We Are Already Free: Marijuana Speech #10

10 ^th speech in this series to the Josephine County Commissioners, July 29, 2009.    

Commissioner Ellis asked me last week if I was going to speak on the same subject, the reasons for passing A Resolution Regarding Marijuana, which would ask the Oregon Legislature to pass the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, with suitable amendment for personal growing and limits thereon.

Rather than continuing with the next in my list of reasons, I pointed out that Mr. Kline had already given you the best possible reason for passing this Resolution.  When he requested that the sheriff arrest me for admitting to buying marijuana, and no notice was given to his request, you and Sheriff Gilbertson showed the true level of your concern about that particular statute. 

Likewise, Commissioner Cassanelli, when you said, after my last speech, “Good point!  You have a very good point!” you were showing your true, spontaneous reaction.  Please don’t change; your spontaneous reactions are why we love you so.

Anything to the contrary you or the Sheriff may do in the future can only be seen as backpedalling, far too late for credibility.  Respect for law demands that you ask the Legislature to repeal a law you no longer care to enforce, nor have the resources to do so.

There is another law enforcement official who could conceivably move against me in this matter, our District Attorney, Stephen Campbell.  After all, he recently charged me with Criminal Trespass 2 for handing out leaflets in a Public Market!  Unnecessary prosecution is nothing new to him, even against me.

But then he would have to explain to the Court why he and his office signed off on my Motion to Discharge Probation, in which I told the Court that I had not and would not comply with my probation for pot possession beyond taking the precious time of my PO in bi-monthly visits, so the Court might as well discharge it, because with a chronic jail emergency, the Court could not legally revoke my probation and jail me.

I am not a privileged person, just a royal pain to persecute.  Others have used my Motion to discharge their own probations, notably a 15-year-old boy.  Equal protection of the law demanded it.

Likewise, the failure to arrest me when Mr. Kline requested it means that laws against pot possession cannot be enforced against anyone else.  It became impossible to enforce the law when the Court couldn’t enforce probation, in any case.

Equal protection of the law demands that you pass this Resolution.  We have it anyways, so we are already free—to the extent that we know it.  You need to pass this so everyone knows it, and we are all equally protected.