Living the Dream
[Guest post by DRJ]
On Thursday, Chris Bartkowicz was living the dream as he ran a “large and profitable medical-marijuana-growing operation in his basement” in a Denver suburb:
“On Thursday night, 9News promoted a story about Bartkowicz’s operation, and on Friday morning, Bartkowicz was featured in a 9News story posted to its website and published in The Denver Post. The story was to air on television Friday night. He told the station he serves as a caregiver to a number of medical-marijuana patients and hoped to turn a profit this year in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I’m definitely living the dream now,” Bartkowicz told 9News.”
On Friday, Bartkowicz was arrested by federal authorities on drug charges:
“Along with the raid, Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s special agent in charge of the Denver office, sent a message to anyone involved in Colorado’s increasingly profitable medical-marijuana industry.
“It’s still a violation of federal law,” Sweetin said. “It’s not medicine. We’re still going to continue to investigate and arrest people.”
Bartkowicz will be spending the long President’s Day weekend in jail awaiting arraignment, although he may get to see himself on the local news reports.
— DRJ
Personally, I think marijuana should be legal and subject to tax. I have known chemotherapy patients who had nausea that only smoking marijuana would stop. The medical MJ thing is BS. Legalize it and tax it.
As far as other drugs, I could deal with legalization of heroin with registered addicts getting their drug from pharmacies. The pharmacists are having enough trouble with reimbursement from HMOs and insurance that I wouldn’t mind seeing them have another legal source of income. They have all these nature cures all over the stores now to boost revenue.
The problem is that you cannot legalize cocaine. It makes people paranoid and hyperactive. It also kills while, aside from ODs, heroin is harmless.
The other synthetic drugs, like speed, are not candidates for legalization. They kill and make people crazy.
Mike K (2cf494) — 2/13/2010 @ 4:23 pmPersonally I’d rather see Sweetin waiting for his trial on the charge of treason and facing a possible death penalty for overthrowing the 10th amendment.
snookered (6f83c5) — 2/13/2010 @ 4:47 pmIt is a little confusing to understand just under what authority Bartkowicz was arrested. Just how is marijuana a federal issue?
Or doesn’t that matter anymore and the states are merely administrative districts of the federal government?
iconoclast (e235f2) — 2/13/2010 @ 7:55 pmMedical marijuana is in the Colorado Constitution, like it or not.
Someone explain to me how it’s conservative to believe that the whim of federal DEA agents trumps a state’s constitution?
Coloradoan (9e4d68) — 2/14/2010 @ 3:11 am1) I vehemently disagree with the current legal situation of cannabis.
2) What kind of moron gives a public interview knowing that the Feds are still taking matters into their hands on this.
3) If he pushes this to a jury trial, I’ll be willing to bet that Jury Nullification raises it’s head.
NavyspyII (df615d) — 2/14/2010 @ 6:11 amIconoclast: back in the 1940s, Congress’ lawyers successfully argued that they could ban the growing of corn for private use on the grounds that that private use had an impact on the price of corn on the interstate market and, therefore, such use could be regulated under the power to regulate interstate commerce. The growing of marijuana can presumably be regulated under a similar theory … and the Supreme Court declined to overrule the sixty-year-old precedent when it was recently given the opportunity to.
NavyspyII: I voted for California’s medical marijuana initiative and will likely vote for outright legalization in November. And yet I agree with #2: the dude is a moron; if you’re doing something which is legal under state law but illegal under federal law, you do not publicly flaunt it, lest you attract the attention of the federal enforcement agents.
That said, I don’t understand why the states-rights types are not up in arms about federal enforcement of laws like this which conflict with more forgiving state laws.
aphrael (99a3f3) — 2/14/2010 @ 1:42 pm