 

A Florida Circuit Judge in Ocala has sentenced the three snorters to eight years of prison, good thing those two dogs were already dead as the Judge might have given an even harsher sentence. 

Press reports noted that:
Detectives investigating the case said the accused men told them they thought the urns contained heroin, cocaine or crushed pills and decided to taste and snort the contents. After the men saw a story published in the newspaper, they realized what they had allegedly snorted were the remains of the victim's woman’s father and her two dogs.

The eight year sentence is on it's face unfair and unconscionable. Deep in the press reports hides the fact that the three youths were just that, only aged 19, 20 and 21. A Clearwater Criminal Defense Lawyer assumes that the sentencing Judge did not grant any Defense Motions for a Reduction of Sentence based on Florida's Youthful Offender Statute due to the nature of the offense, prior unlawful conduct or other pending burglaries and grand thefts. Invoking the Youthful Offender statute would have allowed the Judge to go under the Florida Sentencing Guidelines to give a fair and reasonable sentence.

FLORIDA DRUG MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES RUIN LIVES

You might think Florida drug laws for hard street drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin are the only drugs where Defendant receive significant punishment, but even drugs like oxycodone from prescription fraud and prescription drug abuse often trigger mandatory minimum sentences for surprisingly small amounts of the drug. A mandatory minimum sentence is one in which the Judge overseeing a criminal case has no discretion other than to sentence the Defendant to a significant amount of time over objections and hopes for leniency from your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney.

Many years ago in the mid 1980's when I was a prosecutor in Pinellas County, Florida, I handled what was then the first major twenty-five year mandatory minimum heroin case in the state of Florida. Yet there was no confidential informant, no wire tap, no large scale law enforcement investigation in apprehending the defendant.
Instead a car was stopped by officers in St. Petersburg, Florida late at night with an inoperative tail light. The driver and passengers were told to get out of the vehicle.

Incident to a search of the vehicle a small packet of heroin was found under the seat. Everyone in the car was arrested and eventually everyone pled to three years - a reduced offer made by the State Attorney's office because no one had yet been convicted of a twenty-five year minimum mandatory sentence in Florida. Everyone pled that is, but one man, a man who was in the back seat, passenger side of the vehicle.

I will never forget at trial in the ugly gray Criminal Court Complex in Clearwater holding the neatly tight-wrapped heroin foil packet in front of the jury and thinking even as I was speaking to them - urging them to convict because the Defendant was in close proximaty to the drugs and therefor must have known about it - that it was a very, very small packet that seemed to weigh so little.

Yet the jury did convict. The next day at sentencing the wise old (he's no longer on the bench where judges are always young when writing about them) judge said he'd been unable to sleep the night before. He granted a new trial to avoid having to sentence the man to the twenty-five year minimum mandatory sentence.

With the judge's prodding three years was again offered for him to plea. He refused. I took it to trial again, convicted him a second time. On the spot the judge sentenced him to a twenty-five year prison term.

I've often wondered how the judge slept that night and suppose that like me he had little problem. The very impersonal nature of the judicial system helps to forestall any notions of absolute justice instead merely fostering a fealty to the Law even when the results are unjust. Are we really better off as a society because that the young man spent the better part of his life in jail?

Yet even more surprising than the harshness of the law in Florida for street drugs is that the drug laws are no less brutal when the drug is obtained through uttering a fraudulent prescription or by forging a script at a local pharmacy. The minimum mandatory applies to many of these drugs, some with common brand names such as tylenol 3 that may unexpectedly contain codeine or one of the many other pain killers not available directly over the counter. Offenders often find themselves looking at three, fifteen or twenty-five year mandatory minimum sentences with Clearwater Criminal Defense Lawyers doing whatever is possible to find ways around the harsh sentences.