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Medical Marijuana News Update
The Coalition
for Medical Marijuana includes:
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"Tortured For Days With No Reason": The Case Of Steven TuckMedical marijuana patient Steven Tuck has been returned to the US from Canada, where he had gone to avoid facing federal marijuana charges. The Associated Press reported on Oct. 12, 2005 ( "Judge Releases Medical Marijuana Patient Arrested In BC Hospital") that "A U.S. Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution because he grew marijuana to help control chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the U.S. border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials – who provided him with no medical treatment for five days, his lawyer said. Steven William Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into U.S. District Court for a detention hearing Wednesday, said his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt. U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue ordered Tuck temporarily released so that Hiatt and Sunil Aggarwal, the president of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, could take him to Harborview Medical Center for treatment. 'The guy comes into the jail with a catheter ..., you'd think they'd do something about it!' Hiatt said, launching into a profanity-laced tirade after the hearing. 'This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason.'" According to AP, " Tuck is a veteran who said he suffered debilitating injuries in the late 1980s, when his parachute failed to open during a jump. He spent a year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center undergoing operations to fuse discs in his back, Hiatt said. His injuries were exacerbated in a car crash that killed his brother-in-law in 1990; over the years, he has had more than a dozen surgeries, his friends said. In 2001, he was living in McKinleyville, Calif., when his marijuana growing operation was raided for the second time. He fled to British Columbia to avoid prosecution, and sought asylum status, which was recently denied. Last Friday, he checked himself in to St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, because he had a cyst on his prostate and was having difficulty urinating, Hiatt said." AP reported that Tuck "was turned over to Whatcom County Jail officials, who, after being flooded with phone calls from activists, called federal marshals from Seattle to pick him up. The marshals brought him to the King County Jail in downtown Seattle. Though Tuck had taken morphine – as prescribed by doctors – for about 16 years to help with his pain, he was given no painkiller or treatment at the jail other than ibuprofen, Hiatt said. Tuck, who appeared emaciated as he cried in court Wednesday, has been sick from the morphine withdrawal, Hiatt said."
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