Blogosphere backs Kubby’s war on drugs

Steve Kubby was told at 23 that he had five years left to live. He was diagnosed with a medical condition (phenochromocytoma, a rare and fatal form of adrenal cancer) that had a 100% mortality rate in five years.

That was 30 years ago. During the three decades in between, Kubby led a life that will put perfectly healthy people to shame. He ran for Governor in California, played an important role in the California proposition 215 of 1996, which allowed terminally ill patients to use medical marijuana and even skied a million feet vertically, “to celebrate the wonderful life that cannabis has made possible” for him.

At the time of writing, Kubby is in the placer county prison in California, his condition rapidly deteriorating, having been denied access to cannabis, which doctors have certified as essential to his survival.

He was arrested on Thursday, January 26, on arrival from Canada, where he spent five years fighting extradition to US, unsuccessfully of course. He had fled to Canada in 2001 with his wife and two children, fearing incarceration without access to Cannabis in  USA.

In 1998, two months after he was an unsuccessful libertarian candidate for Governor in California, and became the president of the American Medical Marijuana Association, his home was raided and a small quantity of peyote, an illegal drug, was seized.

It is his plight in the prisons then, without the benefit of even blankets, which led him to flee to Canada, where Cannabis is legal.

While he is scheduled to appear before a court today, the blogosphere is up in arms against the “insane war on drugs” and the “political busting of a medical miracle”. On The Kubby Vertical Challenge blog, he had chronicled in detail his skiing schedule and his troubles with Canadian authorities.

Kubby’s ordeal with the law has, among others, reignited the debate on US laws on ‘consensual crimes’ in general and the “war on drugs” in particular. While rallying behind Kubby and demanding his release, most bloggers are looking at the larger public policy picture as well.

“We are spending billions every year opposing this drug, and for what? To keep Americans from experiencing a high that is, for all practical purposes, not all that much different from the buzz they can legally obtain from alcohol,” Rob Port of Wizbang opines. Many in the blogosphere are worried if Kubby will meet the same fate as Peter McWilliams, cancer patient and author, who reportedly died as he was denied marijuana by the authorities.

Blogin is DNA’s weekly take on the blogosphere. Send your comments at blogin@dnaindia.net