Heart Attack Ended Marilyn’s Life, but Bureaucracy Killed Her
Marilyn Holsten died of a heart attack in August. A nearly blind, diabetic, double amputee. Marilyn was another evicted medical marijuana patient. Marilyn used cannabis to control the pain. Her last year on Earth was a living hell after being evicted because of cannabis.
“I’m really scared”
“I don’t want to be out on the streets. I don’t have anywhere to go.” Holsten, a 49-year-old diabetic who is also losing sight in her right eye, has lived for eight years in a building run by the non-profit Anavets Senior Citizens’ Housing Society.
“I get these terrible ghost pains,” she said.
“Doctors say there’s nothing that’ll work for it, so the only thing they suggested was to try pot.”
When she started smoking pot — about a gram a day — she gave a note from her doctor to the society that runs the building on East 8th Ave.
She got her first eviction notice in April 2008.
In order to stay, she signed a document promising that she would light up outdoors only.
“I was exhausted. I didn’t have time to fight,” said Holsten.
Last month, she received her second eviction notice after management said the smell of marijuana from her suite was wafting into the public areas.
Holsten said she tries to smoke outside, but admits she smokes in her room when she wakes up in pain in the middle of the night.
She does her best to diffuse the smell, she said — keeping her window open, using a fan and sprays.
Holsten’s physician, Dr. Fraser Norrie, supports her pot use.
“I agree with this medical treatment,” he wrote in a letter to the housing society.
“I would ask you to accept her medical needs, including her need to smoke marijuana.”
But the doctor’s note wasn’t enough for building management.
“While your doctor supports your decision to use marijuana, he has not prescribed it for medicinal purposes,” society administrator Mary McLeod wrote in a letter to Holsten dated April 24.
“Marijuana use is still against the law and … [as] part of your tenancy agreement, you agreed you would not participate in illegal activities.”
Anavets refused an interview request.
- article by THE PROVINCE
photographs by Cannabis Culture Magazine
Jeremiah Vandermeer photographer
MS Medical Marijuana Patient Evicted in Colorado by HUD
…smoking marijuana has allowed him to cut out many prescription medications with bad side effects. He said he no longer uses tranquilizers, muscle relaxers, sleeping pills and a nerve drug. He still takes medications for his heart, bladder and stomach and a half dose of the painkiller methadone…
There is no data to say how widespread the problem is. HUD officials say they don’t track evictions or complaints tied to medical- marijuana use.
Medical-marijuana users and suppliers say it is common and becoming more so.
“It’s safe to say this is a growing problem. We’re going to encounter it more,” said Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado, a nonprofit resource for medical- marijuana users.
Hewitt said he knows three other disabled users in federally subsidized housing in the small town of Olathe who plan to move into his trailer park rather than fight HUD rules.
“It’s disgusting. Most disabled can’t afford a house, so they get assistance. These people should not be thrown in the street because they use a medication that alleviates pain,” Hewitt said.
He said he received an eviction notice this spring, a day after HUD inspectors looked over his rental house and told him everything was satisfactory. He said he gave them a copy of his medical-marijuana card months before that.
Hewitt is fearing the winter in his little trailer. He said
the owner has told him that it will be like an icebox.
And he has to make his way about 50 yards across a lot
to use a rest room in a former gas station.
Barbara Allison Photographer
The Niles man who’s growing marijuana in his federally subsidized home under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act is once again facing eviction…
That date turned out to be Tuesday. Bell said Wednesday he has refiled in Berrien County Trial Court the commission’s motion to evict Allain, calling the new action “a belt-and-suspenders way to deal with some of the procedural defenses Steve (Allain) raised.’’
…heart of the matter: Whether state or federal law takes precedence.
“That’s the issue we need the court to decide,’’ he said.
Bell said Allain, as he did with the initial eviction motion, would still be able to receive a jury trial…
Allain and his teenage son reside in one of Niles’ 50 scattered public-housing sites, which are subject to rules and regulations set down by the U. S. Department Of Housing and Urban Development. Bush said earlier she sympathized with Allain, who has stated he suffers from Crohn’s disease, hepatitis C and acute depression, but a check with HUD revealed it has a “zero tolerance’’ policy regarding marijuana.
- This post assembled by Muggles
A perfect storm of relaxed federal intervention, intriguing new science and the failure of pharmaceutical narcotics for treating chronic illness has citizens clambering for legal access to medical Cannabis (marijuana) and several state legislatures scrambling for solutions to an issue many politicians don’t adequately understand.
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Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
With today’s 
The confusion about plants and drugs seems rampant these days. Like Digitalis from the plant Foxglove, THC is derived from Cannabis. Our government warns us about the 
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America is relearning a hard lesson these days – one that Al Capone, Sir Issac Newton and Lao Tzu could easily understand – that applied force triggers an equal and opposite reaction. Our modern prohibition – the “War on Drugs” – has plenty of unintended consequences and threatens to plunge our nation into a nightmare far eclipsing the short lived alcohol prohibition fiasco of the last century.
so marijuana is included to bolster the ranks of offenders. To further frighten the public, substance abuse statistics always include the ravages of alcohol and pharmaceuticals, skewing perceptions of the true effects of illegal drugs on society. For excellent analysis of this deception, check out 
“The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”
U.S. Attorney General
Cliff village, a small community just outside of Joplin, Missouri, has garnered a lot of attention lately for a largely symbolic town ordinance that permits patients to possess and grow small amounts of Cannabis with doctor approval.
“The makers of the constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life are found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be left alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized man.” – Justice Louis Brandeis
I remember it well – in 1998 the United Nations General Assembly declared a ten year plan of action, “A Drug Free World – We Can Do it!”, with the goal of eradication of all drug crops, from Coca to Cannabis. A blasphemy against Nature and laughable even to a novice drug policy reform advocate, the declaration underscored the disconnect between government and reality on the issue of drug use amongst humanity.
But the UN heard the new voices for change and so has the world, even prompting the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to admit the failures and unintended consequences of our modern prohibition - even praising harm reduction to the media. Several NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) presenting reform agendas in Vienna educated the UN delegates with sometimes novel methods. In this video produced by the 
