An Outrageous Medical Pot Bust
I can't think of any other way than outrageous to describe this:
An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says. He then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain, attorney Douglas Hiatt said.
Steven W. Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court for a detention hearing Wednesday, Hiatt said. "This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason," Hiatt said.
It gets worse: The judge ordered him released to a hospital, but instead, he got sent to another jail:
Here's Tuck's background:
Tuck suffered debilitating injuries in the 1980s when his parachute failed to open during a jump, and those injuries were exacerbated by a car crash in 1990, Hiatt said. He said Tuck was using marijuana to treat his chronic pain. In 2001, while he was living in McKinleyville, Calif., his marijuana operation was raided for the second time. He fled to British Columbia to avoid prosecution but asylum was denied. Last Friday, he checked himself into a Vancouver hospital for prostate problems, and it was there that he was arrested.
A friend was there when he was arrested:
"I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan said. "They sent people in to arrest him while he was on a gurney. They took him out of the hospital in handcuffs, put him in an SUV, and drove him to the border."
Though Tuck has taken morphine - as prescribed by doctors - for about 16 years to help with his pain, he was given no painkiller or treatment at the jail other than ibuprofen, Hiatt said. Tuck appeared emaciated in court, and Hiatt said he had been sick from morphine withdrawal.
America. Prison Nation.
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