Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)

Pubdate: June 28, 2005

U.S drug warriors looking to inflict another casualty

By Geoff Olson

"The history of the 'war on drugs,' and more specifically the

well-documented history of marijuana legislation, makes it clear that

the goals of the repeatedly declared 'wars' have little to do with

availability and use of harmful substances, and a lot to do with what is

called 'population control' in the literature of counterinsurgency. The

targets are both at home and abroad-overwhelmingly the poor and

defenseless... The 'war on drugs' has the dual function of eliminating

the disposable people (being civilized, we lock them up rather than

murdering them) and frightening the rest, and has been cynically used

for these purposes. The case of Renee Boje illustrates this cynical

abuse of power..."

-Noam Chomsky

Last week Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler denied North Vancouver

resident Renee Boje's application to remain in Canada as a refugee. Even

though she is married to a Canadian and has a three-year- old son, the

slight, soft-spoken 34-year-old faces extradition to the U.S. and the

possibility of a "mandatory minimum" sentence-meaning 10 years to life

in a federal prison.

In 1997, the young art student approached a man smoking a joint in a

Hollywood caf, and asked how he could be so bold. The conversation with

writer Todd McCormick, who suffered from AIDS, led to a discussion of

California 's newly adopted Proposition 215, the compassionate care act,

which allowed seriously ill people to purchase and use marijuana under a

doctor's recommendation. McCormick then commissioned Boje, an art

student, to illustrate a book he was writing on medicinal marijuana.

Renting a stucco mansion in Bel Air with proceeds from the book's

advance, he gathered together assistants and activists to work on the

project, breeding various marijuana strains openly on the property.

The overabundance of plants alerted authorities at the apex of the

judicial pyramid. Under U.S. federal law, marijuana was and is a

schedule one drug with severe penalties attached. On her way home one

day from the mansion, Boje was apprehended by officers who told her they

had seen her through binoculars, watering plants at the mansion.

Although she had nothing in her possession, police strip-searched Boje

multiple times over the next 72 hours, and released her without charges.

But the feds were determined to bring down proposition 215, and wanted a

slam-dunk case against McCormick and his publisher, Peter McWilliams, an

AIDS sufferer. The duo's "cannabis castle" had become the Holy Grail of

federal drug enforcement. Boje's lawyer advised her to flee up north,

fearing that if Boje continued to refuse to testify against her friends,

she could face the reefer madness "mandatory minimum" upon conviction.

Boje had begun to research the U.S. federal-industrial prison complex,

and abuse of female prisoners documented by Amnesty International. She

followed his advice.

At the Canada/U.S. border, Boje's dropped marijuana charges came up on

the computer. No biggie; she was in, and on her way to B.C.'s Sunshine

Coast. Aided financially by local cannabis activists, Boje founded a

local compassion club. The Californian native was in deep, her identity

now irrevocably tied to weed. She appeared on Mark Emery's Pot TV in a

show called "The Healing Herb," which broadcast updates on the fight for

medicinal marijuana. Emery, head of the B.C. Marijuana Party, also put

up a good deal of money to help with her legal appeals.

McCormick and McWilliams, too sick to flee anywhere, ended up in a U.S.

federal court, where neither was allowed to discuss medicinal marijuana,

proposition 215, or even their own illnesses. With his bail secured by

his mother's house, McCormick didn't dare use cannabis, which he usually

took to keep from throwing up his AIDS medication. He was found dead in

his bathroom, having choked on his own vomit. McWilliams, sentenced to

five years in a federal prison, asked prison officials for access to the

synthetic marijuana drug Marisol to manage his pain. The jailers didn't

just refuse-they tested him for drug use, and summarily threw him into

solitary after he tested positive. (The publisher claimed the result

came from use prior to his imprisonment, since THC, marijuana's active

ingredient, remains in the bloodstream for up to a month.)

Boje will appeal Cotler's ruling when she appears in court again on

September 30. The dual irony would be comic, if it weren't so tragic.

The Canadian government, which has refused refugee status to the

California native, routinely does the very thing she is accused of (in

our case, growing substandard weed in Flin Flon for limited medicinal

use). As for the U.S. government, it appears to be itching to plant a

lovely, gentle soul in the one place any convicted American can find

drugs: a federal penitentiary.