North Carolina

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Marijuana legislation debate held in Pugh

By Maya Yette
Staff writer
The Old Gold & Black
October 12, 2006



The Student Union hosted “The Great Debate: Heads vs. Feds” on Oct. 11 in Pugh Auditorium, to explore the various facets of the enduring American debate about the merits of marijuana’s legalization.

The debate featured experts Steven Hager, former editor of High Times magazine, and creator of the Cannabis Cup and the Counterculture Hall of Fame against Robert M. Stutman, a 25-year veteran in the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration who has launched approximately 5,000 investigations leading to more than 15, 000 drug arrests.

Hager began by explaining the reasons he supports the legalization of marijuana. The first reason was the medicinal benefits. “We have a healthcare system in this country that is broken in my opinion, because the cost has been skyrocketing and the two major beneficiaries are pharmacies and insurance companies,” said Hager. “They don’t have a problem with you getting high; they have all kinds of mind altering chemicals which they hand out like M&Ms”

Opposing Hager’s position that pharmaceutical companies do not want to produce natural drugs, Stutman said, “Over the past fifty years the single largest producer of revenue for pharmaceuticals is penicillin, a natural product …. aspirin is a natural extract of a plant.” Additionally, Stutman said, “... any doctor who tells you to smoke something because it’s good for you is a fool.”

“Pharmaceutical companies don’t like marijuana because I’m handing you and future generations free medicine...there are more diseases and disorders for which this is a useful substance than any other substance under the sun,” said Hager.

The second reason Hager uses to support marijuana use is its benefits to the environment. However, “Just because God made it doesn’t make it good for everybody,” said Stutman.

He also believes that based on marijuana use, the United States has built the largest prison system in the world. “We don’t have forfeiture or mandatory minimum sentences for armed robbers and rapists but we have it for people that grow marijuana,” said Hager. “Having the highest population of your society in jail is not the hallmark of free society.”

Additionally, by making marijuana illegal, Hager believes the United States is funding corruption. Lastly, Hager’s personal beliefs play a part in why he wants marijuana legalized. Hager said, he and others of his religious following, “Believe marijuana is the true sacrament of our world.”

Stutman said, “I don’t think marijuana should be legalized because if we legalize it we will have far more users.” He explains the negatives he sees to legalizing marijuana. First, the number of auto and workplace accidents would increase, marijuana causes dependency for some, in adolescents it interferes with their ability to think and reason.

“I just think it’s a very pertinent issue for our times, given the movement that was mentioned in 11 states where medical marijuana has been passed, it just seems like an issue whose time has come and especially as a law student it interests me to hear the policy arguments between people who stand on really discrete side s of the issue,” said law student Scott Montgomery.

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It’s time to declare defeat in the war on drugs

by Scott MacKay
The Asheville Citizen-Times
published January 25, 2007 12:15 am

Public opinion, as expressed in the AC-T letters of Jan. 17, lauds the effort of Councilman Carl Mumpower to lead the fight against drug crime in our public housing. I commend him for his commitment to good order among the poor we aid.

The Herculean task of cleansing certain neighborhoods of illicit drugs, as honorable as it is, is as shortsighted as the failed “war on drugs.” For a better discussion of the issue, I refer the reader to an op-ed article by Orlando Patterson in the Jan. 13 New York Times. The special efforts to squelch this crime began in 1971, apparently as part of Richard Nixon’s personal vendetta against pot-crazed communists, hippies and peaceniks, all unsavory characters. (I know this to be true from experience. I was one of those about whom parents warned their daughters.) The results of this forgotten war have been anything but what was intended, and makes one wonder why it is not terminated.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has created an artificial shortage of product, without affecting demand. Risk is not inherent to the industry, and has been introduced by the government in a way that only the most ruthless entrepreneurs will enter the market. Narco-managers reduce risk further and increase efficiency by usurping the government’s monopoly of violence.

Eradication as a means of restricting supply means the waging of chemical warfare on peasants of Latin America. We spray the coca crop, and any crop and person in the way, with herbicides.

Markets for cocaine were developed by dramatizing the exploits of drug agents and smugglers, making the enterprise appear exciting and romantic, with such entertainments as “Miami Vice.” When demand and supply reached equilibrium and growth stalled, new forms were introduced. Crack sells for less per dose, but economies of scale mean greater total revenue. I don’t believe manufacturers knew that the delivery mechanism, smoking, was more efficient than snorting.

This was a bonus, making the longevity of the high shorter, the drug more addictive, and more of it sold. It has all the makings of perfect capitalism: Make it for a dime, sell it for a dollar, and it’s habit-forming.

Where local supply is unreliable, and there’s an upward pressure on price, the market has become differentiated. For each of the major illicit drugs, there is at least one designer drug substitute. Some of these are more dangerous in the production process, in their effects on the body, and some are more addictive. There is also a thriving black market in stolen pharmaceuticals.

The law draws a border between legitimate society (white, middle class, middle-aged men) and the society and culture of drugs. Beyond that border there are no controls.

A street dealer is not going to complain to the cops that he has been ripped off. Nor is a cop going to run to his aid as he might to a storeowner. Once one is willing to enter this underworld, one is also willing to abandon normal inhibitions. Morality becomes a remote memory. I agree with the conservative analysis of William F. Buckley on the subject of de-criminalization of cocaine: The result would be a supply far exceeding demand, and prices would fall far below profitability. Each of these drugs originates in vegetable form, and have uses with little refinement. Coca leaf is a good stimulant, better than caffeine.

There is considerable need for opiate anesthetics in the Third World.

Marijuana, now the most profitable crop in the country, has good enough medical uses that Canada approved a drug for treatment of multiple sclerosis distilled from cannabis sativa. Decriminalization and controlled production can enhance the incomes of peasant farmers in Latin America and Afghanistan.

There are distinct advantages to declaring defeat in the war on drugs. The nation would cease the billions of dollars of expenses incurred by the DEA. The cost of prisons would be cut about in half, because we would stop prosecuting and incarcerating young men for drug crimes and drug-related crimes committed against the vulnerable poor. We will have adequate funds for prevention, education and treatment.

Carl Mumpower could go home to bed.

There are severe impediments to decriminalization of these drugs. Each drug provides instantly and artificially something that is lacking in the life of the user. Inasmuch as they mimic natural processes, then there is a drug-free means to achieve this. Drugs offer the user a false sense of empowerment, of well-being, of invulnerability. The natural option, then, is to organize politically. Self-empowerment, economic cooperation and community protection will produce authentic and clean neighborhoods. Go ask the Black Panthers, those still alive, what they know about this.

A native of Ann Arbor, Mich., Scott MacKay served his country as a conscientious objector in the 1960s. He has a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and retired from a career as a substance abuse counselor, the last 10 years with the N.C. Criminal Justice System. He lives in Asheville.

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Marlowe says marijuana charges will be fought

by Leah Justice, Tryon Daily Bulletin
November 20th, 2007


Medical marijuana advocate Jean Marlowe says recent marijuana charges against Steve Marlowe will be fought and the fight will cost the taxpayers of this county thousands of dollars.

Jean Marlowe wrote a letter to the editor (see pg. 8 ) saying that she is one of the patients for whom Steve Marlowe grows marijuana. She questions the informant that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office used to execute warrants and says the county faces potential lawsuits in the case for unnecessary destruction of one property and abuse to another individual, who was hit with a gun, knocked out and had to spend the night in the hospital.

Last Tuesday night, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office executed search warrants at the home of Steve Marlowe on Coopers Trace Road in Sunny View, where officers seized about 60 marijuana plants being grown there, according to sheriff’s office reports. Steve Marlowe was charged with maintaining a vehicle/dwelling/place for a controlled substance, manufacturing marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

He appeared in Polk County District Court last Wednesday; the case was continued until Dec. 12.

Although only Steve Marlowe was charged last Tuesday, Jean Marlowe says her advocacy for the use of medical marijuana has resulted in her being arrested and prosecuted in the past. She uses marijuana medicinally because she was born with a defective liver, which makes her allergic to any type pain reliever. Several of her cases in the past (in 1996 and 1998) have been dismissed by the district attorney or reduced to a misdemeanor. Her most recent case in Bryson City in May was also dismissed.

She says 14 states have now passed laws to protect patients and when this case is over she will work for N.C. Legislation to protect patients and their caregivers from prosecution. She says Congress has passed the “Right To Be Pain Free Act,” which provides some protection on a constitutional level.

In her letter, Jean Marlowe questions the tactics used to execute the warrants against Steve and says the sheriff’s office did not find large amounts of marijuana and cash as the informant had advised.

But sheriff’s officers say there were 60 plants with special lights and that the growing operation was one of the biggest and most professional they’d seen.

Polk County Sheriff Chris Abril says the informant was local and his office was simply trying to do its job and enforce the law.

“(Marijuana) is still illegal in North Carolina,” Sheriff Abril said. “All we are doing is trying to do our jobs and enforce the law.”

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CITIZEN-TIMES.com

Marijuana grower: ‘I wanted to help’


<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=300 src=bin/aiken_tod.jpg alt="Tod Odell Aiken Sr. stands outside his home in Columbus, NC Thursday evening. Aiken is out on bail after being arrested for growing large amounts of marijuana which he says he grew for medicinal purposes."></td></tr></table>Andre A. Rodriguez
December 20, 2007 12:15 am


A man accused of running Henderson County’s largest and most sophisticated marijuana growing operation says he did it out of compassion.

Tod Aiken, of Columbus, said Wednesday the marijuana that led to his arrest was being sold for medicinal purposes.

“There’s a lot of people out there that need medical marijuana,” Aiken said. “I’m a man of compassion. I wanted to help these people.”

Aiken said he began growing marijuana in 2000 to help counteract the effects of hepatitis C treatments.

Henderson County Sheriff Rick Davis said Tuesday that deputies on Dec. 10 found 220 marijuana plants and equipment worth up to $20,000 inside a mobile home Aiken owned in the Jeter Mountain community.

Aiken and his wife, Sharon, were arrested Dec. 11 at their Columbus home.

Growing marijuana is still against the law, whatever Aiken’s reasons, Davis said.

“The ultimate answer here is to look to the law and the law clearly says that to manufacture it is a violation,” Davis said. “The charges are very appropriate.”

Aiken, 50, is charged with maintaining a drug house and manufacturing marijuana. His wife is charged with two counts of trafficking in marijuana and one count of conspiracy to sell and deliver the drug.

Aiken is scheduled to be in court Jan. 4. He said the medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access has come to his defense and is providing him support.

Aiken said he wants to be a medical marijuana advocate.

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Published Thursday, December 20, 2007

Aiken: But why should I not be allowed to grow a plant?

By John Harbin
Times-News Staff Writer


When Todd Aiken was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2000, he decided to begin growing marijuana to help him face his grueling treatment, he said.

It was no garden variety pot growing operation.

Aiken, 50, and his wife, Sharon, 35, were arrested last week after Henderson County Sheriff's deputies discovered 146 marijuana plants in a mobile home on Jeter Mountain in the Crab Creek community.

Officers found several modifications to the home "specific to creating an environment conducive to growing marijuana" after getting a search warrant for the trailer at 428 Overton Hills Drive.

Aiken said that he used to live at the Overton Hills Drive address but moved to Columbus about three years ago.

"I found out I was sick in 2000," Aiken said. "Finding out I had hepatitis C devastated me. I didn't even know what it was. I did some research online and discovered that it involved very intensive treatments. I sought out people who had done the treatments and discovered many used medicinal marijuana."

Aiken said after doing some more research, he discovered he could grow his own marijuana.

"I furnished myself with the marijuana and I furnished a friend of mine who was suffering from stomach cancer," he said. "It's like this, to me marijuana is not wrong. I did this knowing the government says it's wrong, but why should I not be allowed to grow a plant?"

<span class=postbigbold>Sheriff:'Charges are appropriate' </span>

Henderson County Sheriff Rick Davis said there are no provisions in the law at the state level for medical marijuana.

"Claiming it is medical marijuana is not a defense," Davis said. "There are other issues too. The sheer volume being manufactured there would preclude the fact that this operation was for one person. Also, why was this grow done in a covert fashion. It's clearly against the law to manufacture marijuana and the charges are appropriate."

Officers seized 146 marijuana plants with extensive root structures, 70 marijuana plants that were recently harvested and about $15,000 to $20,000 worth of growing materials.

When Aiken was asked why he needed 146 plants, he said that was because the plants were in different stages of growth.

"If I were in this for greed I could have made a great deal of money," Aiken said. "I was not in this for profit. Yes, there was money involved. Call it sales or contributions, but yes people did invest money back into the grow."

<span class=postbigbold>Getting through</span>

Aiken said he grew the marijuana in the mobile home in Henderson County to keep it separate from his family.

"I know he needed it," said his wife, Sharon. "My husband was fading away, and if it wasn't for the medical marijuana, he would not be here today."

Aiken and his wife have received help from a local chapter of the Americans for Safe Access, which promotes safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research.

"Jean Marlowe has started a chapter of Americans for Safe Access and she has been able to point us in the best direction we can go," he said.

Marlowe said she began a Western North Carolina chapter of Americans for Safe Access in Mill Spring on Nov. 30.

"I have put Mr. Aiken in touch with legal counsel for the ASA who can help him," she said. "They will be able to provide him with expert witnesses and those who receive medical marijuana from the federal government."

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Published: Jan 05, 2008 12:30 AM Modified: Jan 05, 2008 03:48 PM

<table class=posttable align=right width=268><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/thornton_stephen-home.jpg alt="Law enforcement officials gather outside the home on Alpine Drive in North Raleigh where a man was fatally shot."></td></tr></table>
Pot found in home where fugitive was fatally shot

<span class=postbigbold>Investigators say man was growing it</span>

Lorenzo Perez, Thomasi McDonald and Mandy Locke, Staff Writers

RALEIGH - Wake County investigators continued to search a North Raleigh home for drugs Saturday after a raid left a sheriff's deputy shot and a federal fugitive dead.

Investigators have found more than two dozen marijuana plants inside the Alpine Drive rental home, said Wake Alcohol Beverage Control law enforcement chief Lew Nuckles. An informant had told Nuckles' department that the man inside might be growing marijuana.

Stephen Scott Thornton, 45, of 5401 Alpine Drive was shot during an exchange of gunfire after officers forced their way into the home while attempting to search it, Sheriff Donnie Harrison said Friday night.

Investigators said Thornton, who was wanted in Texas and described as "armed and dangerous," was going by the alias Scott Monaco; they did not know how long he had been living at the home. He died at WakeMed Raleigh Campus.

<table class=posttable align=right width=128><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/byrd_ronnie.jpg alt="Sgt. Ronnie Byrd was treated and released."></td></tr></table>A deputy shot in the leg during the incident, Sgt. Ronnie Byrd, 37, of the sheriff's Special Response Team, was treated and released from the hospital. Harrison said it's not clear who shot whom. The State Bureau of Investigation worked Saturday to figure out what happened in the shootout.

Byrd and the sheriff's office were helping Wake ABC investigators during the raid. Nuckles said his office received a tip about two months ago from someone who thought marijuana was being grown inside the home. Nuckles said his officers got a warrant for a search after a two-month investigation. Neighbors said the owner, Diane B. Reeve of Florida, has been renting it to different tenants in recent years.

The drug raid came to a halt as SBI agents searched the home for evidence related to the shooting.

The late-morning shootings puzzled some residents in the neighborhood, with its spacious split-level homes and expansive lawns. Carmen Perry was taking down Christmas decorations when she heard the gunshots.

"I'm surprised, then again I'm not," said Perry, 56. "You just don't know what happens behind closed doors."

Perry said that before 9:15 a.m. she saw an unmarked white van creeping down the street. She noticed the van, which turned out to be part of the raid, because it was moving so slowly.

"I heard, 'Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop,' " Perry said. "We saw them taking two people out. They both went out on stretchers."

Perry, her husband, Leon, and several other neighbors contacted Friday said they had few dealings with Thornton. Several said they were surprised to learn that anyone was living in the house, which they had assumed was vacant because of the overgrown yard and lack of traffic in and out of the home.

The Perrys met Thornton at a neighborhood Christmas party in 2006 but did not recall seeing him the past two or three months. Thornton did not appear to own a car, but they used to see him pedaling down the street occasionally on a bike.

"He didn't strike me as a drug dealer or a drug user," said Leon Perry said. "He stayed pretty much to himself."

Richard Walden, 71, and his wife have lived two houses down from 5401 Alpine Drive since Memorial Day weekend 1969. Walden realized his cable Internet was out Friday morning when he noticed several Time Warner cable vans -- different from the white vans that Carmen Perry saw -- going down the street. So Walden stepped out to try to catch the Time Warner trucks when he saw people waving him back.

"Then I heard someone screaming, 'Get away from me! Get off my property!' " Walden said. "The next thing I heard was a banging sound, like an aluminum ladder leaned up against a home." Walden now assumes those were gunshots.

Three Time Warner technicians in the cable company's trucks were doing routine maintenance work along the street when the raid took place. The Time Warner vans or its technicians were not part of the law enforcement's cover for the raid, said Brad Phillips, Time Warner's vice president for government and public affairs.

"They just happened to be at the wrong place when it all came down," Phillips said.

The State Bureau of Investigation is handling the probe of the shootings and searched the home Friday for related evidence. Thornton was scheduled to be taken to the state Medical Examiner's office in Chapel Hill for an autopsy.

Harrison said Friday afternoon that the drug raid was not yet completed.

"After the SBI finishes working the shooting, they'll turn it over to Wake County ABC law enforcement, and they'll look for the drug stuff," Harrison said.

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Fugitive was medical marijuana user

<span class=postbigbold>A man who was fatally shot in a North Raleigh raid claimed to be a cancer survivor who grew pot to help others manage pain</span>

The News & Observer
Janury 6, 2008
Mandy Locke, Staff Writer

<table class=posttable align=right width=128><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/thornton_stephen.jpg alt="Thornton fled Texas before he could be sentenced."></td></tr></table>RALEIGH - Stephen Scott Thornton vanished months before a judge was expected to send him to federal prison for growing dozens of marijuana plants in his suburban Texas home.

Unsuspecting Wake County officers stumbled upon Thornton's hiding place Friday during a drug raid that left the 45-year-old federal fugitive dead. A sheriff's deputy took a bullet in the leg; he was recuperating at home Saturday.

A tip led Wake County Alcoholic Beverage Control investigators to Thornton's North Raleigh home looking for marijuana plants, said Wake ABC Chief Lew Nuckles. Investigators thought the mysterious man who rented the home at 5401 Alpine Drive was a kingpin of some moderate-level pot manufacturing ring. On Saturday, they found more than two dozen plants inside, Nuckles said.

Investigators didn't know their raid would surprise a wanted man. They knew next to nothing about him. No job, no friends, no family. They'd been told he went by the name "Scott Monaco," but Nuckles couldn't trace that to any documents like a driver's license, property records or tax information.

"I was suspicious," Nuckles said of the two months of surveillance he and other officers performed on Alpine Drive. "It's like his house was shut up or something, completely different than any other house in the neighborhood. We hardly ever saw anyone coming or going."

Federal court records and an on-line testimonial thought to be written by Thornton help explain the stranger who found refuge in Raleigh, in a quiet, friendly neighborhood filled with middle-class families.

By Thornton's telling, he was a cancer survivor who turned to marijuana to ease his crippling chronic pain. In an essay posted on a Web site "Texans for Medical Marijuana," a grassroots organization that lobbied for legalizing the drug for pain management, Thornton described his motivations for growing pot and his mounting legal woes.

"I have provided marijuana for other cancer patients over the years and have literally saved the lives of many people," Thornton said. He went on to complain about his imminent prison term and how it might undermine his battle with cancer.

<span class=postbigbold>Caught in the act</span>

Thornton's brush with federal drug agents began by accident in suburban Dallas in May 2005. Officers in the town of Wylie had rushed to Thornton's quiet cul-de-sac to look for a gun that his next door neighbor said Thornton had cocked in her direction, according to the neighbor and a release from the Wylie Police Department in 2005.

The neighbor, Jennifer Wynne, said Thornton had become agitated that day by her barking dogs. Wynne said by phone Saturday that Thornton began throwing eggs and blocks of wood at her dogs. When her stepfather confronted him, he opened his door, flashed a handgun and cocked it in their direction.

Wynne said neighbors had always found Thornton a bit odd; he was a single, middle-aged man who had built a house in a subdivision full of young families. He collected antique cars, and neighbors rarely saw him except when he came outside to wash and wax them, Wynne said.

Thornton's sudden eruption that evening in 2005 caught them all off guard. So did the drug operation police found growing inside, Wynne said.

Police seized enough marijuana plants to fill four full-size trucks, she said. Court filings show Thornton had 42 plants. Investigators also took more than 4 kilograms of dried and cut pot which Thornton later admitted in a plea deal that he meant to distribute, court documents show.

Investigators also confiscated a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, according to court documents.

Federal agents eventually took over the case from local police. In August 2005, Thornton pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm and possessing marijuana and marijuana plants with the intent to distribute.

A judge agreed to let Thornton live under house arrest while he awaited sentencing on the charges, court documents show. An electronic monitoring bracelet was to keep tabs on him. Thornton was to stay at home, except for biweekly volunteer sessions with a local hospice organization, court documents show.

Thornton faced a sentence of as long as 15 years, though he could have been spared with probation. Agents asked him to inform on the people whom he supplied, Thornton said in his online essay. He refused. Thornton said in his essay he expected to serve between two to three years in federal prison.

Before that could happen, Thornton vanished. He left his home the evening of Dec. 10, 2005, and never came back. Probation officers hunted for him with no luck, according to court records.

Federal officials issued a warrant for his arrest and waited.

Wake County Sheriff's deputies came across it Friday, a spokeswoman said, when they plugged Thornton's fingerprints into a national criminal database.

<hr class=postrule>
<center><small>(News researcher Lamara Williams contributed to this report.)

mandy.locke@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8927
News researcher Lamara Williams contributed to this report.</small></center>

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Officers: Pot grew in fugitive's home

<span class=postbigbold>A warrant says a Texas man who was shot to death had 43 plants, lights and soil additive</span>

The News & Observer
Thomasi McDonald, Staff Writer
January 8, 2008


RALEIGH - A federal fugitive who was shot and killed during a drug raid last week had a full-scale marijuana-growing operation in his North Raleigh home, according to a search warrant made public Monday.
Stephen Scott Thornton, 45, of 5401 Alpine Drive died Friday afternoon at WakeMed's Raleigh Campus from wounds received in an exchange of gunfire with sheriff's deputies and county ABC officers who forced their way into his home in a drug raid that morning.

A sheriff's deputy, Sgt. Ronnie Byrd, 37, also was shot in the leg during the raid. He was treated at WakeMed and released. He is recovering at home.

Wake County sheriff's deputies and officers with Wake County Alcoholic Beverage Control obtained the search warrant following a tip from a confidential source and a search of the slain man's garbage, where they found marijuana and marijuana stems. The officers also found a light timer in the garbage that is commonly used with indoor marijuana-growing operations, according to the search warrant.

After the raid Friday, county investigators halted the drug investigation while State Bureau of Investigation agents searched the home for evidence related to the shooting. Authorities learned that Thornton had come to Raleigh after fleeing from his suburban home in Texas, months before a judge was expected to send him to federal prison for growing dozens of marijuana plants in that residence.

When authorities resumed their search of the Raleigh residence, they found marijuana, materials to assist in the growing of the plant and related literature. Among the items seized were 43 marijuana plants in various stages of growth, four plastic bags of what appeared to be marijuana, soil additives, grow lights, plant-growing chemicals, a VHS tape entitled "Frontline: War on Marijuana" and another entitled "Pot of Gold." Officers also seized books and magazines on growing marijuana and books described as anti-government, according to the warrant.

On a Web site, "Texans for Medical Marijuana," a grass-roots organization that lobbied for legalizing the drug for pain management, Thornton wrote that he was a cancer survivor who turned to marijuana to ease his crippling chronic pain.


thomasi.mcdonald@newsobserver.com or 829-4533

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Texans mourn fugitive

<span class=postbigbold>Advocates for medical marijuana use see him as a victim of the government's policy</span>

The News Observer
January, 9, 2008
Thomasi McDonald, Staff Writer


Medical marijuana advocates in Texas lament the fate of a cancer patient turned federal fugitive who was shot and killed during a drug raid last week at his North Raleigh home.

Stephen Scott Thornton, 45, of 5401 Alpine Drive died Friday afternoon from wounds received as sheriff's deputies and Wake County Alcohol Beverage Control officers forced their way into his home that morning to search for evidence of marijuana plants.

On the Web site of Texans for Medical Marijuana, a grass-roots organization that lobbied for legalizing the drug for pain management, Thornton in 2006 described himself as a thyroid cancer survivor who used marijuana to control chronic pain, eliminate nausea and gain weight.

A Wake County sheriff's deputy, Sgt. Ronnie Byrd, was shot in the leg during the raid. Byrd was treated at WakeMed and released.

The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident, standard procedure when a law officer shoots someone. No ABC officer or Wake deputy has been placed on administrative leave as a result of the shootings. ABC Chief Lew Nuckles declined to comment Tuesday.

"It's being investigated by the SBI, and we don't want to hinder their investigation," Nuckles said.

When sheriff's deputies and ABC officers entered Thornton's home, they found evidence of a full-scale marijuana-growing operation, including 43 marijuana plants in various stages of growth, soil additives, lights and plant-growing chemicals, according to a search warrant made public Monday.

Thornton was wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service. He fled Texas in late 2005, before he was to be sentenced by a federal judge for possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance and for distributing marijuana and marijuana plants.

Texans for Medical Marijuana disbanded in May after two bills the group supported to legalize the medical use of marijuana stalled in the state legislature. Its former executive director, Noelle Davis, did not know Thornton but said that he was likely living with a lot of shame because he had to use an illegal substance for relief from his illness and that his fear of prison was probably compounded by the prospect of receiving inadequate medical treatment.

"It could have been a death sentence for him," said Davis, who now works as a consultant for the Marijuana Policy Project, the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States.

A Republican activist and medical marijuana advocate, Ann Lee of Houston, called Thornton a casualty of a failed war on drugs.

"They took a life because of it," said Lee, whose paraplegic son is a medical marijuana user. "Why have they spent $30 billion and not achieved a single goal?"

Davis said Texans for Medical Marijuana did not endorse the distribution of marijuana, but the organization did acknowledge the practice.

"We have to understand why people go to those extremes," she said. "When your quality of life is on the line, you are going to take a risk."


thomasi.mcdonald@newsobserver.com or (919)829-4533

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Committee Debates Bill To Legalize Medical Marijuana

NBC 17 | 19 Jun 2009
RALEIGH, N.C. -

It was standing room only for a crowd listening to a debate on whether marijuana should be legalized in North Carolina for medicinal purposes.

"Marijuana has less side effects than other drugs that citizens throughout this country use regularly," the bill's sponsor, Representative Earl Jones, said.

House Bill 1380 would legalize marijuana in the state of North Carolina for people who use it for medicinal purposes.

The drug would remain in a smoking form and be provided by the federal government, Jones said.

He estimates revenues for the state would total more than $60 million annually.

(Click the second picture above to hear the author of the bill talk about medical marijuana)

Update: Thirteen states already have laws on the books legalizing the use of medicinal marijuana.

Under the bill, in North Carolina growers and distributors of marijuana would both be taxed.

There are also restrictions that come with the bill.

Users can't operate machinery while under the influence.

There would be no smoking allowed in a public place or anywhere else smoking is prohibited.

The bill also does not require an insurance company to cover the drug.

Supporters know the bill faces an uphill battle.

"(Marijuana) has got a huge (public relations) problem," Ben Scales, the author of the bill, said. "People who are open about their marijuana use are usually tie dyed hippies."

The bill provides for the drug to be legally smoked as long as there is a doctor's order, but advocates will have to convince concerned citizens the drug will remain in the right hands.

"Marijuana has great benefits in alleviating pain and what have you," said citizen John Lamazon. "The problem is them being able to control it."

Unless lawmakers can be convinced the law is necessary, medical patients may not be able to light up.

Representative jones hopes the health committee will vote on the bill next week.

Even if it passes the bill will have to go through two more committees before the full house will vote on it.