Pubdate: Wed, 12 Dec 2001
Source: Star-Gazette
(NY)
Copyright: 2001sStar-Gazette
Contact: opinion@stargazette.comWebsite: http://www.stargazette.com/Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1005Author: Jim
Pfiffer, Star-GazetteWOMAN RUNNING MEDICAL
POT CLUB BUSTEDCops Raid Grandmother's Home;
Push Renewed For Legal Drug UseA 65-year-old Elmira grandmother
faces criminal charges after police raided
her apartment and confiscated
three pounds of pot she was planning to
distribute through her medical
marijuana buyers club.
Sherrie D. Wilkie, who suffers chronic pain from
arthritis and other
ailments, said she started the buyers club in 1998 and
began making regular
trips to New York City to buy pot for about a dozen
other Twin Tiers
residents who use marijuana as medicine.
But that
routine changed last week when Elmira police raided her apartment
and
confiscated nearly three pounds of high-grade marijuana and 40 grams
of
hashish, investigators said. The drugs were worth $10,000 to
$15,000,
investigators said.
Wilkie, who lives at Edward Flannery
Apartments, a high-rise complex for
senior citizens on the city's Southside,
now faces a felony charge of
second-degree criminal possession of marijuana.
If convicted, she could be
sentenced to seven years in prison.
Wilkie
said her health is failing and she is in constant pain because she
has no
marijuana to smoke.
"They took it all, every last bit of it," said
Wilkie, a retired secretary
who has been living on Social Security disability
since 1974.
She said she tried more conventional medications, but they
didn't relieve
the pain. Now, she said, she is in such intense pain that she
intends to
kill herself if she is prevented from smoking the illegal drug in
the
future. "I don't fear death as much as I fear the pain," Wilkie said
from
her home Tuesday.
Wilkie's case highlights the politically
sensitive issue of medical
marijuana use. Possession and sale of marijuana
remains illegal in New York
and Pennsylvania. But efforts to legalize the
drug for medical use have
increased nationwide. At least eight states --
Alaska, Arizona, California,
Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Nevada and Washington
-- allow the use of medical
marijuana.
Wilkie said she doesn't sell
the drug for profit, but reinvests the money
to buy more marijuana for club
members, some of whom have cancer, AIDS and
chronic back pain. She also uses
the money to cover the cost of her own
personal supply -- about one-half
ounce a week.
While she has no known criminal record, police said Wilkie
has broken the
law, and that's what brought them with a search warrant to her
apartment.
"She's violating the law and our job is the enforce the law,
especially in
a case like this, where we had numerous complaints about her,"
said Chemung
County Assistant District Attorney Charles Metcalfe.
The
police aren't at fault, it's the law that needs to be changed, said
Nicholas
Eyle, executive director of Reconsider, a Syracuse-based
nonprofit
organization working to educate the public about drug
laws.
"I understand the dilemma the police are in," Eyle said. "What
we're trying
to do is get (Wilkie) an attorney and focus some press attention
on her so
the public can better understand the issue, and we can show them
that these
laws need to be changed."
The drugs were packed in about 50
bags of various sizes, and were found all
over Wilkie's apartment, police
said. Wilkie said she labeled one bag "Oh
My God," referring to its high
potency.
"That was the highest quality pot I ever had," she said. "In New
York City,
they sell it to the Wall Street crowd -- the rich people from Long
Island
-- for $60 to $90 a gram."
Most commercial-grade marijuana
sells for $3 to $10 a gram, police said.
Wilkie said she needs the
high-quality pot for her pain. She takes 11
prescription medications for
coronary heart disease (she has a pacemaker),
high blood pressure, thyroid
gland problems, high cholesterol and scores of
allergies.
She said a
liver condition prevents doctors from prescribing pain killers
that work as
well as the marijuana. She said she tried prescribed morphine,
but it made
her sick.
The Star-Gazette published a story in May 1998 about Wilkie,
shortly after
she organized the medical marijuana club. She was given an
alias in the
story to protect her identity. At the time, local law
enforcement officials
said it was unlikely they would investigate the club,
unless someone
complained.
That's exactly what happened, Metcalfe
said. The first of several
complaints began in July when Wilkie lived alone
in a small apartment on
Hoffman Street, Metcalfe said.
She moved to
Flannery Apartments in November.
Police raided her apartment after a
confidential police informant bought
marijuana from Wilkie sometime during
the six-month investigation, Metcalfe
said.
Police knew exactly where
she kept her drugs -- in a blue Champion sports
bag in the living room of her
small, neatly kept apartment. The color of
the bag was spelled out in the
search warrant issued by Elmira City Court
Judge Thomas E. Ramich, who is
scheduled to arraign Wilkie on Thursday,
when she will be formally
charged.
In the meantime, friends and pro-marijuana groups are coming to
her aid,
trying to find an attorney to handle her case for free because she
has
little money.
Police confiscated nearly $1,000 in the raid. About
$200 of it was from the
$620 she gets each month from Social Security, Wilkie
said.
It's unlikely that Wilkie will be sent to the Chemung County Jail
because
of her medical conditions and because she poses no real threat to
anyone,
Metcalfe said. She'll probably be released on her own
recognizance.
"We didn't arrest her and put her in jail when we searched
her apartment
and confiscated the drugs, because, at the time, we didn't know
how much
marijuana she had," Metcalfe said. "They had to sort it all out
before
deciding what to charge her with."
Police also confiscated
several marijuana pipes, a bag of marijuana seeds
and stalks, and a set of
triple-beam scales that Wilkie said she used to
weigh the
drugs.
Wilkie hasn't been charged with sale of a controlled substance,
and
probably won't be, Metcalfe added.
Wilkie said she doesn't believe
what she is doing is wrong.
"Marijuana is a plant that God put on this
earth to help people," she said.
"It works best in its natural form. It's a
member of the herb family and
it's the only thing I've found that gets rid of
my pain. Unfortunately, the
government has made it illegal."