Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee

Author:Martin A. Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

The police, meanwhile, had seized nearly everything the Kubbys owned, including all their office equipment, which they used to operate an online magazine devoted to extreme winter sports. As a result, Kubby lost his business and was forced into bankruptcy. He also had to deal with the hassle and expense of obtaining enough cannabis on the black market for his medical needs. A costly wrangle in court loomed as both Kubbys were charged with conspiring to cultivate and sell marijuana.

When Dr. Vincent DeQuattro, one of the world’s leading specialists on adrenal cancer, heard that Kubby had been busted, he couldn’t believe that his former patient was still alive. Every other patient whom he treated for this terminal illness “had died long ago,” DeQuattro wrote in a letter to the judge. “Only Kubby had survived.” DeQuattro examined Kubby and concluded that cannabis stabilized his adrenal function: “In some amazing fashion, this medication has not only controlled the symptoms of phenochromocytoma, but in my view, has arrested growth.” If Kubby is deprived of cannabis, according to DeQuattro, adrenaline will overwhelm his system and his blood pressure will spike to dangerous levels, which could result in a fatal seizure. In short, marijuana was keeping Kubby alive.

The Mayo Clinic, one of the most prestigious medical centers in the world, also studied Kubby’s medical condition. “[W]e can’t explain it, but whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” the Mayo Clinic urged. But Kubby couldn’t keep “doing it”—smoking high-THC reefer all day long—while residing in prison, which is where he feared he’d end up if a Placer County jury found him guilty as charged. Dr. DeQuattro testified on Kubby’s behalf; so did Dr. Tod Mikuriya, whose letter of recommendation entitled Kubby to use cannabis as a medicine in California. After a lengthy trial and four days of deliberation, Kubby and his wife were exonerated of marijuana charges. But the jury found him guilty of felony possession of a peyote button and a magic mushroom. Judge John Cosgrove sentenced Kubby to 120 days of home detention and three years probation.

A defiant Kubby refused to accept a guilty verdict of any sort. “Make no mistake,” he asserted in memos and press releases to his supporters, “this trial is no more about marijuana than the Boston Tea Party was about tea.” Unwilling to countenance another life-threatening stint in jail, the Kubbys fled the country with their two small children. In the spring of 2001, they slipped across the border into Canada and applied for political asylum on the grounds that they had a “well-founded fear of persecution” by drug warriors in the United States.

Michael Baldwin, a Placer County dentist who used marijuana for chronic lower back pain and sciatica, was closely watching developments in the Kubby case. Baldwin’s home had been raided on September 23, 1998, even though he and his wife, Georgia Chacko, both had recommendations to medicate with cannabis from Dr. Alex Stalcup, a leading authority on illegal drugs. (Stalcup taught classes on the subject to narcotics agents at the behest of the California Narcotics Officers’ Association.

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