[THS] Busted for Growing Pot to Ease Suffering from Chemo...

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.alternet.org/story/150353/busted_for_growing_pot_to_ease_suffering_from_chemotherapy_and_hemophilia%2C_couple_prepares_to_surrender_for_5-year_prison_terms?page=entire

Busted for Growing Pot to Ease Suffering from Chemotherapy and Hemophilia,
Couple Prepares to Surrender for 5-Year Prison Terms

A radical mastectomy, complications from chemotherapy, hemophilia and back
syndrome amount to motives for this "crime," carried out by a harmless middle-aged
couple.
March 23, 2011  |


After more than six years of litigation, and three years of appeals for manufacturing
and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cannabis, Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry and
her husband of 25 years, civil attorney Dale Schafer, attended a hearing at the US
courthouse in Sacramento Monday week, in which their bonds were revoked and
they were given a the date of May 2 to surrender to serve five-year federal prison
terms.

Fry and Schafer's prior home located in the hills just north of Sacramento was raided
in 2001, with 34 plants confiscated - what they believed to be well below the 99 plant
limit set forth by local ordinances.

According to Schafer, the couple had never grown more than 44 plants in a given
year.  A little known fact, he explained, is that under federal law more than 100
plants grown in a five year period, accumulatively, is cause for the mandatory five-
year sentence, overriding state laws.

Dr. Fry, who had gone through a radical mastectomy just three years prior, had
made the decision to grow her own medicine, medicating through her illness, surgery
and continued to medicate from myriad complications from chemotherapy until the
arrest. Schafer suffers from hemophilia and failed back syndrome, is under constant
care, and had also medicated with cannabis legally.

According to Fry and Schafer, prior to the arrest they had conferred numerous times
with local officials, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, and El Dorado County Sheriff's
Detectives Timothy McNulty and Robert Ashworth, regarding the legality of their
cannabis production for their own use and for Fry’s patients.

"We weren't selling the medical cannabis to my patients," Fry said. "We had staff and
were charging $10 for delivery only, and that's a common practice today."

Ultimately it was staff, Schafer said, who broke rules, and ultimately they were
responsible for all actions.

"We fired anyone who wasn't following the code of the law," Schafer said. "One week
before we were raided, two undercover Federal Agents attended a workshop for 215
cardholders we were holding at the local Grange Hall. The chef teaching the class
allowed patients to go home with some of the edibles made, including the agents."

Fry said comments were made during the class that may have been misunderstood
by the agents, saying it was a comedy of errors with a not so amusing ending.

"The judge wouldn’t allow any medical evidence. They wouldn't let us tell the jury I
was sick, or that I was a doctor," Fry said. "They wouldn’t allow that I was helping
sick patients. Ironically, two years before the raid, local authorities asked me to tell
them who of my patients were 'really' sick, and who wasn't." I told them it wasn't my
job to police my patients, and that everyone who came to me had legitimate health
issues. They have treated us like criminals."

Fry's lineage includes seven generations of doctors. Family notables include her
grandfather, Dr. Francis Marion Pottenger, celebrated for being at the forefront of
curing tuberculosis in the early 1900s, and founding the field of internal medicine in
the process.

Her grandmother studied under Carl Jung in the 1950s, founding a Jungian institute
in Houston in the 1960s, while her mother also became a physician in the 1950s.

"When I was young my mother told me I could do whatever I choose to do with my
life. She told me the United States of America is a free country," Fry explained. "But,
I was outspoken on this topic."

Lack of education on the topic of medicinal cannabis, Fry and Schafer agree, is the
true culprit in their court case, and the couple chose activism to further the cause,
something that may have contributed to their demise.

"When I was in the thick of helping people, I knew it was the right thing to do," she
said. "Cannabis helped me immensely when I was going through cancer."

After ten years of defending themselves the couple has more questions than
answers.

"Cannabis is proven medicine. Why would the state of California create laws based on
what the people want, and then allow the federal Government to override them?" Fry
asks. "I had cancer, we were growing medicine. I was helping people."

Dr. Fry's license to practice has been revoked for some time now, as has her
husband's license to practice law. The couple's grown children with grandkids have
moved back home to help with financs and save the family home. A Pay Pal account
has been set up for donations. It can be accessed

here [go to url at top of page]

. "Cool Madness," a book written about the trial by author Vanessa Williams is
available online through StoptheDrugWar.org

(publisher of this web site), Amazon.com or other online booksellers, or directly at the

"Cool Madness" web site

.  Donations and correspondence of support can also be sent to the family, P.O. Box
634, Cool, CA 95614.
Sacramento, CA
United States