When I called Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer’s home near Sacramento, three days before their surrender to federal authorities, Mollie answered in tears, her words interrupted by bad coughs. A breast cancer survivor, Mollie faces five years in prison for using and distributing less than two pounds of medical marijuana over a five-year period. She and her hemophiliac husband, Dale, argue they complied with state law – California’s Compassionate Use Act – but none of that mattered. All that matters now is that Mollie and Dale, also facing five years, will miss the birth of their granddaughter, expected this October, and that Mollie may die in prison.
“Do you think it would be all right to wear my mother’s dress when I surrender?” Mollie Fry asked me. “I loved her so much.”
“Of course,” I answered, thinking there is no better time to wrap your arms, both literally and figuratively, around your family than when you are marching off to prison.
Mollie, a physician known as Dr. Fry, needed help in the late 90s after undergoing a radical mastectomy. The chemotherapy made her sick and the drugs the doctor gave her didn’t alleviate the discomfort. “I was falling over in the shower,” she told me. “My husband had to bathe me.”
Dale, an attorney, who ran for District Attorney of El Dorado County, had been active in the medical marijuana movement for years. Together, they grew cannabis and distributed it, for free to others.
On June 22, 2005, federal officers arrested and charged Mollie and Dale with manufacturing and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana. The federal government added up the plants grown over a multi-year period to seek a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence associated with growing more than 100 plants.
On Monday, May 2nd, at 11 AM, when Mollie and Dale are surrendering to federal authorities in Sacramento and Americans for Safe Access is protesting in Washington D.C., I will deliver a Cease & Desist Order to the Drug Enforcement Agency office in Los Angeles, located at 255 E. Temple Street, 17th floor. The order will call on the DEA to stop its raids on medical marijuana facilities and to halt harassment of medical marijuana users.
We need to bring compassion and common sense to the use of medical marijuana. The current “War on Drugs” has been a failure, with the lives of compassionate care activists and young people ruined by a federal law that punishes medical marijuana users and providers.
In 2007 when my own mother was dying with cancer and seeking relief from medical marijuana, the DEA and Los Angeles Police Department raided and closed medical marijuana pharmacies throughout Los Angeles. Disabled men in wheelchairs found themselves locked out of their pharmacies, waving signs for “Help.” AIDS patients watched their back when they made their way to a pharmacies that were still open. On the heels of the raids, I wrote and passed a resolution at California Democratic Party Executive Board meeting calling for an end to LAPD complicity with the DEA raids.
It is time to remove cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act because this Act does not recognize marijuana’s medicinal value. In the state of California, where the use of medical marijuana is legal, care providers and patients should not have to live in fear of arrest for using small amounts of marijuana to alleviate pain and discomfort. I ask the Drug Enforcement Agency to cease and desist harassment of medical marijuana pharmacies and users – and urge President Obama to commute the sentences of Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer.
If you live in Los Angeles and want to join me on Monday, please show up at the DEA office to support humane treatment of medical marijuana users. If you agree with me that we need to amend the Controlled Substances Act, please volunteer on my congressional campaign (CA-36) to fill Jane Harman's newly vacated seat. The Special Election is Tues., May 17th and absentee voters are voting now. To phone bank for me, email Bill@WinogradforCongress.com to set up a virtual phone banking account. Our headquarters, open 10 am to 2 pm today, 11 am - 8 pm, Monday through Saturday, is located at the Venice Center for the Arts, 1020 Victoria Ave. (Victoria and Lincoln), Venice, 90291. Thank you.
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