Pubdate: Tue, 03 Apr 2007
Source: Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Copyright: 2007, Denver Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.rockymountainnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/371
Author: Paul Campos
Note: Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of  Colorado.

THE WITCH HUNT CONTINUES

THORNTON - Jack Branson sits in the cluttered living  room of the
modest house he rents from a family member  on the ragged edge of this
Denver suburb. On the table  between us are vials containing eight
different  medicines.

Branson, a slightly built man who will turn 39 the next  day, is
seriously ill. For nearly 20 years he's lived  with the HIV virus that
causes AIDS; in addition he has  hepatitis B, and a slipped disc in
his back. Some of  the medicines keep him alive, while others,
including  oxycodone and methadone, help control the chronic pain  in
which he lives.

Like many people with HIV, Branson finds it difficult  to tolerate the
drugs that suppress the virus. Indeed,  the drugs tend to make him so
nauseated that on several  occasions he stopped taking them, causing
him to  develop full-blown AIDS.

And, like many other seriously ill people, Branson  discovered that by
smoking marijuana he could control  the nausea well enough to take his
medicine regularly.  It was precisely to help people like Branson that
the  voters of Colorado amended the state's constitution in  2000, to
allow doctors to recommend marijuana for  patients they believed would
benefit from it.

Six years ago, a doctor at the University of Colorado  School of
Medicine - an expert on the treatment of AIDS  - told Branson he ought
to smoke marijuana if that  would allow him to take his medicine
regularly (each  time Branson stopped taking the medicine his body
became more resistant to its effects).

The Colorado medical marijuana law doesn't require a  doctor's
recommendation to be in writing, and Branson  began to grow a few
marijuana plants in his backyard,  Eventually he had 14 plants, which,
given the  relatively short Colorado growing season, was only  enough
to supply him with enough medical marijuana to  get him through two
thirds of the year.

In October of 2004, the North Metro Drug Task Force, a  local law
enforcement consortium that gets considerable  funding from the
federal government, showed up at  Branson's house. They didn't have a
warrant, but  according to Branson they told him they would do
serious damage to his house if he forced them to come  back with one.

Branson had every reason to believe he had done nothing  illegal (he
in fact has no criminal record of any  kind), and he consented to the
warrantless search. He  was then charged with felony cultivation of a
controlled substance, and possession with intent to  distribute.

Branson shows me the approximately 10-foot-by-4-foot  plot of earth
where he had grown his plants. "This is  the east side and this is the
west side of the plot,"  he tells me. "I labeled the bags in which I
kept the  marijuana East and West, depending on which side of the
plot the plants came from. The drug task force's theory  is that I
intended to distribute the stuff on the East  and West coasts."

Branson's lawyer, Robert Corry, describes himself as a  strong
Republican (he was the Republican committee  counsel for the House
Judiciary Committee in Washington  in the 1990s.) In other words, he's
hardly a  bleeding-heart liberal, yet he's genuinely outraged by  what
the government is doing to his client. He  estimates that Branson's
trial, which starts tomorrow,  will cost the taxpayers of Adams County
at least  $100,000.

That seems like a steep price to pay for the privilege  of persecuting
a harmless, desperately ill man, who  doesn't appear to have committed
a crime in even the  most technical sense, and who might well die in
prison  if he's sent there.

Prisons don't allow medical marijuana use, and Branson  says he would
consider a prison sentence of more than  six months to be the
equivalent of capital punishment,  since he probably can't live longer
than that without  his HIV medicine.

I suppose in our government's eyes that outcome would  just prove once
again how dangerous smoking marijuana  really is.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of  Colorado.
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