medical marijuana card holder commits suicide after police ‘witch hunt’ over pot ‘butter’

[UglyGreed]

former corrections officer took his own life over the weekend after being found guilty in a case involving marijuana-infused butter, his attorney said.

Attorney Matthew Newberg told MLive.com that 49-year-old Timothy Bernhardt’s life had come to a “tragic” end on Sunday.

Bernhardt and three other Kent County Sheriff’s Department corrections officers were charged earlier this year with making marijuana butter. Although three of the men had medical marijuana cards, Michigan law does not protect patients who use edibles.


Bernhardt, who spent 22 years in law enforcement, had pleaded guilty to reduced charges of maintaining a drug house, which carried up to two years in prison.

Defense attorneys had argued that the men were doing the best they could to follow the state’s poorly-written medical marijuana law.

Attorney Bruce Block, who represented one of the men, insisted to MLive.com in March that “this was medical use beginning and end.”



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/mich-medical-marijuana-card-holder-commits-suicide-after-police-witch-hunt-over-pot-butter/

[TeamPooka]

1. RIP

[JimDandy]

2. He plead guilty to maintaining a drug house.

The police will probably move to confiscate the house he was living in.

[silverweb]

3. K&R

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Cannabis ([font face="Arial"]prohibition[font face="Verdana"]) ruins lives and kills.

[drm604]

4. A medical marijuana law that doesn't allow edibles?

What sense does that make? There are probably people with conditions that make smoking inadvisable.

[UglyGreed]

5. In NY you

won't be allowed to smoke it......

[zonkers]

6. Yes, the witch hunt was reprehensible but damn, to kill yourself over it?! When you have a family

that loves you? Messed up behavior. Life goes on. You deal with it.

[UglyGreed]

7. Who knows

what was going on in his life. It could be depression on top of his pain, they do walk hand in hand. This could of been the straw that broke the camel's back. I won't judge him since that thought has crossed my own mind many times dealing with chronic head, neck and back pain.

[TheSarcastinator]

8. the arrogance and ignorance of your response really upsets me

But instead of calling you all sorts of names and pointing out that your position is absolutely one that is only possible to occur through a very real form of entitlement, I will say this:

I hope that you or a loved one is never confronted with a lifetime of hideously unbearable chronic pain and that pain never leads you to lose all hope for a happy, fulfilling life. I also truly hope that if that does occur and you seek to find relief in cannabis that your life is not absolutely ruined and your family, livelihood and possessions are not stolen away by the so-called "justice system".

[Warpy]

9. Some day you will get sick and you will suffer

and eventually that sickness will end your life.

I suppose that's what it will take to make you understand how chronic pain eats you up until there is nothing left.

Offering this guy such an incredibly insane plea bargain should be the criminal behavior here, not making an edible marijuana that's easier to take.