LETTER OF THE WEEK

NO LEGAL AUTHORITY

By way of introduction, I had a 24-year career in federal law
enforcement and then worked for the state judiciary and the
enforcement branch of the Department of Land and Natural Resources
for 13 years. I am a strong supporter of law enforcement. Even so,
I was appalled by the piece in West Hawaii Today Oct. 31. It
appears a major travesty of justice is playing out here.

To see two medical marijuana patients improperly denied boarding on
an aircraft and then detained by the Transportation Security
Authority representatives for arrest by the local police is ludicrous
if I can accept WHT's assurance that they were in full compliance
with state law. According to the article, a TSA spokesman stated
their only mission is to keep explosives off planes ( something they
have not done in nine years to the best of my knowledge ). That
amounts to tacit admission that TSA exceeded their statutory
authority in this case.

The local police then "stole" their legally owned property and
conducted what appears to be an illegal arrest. Worse the prosecutor
for whatever reason decided to levy criminal charges against the two
individuals that seem to have been in full compliance with the law,
and if so, they are victims and NOT criminals. Lastly, the judge in
the case failed to see the baselessness of this case and is pursuing it!

We all have to comply with various laws such as wear your seat belt,
comply with speed limits, don't drive and use a cell phone, etc. If
we don't like the laws, we must work within the system to change them
and follow them in the meantime. Law enforcement has the same
obligation and should be held to an even higher standard in this regard.

Yet in this case it appears we have the feds, the state and local
authorities who don't agree with our medical marijuana laws, choose
to violate them and harass law-abiding citizens and try to prosecute them.

My advice to the two victims that now find themselves defendants is
to sue their butts off. Enforcement and the courts are not above the law.

For the record, the only marijuana I ever touched was samples of
evidence in a seizure case for illicit trafficking cases. Some
sanity needs to get interjected here, and if a cardiac patient is
driving down the road with prescription drugs in his or her car and
is stopped by police, would their medication be seized, that person
get arrested and face criminal charges? I think not.

I'd love to have someone in law enforcement advise us why in hell
people holding legal prescriptions are treated differently based upon
the particular drug.

We'll get silence as none of the entities in this case have ANY legal
authority for their actions, nor a leg to stand on.

Keith King

Kailua-Kona

Pubdate: Mon, 8 Nov 2010

Source: West Hawaii Today (HI)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a055.html