Joseph P. Welch

Join Greater St. Louis NORML and Legalize St. Louis! on Saturday, May 2, 2009 at the March to the Arch - St. Louis Worldwide Cannabis Liberation Day!

From 1 PM to 7PM on the Arch steps we’ll have national marijuana reform activists and several local bands out in support of our decriminalization initiative petition.

For more info, check out our event on Facebook: March to the Arch - St. Louis Cannabis Liberation Day

Our guests will include:

Ray Hartmann – founder of Riverfront Times, Ray is a regular on KETC Channel 9’s “Donnybrook”.

John Coffman – John is a lobbyist for the ACLU.

George McMahon – one of only four remaining patients who receives medicinal cannabis from the Federal Government. George is a founding member of Patients Out of Time

Jacqueline Patterson – cannabis patient and activist, appeared in Showtime’s “In Pot We Trust”

Mark Pedersen – a cannabis patient & founder of Cannabis Patient Network, Mark has interviewed over 100 medical cannabis patients, their family members, & physicians

Ervin Dargan – cannabis patient & videographer, works closely with Cannabis Patient Network & Patients Out of Time

Mayor Joe Blundell – Mayor of Cliff Village, MO; Joe was instrumental in the passage of Missouri’s 2nd medical cannabis city ordinance

Dan Viets – attorney, state coordinator for Missouri Norml; Dan has been fighting for over 40 years for an end to cannabis prohibition in Missouri.

Kelly Maddy – President, Joplin Norml, is currently working toward a medical cannabis city ordinance for Joplin, is instrumental in Missouri state cannabis reform.

Joseph Welch – criminal defense lawyer, director of Greater St. Louis NORML; is working toward establishing a cannabis city ordinance for St. Louis City.

Denise Lieberman – attorney, teacher, civil rights activist; Denise was formerly the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Easter Missouri

Terri Zeman - Director, Greater St. Louis NORML; Terri has worked many years educating Missouri regarding the benefits of hemp & bio diesel.

Medical cannabis patients from across Missouri and Illinois are expected to attend and participate.

Our bands will include:

Madahoochi St. Louis, MO http://madahoochi.com/index.html

56 Hope Road Chicago, IL http://www.56hoperd.com/

Frog Eye Jug Band Springfield, MO http://www.myspace.com/frogeyejugband

Vitamen A St. Louis, MO http://www.myspace.com/vitaminamusic

Upright Animals St. Louis, MO http://www.myspace.com/theuprightanimals

Aaron Kamm & the One Drops Edwardsville, IL http://www.myspace.com/theonedrops

For more info, check out our event on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39209377718

Hope to see all of you there!

Joseph Welch, Director
Greater St. Louis NORML
Legalize St. Louis!

joe :: Apr.05.2009 :: NORML, Missouri, St. Louis, Drug Law Reform, Drug Laws :: No Comments »

Members of Greater St. Louis NORML cleaned up sections of I-170 today in Berkeley, Missouri.

joe :: Jul.29.2007 :: NORML, Missouri, St. Louis, Drug Laws :: No Comments »

A funny video from the Drug Policy Alliance, brought to my attention by the very thorough Drug Law Blog.

joe :: Jun.22.2007 :: Drug Laws :: No Comments »

From the New York Times

Ronald McIver is a prisoner in a medium-security federal compound in Butner, N.C. He is 63 years old, of medium height and overweight, with a white Santa Claus beard, white hair and a calm, direct and intelligent manner. He is serving 30 years for drug trafficking, and so will likely live there the rest of his life. McIver (pronounced mi-KEE-ver) has not been convicted of drug trafficking in the classic sense. He is a doctor who for years treated patients suffering from chronic pain. At the Pain Therapy Center, his small storefront office not far from Main Street in Greenwood, S.C., he cracked backs, gave trigger-point injections and put patients through physical therapy. He administered ultrasound and gravity-inversion therapy and devised exercise regimens. And he wrote prescriptions for high doses of opioid drugs like OxyContin.

McIver was a particularly aggressive pain doctor. Pain can be measured only by how patients say they feel: on a scale from 0 to 10, a report of 0 signifies the absence of pain; 10 is unbearable pain. Many pain doctors will try to reduce a patient’s pain to the level of 5. McIver tried for a 2. He prescribed more, and sooner, than most doctors.

Some of his patients sold their pills. Some abused them. One man, Larry Shealy, died with high doses of opioids that McIver had prescribed him in his bloodstream. In April 2005, McIver was convicted in federal court of one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and eight counts of distribution. (He was also acquitted of six counts of distribution.) The jury also found that Shealy was killed by the drugs McIver prescribed. McIver is serving concurrent sentences of 20 years for distribution and 30 years for dispensing drugs that resulted in Shealy’s death. His appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court were rejected.

McIver’s case is not simply the story of a narcotics conviction. It has enormous relevance to the lives of the one in five adult Americans who, according to a 2005 survey by Stanford University Medical Center, ABC News and USA Today, reported they suffered from chronic pain — pain lasting for several months or longer. According to a 2003 study in The Journal of the American Medical Association, pain costs American workers more than $61 billion a year in lost productive time — and that doesn’t include medical bills.

Contrary to the old saw, pain kills. A body in pain produces high levels of hormones that cause stress to the heart and lungs. Pain can cause blood pressure to spike, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Pain can also consume so much of the body’s energy that the immune system degrades. Severe chronic pain sometimes leads to suicide. There are, of course, many ways to treat pain: some pain sufferers respond well to surgery, physical therapy, ultrasound, acupuncture, trigger-point injections, meditation or over-the-counter painkillers like Advil (ibuprofen) or Tylenol (acetaminophen). But for many people in severe chronic pain, an opioid (an opiumlike compound) like OxyContin, Dilaudid, Vicodin, Percocet, oxycodone, methadone or morphine is the only thing that allows them to get out of bed. Yet most doctors prescribe opioids conservatively, and many patients and their families are just as cautious as their doctors. Men, especially, will simply tough it out, reasoning that pain is better than addiction.

Read the full story at When Is a Pain Doctor a Drug Pusher?

joe :: Jun.19.2007 :: Drug Laws :: No Comments »

Flex Your Rights.org reports on an Eight Circuit Court of Appeals decision in which an innocent man had his life savings stolen from him through our unfair system of civil forfeiture laws. From Flex Your Rights.org:

The blogoshere is buzzing about the fate of Emiliano Gonzolez, an immigrant who consented to a police search only to have his life savings confiscated. The Eighth Circuit upheld the seizure even though Gonzolez was never even charged with a crime

The problem here is that forfeiture laws target the money directly, without addressing the guilt or innocence of the suspect. This case, for example, is bizarrely titled United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency. Forfeiture cases require a mere “preponderance of the evidence”, which means that the court only has to be 51% sure you did something wrong in order to take everything you own.

Yet even this government-friendly standard appears unmet here. Gonzolez’s evasive answers during the traffic stop are easily attributable to his difficulty with English and his obviously valid concern that police might confiscate his money if they knew about it. The fact that a drug dog alerted on the money is insignificant since 80% of U.S. currency contains drug traces. He had a one-way ticket because he intended to drive home in a truck, and he had someone else rent the car because he couldn’t rent without a credit card.

A policy that ignores reason condemns itself to the inevitability of injustice against the innocent. Even if the Eighth Circuit truly disbelieves Gonzolez, these judges must surely recognize the ease with which law-abiding citizens could be rendered helpless under this doctrine.

This callous ruling underscores the importance of knowing your rights in the first place. Had Gonzolez known to refuse the search and remain silent instead of lying, he may have been able to avoid this mess entirely. At the very least, a 4th Amendment challenge would have given him an additional legal option to pursue.

Read the rest of the story here at Flex Your Rights.org.

joe :: Sep.28.2006 :: Drug Laws, Criminal Law :: No Comments »