Panics, then & now

I'd like to start by saying what a pleasure and a privilege it is to have been alternating in this space for almost a full year with one of my favorite writers, Larry Gabriel, whose column last week was particularly informative and told me everything I wanted to know about what's been happening in Michigan since the shit hit the medical marijuana fan last month.

The August events that rattled the cannabis community certainly seem to have been designed to throw a massive scare into smokers and suppliers, leaving patients and their caregivers trembling in fear of arrest or serious disruption of their medicine delivery systems.

In a way, the latest panic took me back almost 45 years to January of 1967, when the Detroit Narcotics Department staged a mammoth invasion of the local bohemian community centered on the Detroit Artists Workshop and the neighborhood around Wayne State University. A total of 56 citizens were arrested in a "lightning campus dope raid" that cast a serious chill on the entire scene that was beginning to cohere around the Grande Ballroom and the burgeoning local rock 'n' roll movement that was showcased there every week.

The 56 arrestees in 1967 ended up being subjected to little in the way of legal prosecution. Most were released without drug charges of any kind, suffering only for their presence in one of the places where 11 felony warrants were being served on persons who had been identified by the narcotics police as users or possessors of small amounts of marijuana.

This writer appeared to be the central target of the operation. I was accused of having given two joints to an undercover policewoman at the Artists Workshop just before the previous Christmas. Since this gift came under the "distribution and sales of narcotics" section of the Michigan drug statutes, I was charged with Violation of State Narcotics Laws and, if convicted of this heinous crime, was subject to a sentence of a minimum mandatory 20 years with a possible maximum of life imprisonment.

More seriously, I had been a vocal opponent of the state narcotics laws and a proponent of marijuana legalization since founding Detroit LEMAR two years earlier and had suffered two previous convictions for possession. As a confirmed marijuana smoker looking forward to a lifetime of arrest after arrest under the existing law, I decided to dedicate myself to fighting back and, with the unswerving support of a fearless legal team headed by attorneys Sheldon Otis and Justin Ravitz, mounted a serious challenge to the constitutionality of the Michigan marijuana laws.

Marijuana was classified as a narcotic. We contended on a pre-trial basis that it was not a narcotic and had been defined as such without any scientific basis. The penalty for simple possession of marijuana in any amount was 1-10 years in prison, with a minimum sentence of 20 years to life for sales or distribution. We contended that such treatment constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Other legal issues were raised and, for the first time in Detroit Recorders Court history, a three-judge panel was appointed to evaluate our argument and decide whether the case should proceed to trial.

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