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| The Cannabis Caper |
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Posted by FoM on March 27, 2002 at 23:19:41 PT By John Suval Source: Houston Press 
Last month, Clayton Jones of Houston got his hands on a newsletter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). The 54-year-old paraplegic and double amputee believes that marijuana should be legal for medicinal purposes. Finding kindred spirits at NORML, he felt moved to send a contribution to the local chapter.He duly filled out his membership information, scribbled out a check for $10 and put it in the mail that same day. Jones was most perplexed when a package arrived from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration a week later. He warily opened the manila envelope and found a succession of smaller envelopes, like a Russian nesting doll. The first was addressed to the DEA's Houston office, with Jones's name and address scrawled in a neat but unfamiliar hand in the space at the top left where the sender's information goes. Inside was Jones's original letter to NORML, which had been opened but still contained his membership information and check -- uncashed. Who would feel compelled to open his private correspondence to high-profile advocates of marijuana legalization and send it off to the agency charged with smoking out users of the herb, he wondered with rising anger. "I feel very violated," he says. Adding fuel to Jones's anxious ruminations is the fact that the DEA has become increasingly heavy-handed in its crackdowns on the use of medical marijuana. The agency, under the guise of homeland security, recently staged a series of raids on medical marijuana cooperatives in California, where state law allows pot for the seriously ill. Jones took the package from the DEA to a leading reform group mentioned in the NORML newsletter, the Drug Policy Forum of Texas. He and the group's executive director, Alan Robison, studied the papers like tea leaves, hoping to determine how the letter had gotten into the hands of the feds. The first thing they determined was that Jones had incorrectly addressed his envelope. Instead of putting NORML's post office box, he had written the Drug Policy Forum's building address at 1425 Blalock Road. In addition, he failed to enter the suite number, making it all but undeliverable in a two-story building with about 20 different offices. That still didn't explain how it turned up at the DEA. The little coupon Jones had clipped from the newsletter and scrawled his personal information on seemed to offer a clue. It so happened that on the back of that square of paper was a snippet of vague information about a planned "action" by NORML to protest a DEA policy. The newsletter gave the address of the agency's building on the West Loop. Someone apparently wanted to tip off the federal agents about NORML's intentions. But who? Their suspicions turned to the postal service. The neatly written envelope to the DEA had been stamped with a postage meter that appeared to be the kind used by post offices. It seemed plausible to Jones and Robison that in post-September 11 America, postal workers saw themselves on the front lines of the nation's "wars" on terrorism and drugs. "Evidently the sneaky bugger in the post office…was trying to get Jones in trouble or make a hero out of himself," said the Drug Policy Forum's Robison, a distinguished professor of pharmacology and former department chair at the University of Texas Health Science Center. When informed of the situation, postal officials expressed doubt that one of their employees would open a first-class letter and then reroute it to some third party, like the DEA. Doug Turner, a postal inspector in San Antonio and a regional spokesman, says such a move would violate the "security and the sanctity of the mail" and potentially constitute a felony. "You can't just take a piece of mail and open it because you think something's wrong with it. You have to have a search warrant to do that," Turner says of postal service protocols. "If we find an employee who is doing that, we will try to prosecute him every time." In the Jones episode, such harsh measures proved unnecessary. It turned out that a mail carrier apparently had committed an error, but one that did not rise to the level of criminality. The carrier mistakenly delivered Jones's letter to the office of a mortgage company at 1425 Blalock, rather than returning it to Jones. It was Joe Etheredge, president of Casa Mortgage Inc., who made the decision to forward Jones's letter to the feds. Confronted in his office with the facts, Etheredge, a man with twinkling blue eyes, short gray hair and beard, thinks back for a moment and explains what happened. Yes, he remembers the errant letter that arrived with the stack of other mail that Tuesday afternoon in February. He recalls slicing open the mail with the mechanical motions of a business owner who receives piles of lien payments and other correspondence. He doesn't look at the face of every envelope, he says, adding that he pulled the contents from Jones's envelope and eyeballed them long enough to know the letter wasn't for him. "I had no idea that whatever was in there had anything to do with NORML… I just gave it to one of the girls in the back and said, 'Here, forward this on. It got sent to the wrong address.' " Etheredge says his assistant forwarded the mail to the DEA because the agency's address was displayed prominently on the back of Jones's membership coupon. "She could have just as easily sent it back to him," he concedes. The DEA received the letter at its West Loop offices and promptly returned it to Jones. "We're not concerned about what an organization like NORML is doing, unless they're breaking the law," says Robert Paiz, spokesman for the Houston office of the DEA. "We have enough responsibility monitoring the illicit drug traffickers who are putting the hard drugs out on the street." Vanessa Kimbrough, a Houston postal service inspector, says the episode is a straightforward case of an "operational error" by the mail carrier who delivered Jones's letter to the wrong place. Robison of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas is satisfied with that version of events. "It sort of takes the fun out of being in the middle of a murder mystery," he quips. For his part, Etheredge says his conscience is clear. He was "trying to be nice" by forwarding the letter on to who he thought was the intended recipient. "I feel no responsibility for the fact that Jones misaddressed the envelope," he says. Jones concludes that his letter may indeed have fallen victim to a comedy of errors. But he is not laughing. A onetime owner of a machine shop, Jones was left paralyzed by a 1985 car wreck. In 1992, circulation problems forced the amputation of both of his legs. A longtime activist for the disabled, he lives in severe pain and finds marijuana is an effective way to ease the suffering. "I want to see marijuana laws change. It's a very good therapeutic medicine," he says. "It isn't going to infringe on anyone else." Source: Houston Press (TX) Drug Policy Forum of Texas CannabisNews Articles - NORML Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #6 posted by DdC on March 28, 2002 at 14:59:49 PT |
| Would Feds open others mail without a warrant? Not the Feds who peer into windows with videotape collecting evidence? Or those who steal piss to test kids and adults. Tell siblings to nark on siblings and parents who are then taken away, leaving Foster to care for the DEAth tool snitches. Or no knock laws and anonymous tips. Heat censors and anything arrests. No medical value found when no ones looking. Taking kids for advocating, taking homes if someone says the stranger toking in the parking lot was a relative. 3 strikes and mandatory sentences. Confiscate the gifts to loved ones or stash the cash and remove the poor from foodstamps and tuition in the name of stopping drugs Bush ain't selling. Profiling and expelltion, raping kids as deterrents, pushing cheaper crack instead of ganja that is comprised of mostly ditchweed while booze is easy and obtained on every street corner bar and market. Sending kids to die in war protecting Exxon and Chevron, treating chemical disease with Pharm aids while eliminating herbal competition. Selling DEAth chemicals on tobacco not mentioned or in organics. MKULTRA or Tuskeghee U spreading sifflis or the Manchurian canidate or Rayguns bogus monkey test or Duponts ditchweed medicine or Nixon shelving Shafer's Commission as Thompsons doing with the 4 year old IOM report.... But to suggest they might open mail in the name of good intentions fighting drugs!!! O'Really! Peace, Love and Liberty or D.E.A.th! [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #5 posted by E_Johnson on March 28, 2002 at 10:21:57 PT |
| I wish Americans would study Russian and Soviet history because there's a lot to be learned there about human behavior. People have this idea that Soviet repression was uniquely delivered by the government to the people. But there could never have been a successful secret police under either the Tsarist or the Communist system if human beings were not ready and willing to turn on each other for personal gain or government favor. We have been taught in school to see a repressive government as a political failing, a systematic failing, an ideological or theoretical failing, but these things are propped up by very deep human character failings. And the people who have pondered that and teased out those subtleties are the Soviet and Russian authors who are not usually included in the list of what college students study these days. It's still too politically sensitive in most American universities to suggest that the faculty criticize the Soviet Union for anything or highlight authors who criticize the Soviet Union. BUT I would like to point out that this story offers a case in point: The DEA is being toadied to by citizens who don't even need to be ASKED to snitch on their fellow citizens, and in comparison to that, they come out looking like agents of restraint. The Russian secret police and the Soviet secret police also found this delightful situation to be true and it greatly aided them in fulfilling their duties as agents of repression. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #4 posted by E_Johnson on March 28, 2002 at 10:02:01 PT |
| Yeah the Soviet Union was full of humor too, they had the best jokes in the world. At least it got NORML in the news. Hey since it's a slow day here's an old Soviet joke: Communist Party general Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was terribly worried that BBC was able to get information about what was being decided at Politburo meetings. So Brezhnev took matters in hand and had the next Politburo meeting in his own office, and had his office walled off from the rest of the Kremlin, with only one phone contact with his most trusted aide Yuri. One hour into the meeting, Kosygin spoke up: Leonid Ilyich, I am an old man with a weak bladder and I have to pee, please let me out to use the bathroom. Brezhnev replied: I cannot do that, Alexei Nikolayevich, because there would be a breach of security in my office. One more hour of meeting and Kosygin again complained: Leonid Ilyich, I am an old man with a weak bladder and I have to pee, please let me out to use the bathroom. Brezhnev replied: I cannot do that, Alexei Nikolayevich, because there would be a breach of security in my office. FInally after another hour of torture, poor Kosygin goes to raise his hand, pain visible on his face. But then the phone rings and instead of answering Kosygin, Brezhnev answers the phone. His loyal aide Yuri reports: Secretary Brezhnev, I have to tell you that it has just been reported on BBC that poor Alexei Nikolyavich is an old man with a weak bladder and he has to pee, and if you don't let him out to go to the bathroom, there will be a breach of more than just security in your office. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by FoM on March 28, 2002 at 08:26:28 PT |
| Hi Everyone,
Here we are again at a long holiday weekend and the news is very slow. I will keep looking for news but I just feel there won't be much. I thought I'd mention why articles aren't being posted so far. Have a nice holiday. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by schmeff on March 28, 2002 at 08:00:26 PT |
| I find this comment somewhat unsettling. I have not heard the term "homeland security" used in conjunction with the DEA raids on the CA dispensaries. I hope this is just coincidental, and not an additional job description for the newly minted Amerikan Gestapo. [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by Dan B on March 28, 2002 at 03:44:05 PT:
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| Even if the explanation in this article is correct (and I admit that it does sound plausible, though I have strong suspicions that somebody along the way deliberately sent the info to the DEA, and nobody is talking), and even if this incident is really just an innocent mistake, this article points out something terrible about our country: average citizens have legitimate reason to be afraid of the federal government. And that in itself is a disgrace. One sure sign that the people have lost all control of the government is when the average American citizen fears its own government--you know, the one that was intended to be of the people, for the people and by the people? So, although this is a cute story (and well-written, I might add), its implications are not cute at all. By the way, I sincerely respect Clayton Jones for sticking up for himself in an era when most choose to hide from their accusers. His up-front, no-nonsense attitude may well be a catalyst toward changing the draconian policies here in Texas. Dan B [ Post Comment ] |
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