"Cannabis Couple: Martyrs Or Drug Dealers?" That's the title of today's front-page Sacramento Bee, 5/1/11 piece on Dale Schafer and Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry, who are scheduled to surrender Monday to serve their 5-year federal sentence. A quick internet search turned up this book, "Cool Madness, The Trial of Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer" by Vanessa Nelson. Speaking of books, I've heard there likely will be one or more on the Harrison Jack case as well as a PBS special on the Hmong community's extraordinary reaction to the case.
Americans for Safe Access are planning a Patients' Rights National Day of Action with rallies in Washington D.C. and at the Sacramento federal courthouse on Monday, 5/2, at noon. Here's the first few paragraphs from the Bee's story:
Dr. Marion P. "Mollie" Fry packs for federal prison in her red "Marijuana Medic" T-shirt.
She is an activist who wears her cause, who clutches a medical cross with a cannabis leaf, who points animatedly at her chest hollowed by radical breast cancer surgery. Her emotional account has stirred rallies demanding acceptance for the "medicine" that alleviated her suffering.
Now, in a widely followed saga, Fry, 54, and her husband, Dale Schafer, 56, are to surrender Monday to serve five years in federal prison for conspiring to produce and distribute marijuana.
They are headed to prison after spurning a plea deal that would have spared Fry any time behind bars and given her husband 1 1/2 years. They are losing their freedom, said federal Judge Frank Damrell, due to their own "self-aggrandizement" as "missionaries for marijuana" that left them feeling impervious to the law.
To California medical marijuana advocates, Fry and Schafer are martyrs for the cause. They portray the El Dorado County couple, a physician who recommended pot and an attorney who counseled patients on marijuana law, as compassionate servants who believed in the healing properties of cannabis.