A letter from the husband of an american asylum seeker, who fled the US after being charged with drug-related crimes, and faces up to 10 years in prison if she returns.
March 26, 2002
To the Honorable Martin Cauchon,
Now that you have had time to settle into your new position as
Minister of Justice, and considering the current spate of media
attention and the usual misrepresentation that it entails, we feel
that now is a prudent time to contact you and explain our situation.
In 1997, my wife, Renee Boje, was hired by nine-time cancer survivor
Todd McCormick to illustrate a book being written on the production of
medicinal-grade cannabis. (Having spent some years in Amsterdam
legally growing and researching cannabis, Todd is a self-trained
expert in that field.) The project was being sponsored by best-selling
author Peter McWilliams, himself a sufferer of both cancer and AIDS,
who used marijuana to control the nausea caused by the many
medications he was required to take.
As part of the research for the book, Todd was producing a variety of
genetic strains, based upon the hypothesis that different arrangements
of the cannabinoids and other active ingredients of cannabis work
specifically on different ailments (i.e. one strain for nausea,
another for pain, etc.), research that has since been taken up by a
number of professional organizations. After the voters passed
Proposition 215 in California, a law which legalized medical marijuana
in that state, many people felt that the growing of medicinal
marijuana was totally legal, and no guidelines were included in the
legislation that specified the amount of plants allowed to be grown.
Unfortunately, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, a federal
agency, failed to acknowledge the voters’ choice in the state of
California, and Mr. McCormick’s research and production facility was
raided by federal authorities. Renee, who was present at McCormick’s
home and research facility when the raid took place, was
strip-searched, often in front of male officers, 15 times.
As a result of the charges being leveled on a federal level, instead
of a state level, neither Mr. McWilliams nor Mr. McCormick were
permitted to defend themselves based upon the state-permitted
medicinal use of marijuana. Todd McCormick was sentenced to a
five-year mandatory minimum sentence, which has caused both his health
and spirit to suffer irrevocably. Peter McWilliams was released on
bail based upon his mother putting her house on the line to do so.
Part of the bail requirement was that Mr. McWilliams not be permitted
to use marijuana, which he was taking in order to relieve the constant
nausea caused by the AIDS medication he was forced to take in order to
stay alive. Shortly after this, Peter McWilliams died of a heart
attack while vomiting, the direct result of being denied his
number-one antinausea medication, marijuana.
In their vindictive assault against McCormick and McWilliams, the DEA
attempted to bribe some of those involved in the case against
testifying against them by holding the threat of extreme jail
sentences over their heads. When it became apparent that Renee was
going to be threatened in this manner (in her case a mandatory minimum
of a 10-years-to-life sentence is what they were seeking), rather than
testify against these sick and dying individuals, she decided to flee
the country. In the United States murderers and rapists are let out of
prison in three to five years, but the Federal authorities want to
lock Renee up for a mandatory minimum of 10 years to life for
allegedly watering some plants!
Renee arrived in Canada in May 1998 and began the application for
refugee status in February 1999. Shortly after this period, Renee and
I met, although we were familiar with each other prior to this, as
before meeting, Renee had read my first book, Green Gold the Tree of
Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion. Through a close relationship
brought about by our involvement in the marijuana-law-reform movement,
the friendship Renee and I shared grew into love, and as often happens
when two people fall in love, some time later, despite precautions,
Renee found herself pregnant. Considering her situation, this left us
with the decision on how to deal with the possibility of a child that
we both deeply wanted.
Having been involved in the cannabis movement for over 12 years, and
knowing the issue inside and out (I started Patriotic Canadians for
Hemp in 1990 and Mama Indica’s, the first commercial hempseed food
company, in 1991; I’ve written two books on the subject of the history
of cannabis and numerous articles, and am media counsel for the B.C.
Marijuana Party, among other things), I felt that Renee, rather than
doing something wrong, had acted out of compassion and honor.
Indeed, at one point she even offered to turn herself into US
authorities if they agreed to drop the charges against Peter
McWilliams and let him resume the use of the medicinal cannabis that
was keeping him alive.
As it is, since applying for refugee status in 1999, Renee has been
required to check in with Canadian parole authorities weekly, a
penalty far exceeding that of what she would likely have been charged
with had her suggested crime taken place in B.C., if charges would be
laid here at all based upon the flimsy evidence against her.
Renee and I were and are deeply in love. With both the pregnancy and
the prospect of criminal persecution, we were faced with the most
terrible dilemma of our lives. I told Renee that too many people have
suffered over what happened already. Peter McWilliams was dead, and
Todd has suffered for years in prison, denied the medication that
eases his pain and placed in solitary confinement several times. We
know at the deepest level of our beings that Renee is not a criminal,
that her involvement with Todd and Peter was one based upon the
necessity of compassion. Thus, we made the decision that we would take
back our lives, that we would celebrate our love and create the family
that is the natural right of all people, just as the right to use a
natural plant is the right of all people.
On December 1st, 2001, Renee and I were married in a celebration
attended by over 300 prominent cannabis activists both from the US and
Canada, all who made a commitment to see us stay together. On the full
moon of February 28th, 2002, we received our son, Shiva Sun Bennett,
in a beautiful home birth. In that moment I decided more than ever
that our family is the most important thing in my life, and I am
irrevocably bound to keeping that family together. If, God forbid,
Renee were ever sent back to the United States, I would not be
permitted into the US, although I have no criminal record, because of
my involvement in the cannabis movement and based upon the example of
Ross Rebagliati. Due to Renee’s criminal record there, she would not
be allowed to visit her Canadian son and husband, cruelly and unjustly
separating mother and child, as well as husband and wife. I have seen
lives ruined, the sick and dying persecuted and worse through the
prohibition laws focused on marijuana. Every man has his line in the
sand. My line is a circle surrounding my wife and child. All who would
violate it do so, as the old saying goes, over my dead body.
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16.3, declares
that “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society
and is entitled to protection by society and the state.” I invoke this
right, and I beseech you as both a fellow Canadian and a compassionate
human being to defend that right.
As talk of legalization of cannabis spreads through the Commonwealth
and European countries, America continues to spend billions on funding
a war against its own people. With 5% of the world’s population and
25% of the world’s prisoners, the one-time Land of the Free has become
the leaders of the prison state, jailing a far higher percentage of
their population than any other country on earth, forcibly
drug-testing and incarcerating the very people whose freedoms they
were elected to represent.
Over half of those in US federal prisons are in on drug charges, and
one in five of those people are there on cannabis-related charges. In
a word, this is wrong. It is time for Canada to once again act as the
conscience of our neighbors to the south, as we did during the final
days of slavery, providing a sanctuary at the end of the Underground
Railroad; as we did in the final days of the Vietnam War, providing a
haven for its conscientious objectors. Once again it is time to tell
America, both firmly and with compassion, “what you are doing is
wrong.” To do so and to act thus, is a Canadian tradition and an
obligation to the world at large.
Please, as a loving husband and a new father, I beg of you to do the
right thing, despite seemingly overwhelming pressure from America, and
act from a place of compassion, and not as a politician reacting to
threats of trade sanctions, and allow my wife and the mother of my
child the refuge in Canada she so rightly deserves.
Respectfully, Chris Bennett
I really feel that this emphasises the idiocy of the War on Some Drugs perpetuated worldwide by the governments of many countries, not just the US. The sheer fallacy that some pain reducing (and therefore mind altering) drugs are “good”, and some mind-altering (and therefore pain-reducing) drugs are “evil” has been shoved down our throats time and time again so that the vast majority of the world believes it. It is about time that we realise that there is no freedom without self-ownership, and there is no self-ownership until we can control exactly what enters and leaves our bodies. It’s good to know that the UK deals with the drug problem so well, by diiging up some bullshit on the one police commander who actually thought to engage his brain and go beyond the over-simplistic good and evil arguements and getting him transferred to a desk job where he can’t do any “damage” to the public’s fragile sense of right and wrong, because after all, we can’t possibly have people thinking for themselves, that way lies anarchy. If they want Joe Public to accept everything he is told like a good litte prole, then they’ve got anopther thing coming. No system lasts forever, and sooner or later people will realise the shit we have been fed for the last 100 years, ever since drugs became unacceptable in the eyes of the elite.
I’m sorry if this seems rantish, but this is a lot of what I’ve had on my chest for a while and it feels good to get it off.