No liberty, no life:

Sullivan:

A woman kills herself to stop the pain of an illness she tried to alleviate with marijuana:

She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.

The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.

At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.

That DEA statement should go down in history as an emblem of the anti-federalist agenda of today's conservatives. It's up there with protecting people from the alleviation of their own pain. Prosser couldn't get the medicine she needed, except from unreliable and sometimes dangerous sources. Unable to cope with the pain of her illness, she took her own life.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July.

That's the American spirit. The government deprived her of liberty and so she chose death.

More from the article:

“I feel immensely let down,” Prosser would write a few months later, in a guest opinion for the Billings Gazette published July 28. “I have no safety, no protection, no help just to survive in a little less pain. I can't even get a job due to my medical marijuana use - can't pass a drug test.”   [...]

In her guest opinion, Prosser wrote that: “I'm 50 years old, low-income and sick. I spend most days in my apartment in bed, with no air conditioning, unable to go outside because I can't tolerate the sun.”   [...]

Before being disabled by her disease, Prosser was a concert pianist and a systems analyst. After the disease hit her, she became a tireless advocate for legalized use of marijuana in medical situations.

Over at Balloon Juice, John Cole is really mad in reaction to this story (and there is a huge comment thread).

Go fuck yourself. To death.

I am tired of being patient with you nannies and your stupid self-serving rules and your slippery slopes and your bullshit and your need to be tough on crime and your earnest concerns about society. Mind your own business, get your own house in order, stop fucking interns and little boys and cheating on your wives and on your taxes and being found dead wearing two wetsuits with a dildo shoved up your ass. Just mind your own damned business, and let people do what they must to deal with their own screwed up lives, and let people handle their pain the best way they can.

I am sick of the bullshit. Life is hard for most people out there, and damned near impossible for people in chronic pain. Quit making it worse, you allegedly compassionate sons-of-bitches.

posted by Quiddity at 10/29/2007 09:10:00 PM