Cancer Patient Gets Probation For Growing, Smoking Pot

Man Says He Needed Drug To Stimulate Appetite

CINCINNATI -- A cancer patient who said he smoked marijuana to stimulate his appetite while undergoing chemotherapy was sentenced to three years of probation.

Carter Singleton, 65, of Mount Healthy, could have been sent to prison for five years. He pleaded guilty last month to a charge that he grew marijuana.

"I find there to be substantial mitigating grounds," Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge John Andrew West said after sentencing Singleton on Thursday. "The circumstances are unlikely to reoccur and he shows genuine remorse."

Singleton said he weighed 230 pounds before beginning chemotherapy, then lost 80 pounds. A friend suggested he try smoking marijuana to help improve his appetite, and Singleton said it worked.

http://www.channelcincinnati.com/news/3356951/detail.html

I heard moving speeches by sick people at a pro pot event and it convinced me that legalization was very important.
The man in this case would have been alright legally in Ohio if he hadn't grown where possession of small amounts is decriminalized. That's the problem with just decriminalization, since growing and selling still carry significant penalties, it is difficult to have a guarenteed supply unless one personally knows dealers, goes to rough neighborhoods where that activity is more open, or grows one's own and risk criminal penalties.

He could have been a jerk about it.

then why does this poor, sick bastard have to have his life "supervised" for the next 3 years?

A suspended sentence of dismissal would have been the RIGHT thing...

I was under the impression that an admission of "guilt" in a court of law meant the judge was required to give some sort of punishment. He broke a real law; a law most of us feel is incredibly stupid, but it is a law. That is why when I get a speeding ticket I don't contest it. If I get caught with pot, well, I guess I'll take that punishment too.

If he had dismissed the case, he would have been accused of being an "activist" judge. I'm just grateful these days for any baby steps in civil rights.

There are things such as suspended sentences and unsupervised probation. They have been given as punishment for things normally requiring prision time. Often these are given to rich prominent citizens who should know better than committ such crimes as running a business for 10 years and not turning in sales tax for the last four or holding public office and misusing your employees, like having them do things for you personally, like cleaning your house, when they are suppose to be working on public stuff. Yes, they do occaisionally give suspended sentences for drug crimes too.

Time to discuss the issues in a mature way, and seperate drug use from drug abuse.

...risk and broach the subject in either house of congress, besides Ron Paul. I'm having good luck on related issues with a politician here and have even got him discussing these issues on the radio. He is not a Democrat; they weren't interested.

before he suddenly died. What was his name? Gary something. And wasn't he a Rep?
Funny how so many groundbreakers have died mysteriously lately.

they all get whiplash in their haste to change direction.