STEVE KUBBY ARRESTED, SENT TO PLACER COUNTY JAIL

STEVE KUBBY RELEASED AFTER SERVING 62 DAYS IN JAIL

Message from Steve Kubby - April 14, 2006

Dear Friends,

I'm pleased to tell you that I've just been released from the Placer
County Jail, where I spent 23 hours a day in lock-down, serving 62 days in
"protective custody."

During that time I experienced excruciating pain, a vicious high
blood-pressure crisis, passed blood in my urine and I lost 33 pounds.
However, there was also good news. I learned that Marinol is an
acceptable, if not ideal, substitute for whole cannabis in treating my
otherwise fatal disease. Now I am a free man and I am profoundly grateful
to be alive and to have friends and supporters such as you.

Everyone knows I was in jail for an unjust conviction that followed a
politically inspired investigation of me in 1998 while I campaigned as the
Libertarian candidate for governor of California. Seven difficult years
later, I can finally declare our hard fought battle to be a victory and
that the mission of the Kubby Defense Fund has been successfully
completed.

I want to thank you for helping me through the ordeal.

With your help, we have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Thanks
to the skillful negotiating of attorney E.D. Lerman, I spent a combined 62
days in jail versus the year or more that prosecutors wanted me to serve.
Despite the new charge, I spent three weeks less in jail than I would have
in 2001, when the county did not have an early release for overcrowding.

The political landscape over medical marijuana has significantly changed
in California since my arrest. I'd like to put some of the events of my
case in perspective, as part of a final report from the Kubby Defense
Fund.

When we started the Kubby Defense Fund in 1999, we faced dire circumstances:

. Nineteen felony counts;
. $200,000 bail, later reduced to a release on our recognizance;
. Involvement by local, state and federal drug warriors;
. A fraudulent DEA document that was used to obtain a search warrant;
. An anonymous note that we now believe was written by law enforcement;
. Judges removed for bias re-entering the case to make me a felony
fugitive; and
. A public defender who abandoned our case, leaving us stranded in Canada.

Law-enforcement attitudes were outright hostile to medical marijuana at
the time, something I experienced first-hand once I was arrested on Jan.
19, 1999. For 72 hours I was deprived of the only medicine I use, and
quickly experienced the classic symptoms of hypertensive crises, as my
blood pressure periodically soared, leaving me partially blind and
violently ill.

Rather than offer medical care and solace, the jail authorities were
openly derisive of my condition, treating me like a criminal who was
hiding behind the medical-marijuana laws. It took me months to recover
from that ordeal.

As a Libertarian, I chose to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights and fight back. I chose to fight on behalf of the many qualified
patients broken by unfair prosecutions, who did not have the resources or
resolve to face their persecutors.

Over the next two years, we went through three juries and six judges, and
built a legal team and brought in expert witnesses that ultimately
outclassed the local prosecutors. During the trial, we discredited the
prosecution's key witness, a state narcotics officer who testified about
plant yields at medical-marijuana trials across the state, making ordinary
patients sound like drug kingpins.

Jail may be an inconvenience to some, but for me it is a life-threatening
experience. That's why I moved to Canada in 2001 rather than remain under
the supervision of authorities I had no reason to trust. My reasons go to
the unusual nature of my medical condition, with its potentially lethal
episodes of high blood pressure.

When the Canadian courts denied our claims to refugee status, I was given
the choice of being deported or leaving Canada voluntarily. On January 26
I returned from British Columbia to turn myself in, and served 40 days of
the 120-day sentence imposed on me in 2001 for possession of a mushroom
stem and peyote buttons.

The more recent stay was for violating probation by not returning from
Canada sooner.

In the seven years since my previous stay in the Placer jail, moreover, I
found that law-enforcement attitudes about medical marijuana had changed.
Gone was the hostility and taunts that guards directed my way in 1999.
This time they called me Mr. Kubby, and treated me with respect.

I was fortunate also that Dr. Tod Mikuriya prescribed Marinol for me as an
experiment, and I was able to take the first dose at admission, just a
single day after my last medication with whole cannabis. We had no idea if
it would work, and it didn't - at first. But, to my lasting relief, over
the next few days my blood pressure began to fall to healthy levels.

Just one 10-milligram capsule of Marinol twice a day was able to control
my blood pressure, although I did have problems with indigestion from
taking the synthetic THC. Unfortunately, Marinol was a Schedule 2 drug
when I was first arrested. Marinol was extremely hard to get until July
of 1999, and remains very expensive and prisoners are usually not allowed
to use it.

Nevertheless, this discovery was a fantastic turn of events for me,
because guaranteeing a stable supply of pot is expensive and dangerous.
With Marinol as an acceptable if not ideal replacement for whole cannabis,
I can now supplement my use of medical marijuana with a prescription
medicine that is widely available. That will allow me to travel and work
more easily, and represents a new lease on life for me.

We now have documented evidence from my jail medical records that Marinol
can control the blood-pressure spikes of adrenal cancer, and may benefit
others with blood-pressure disorders as well.

Certainly, no one can say that I was sneaking blood-pressure medicine
along with the Marinol, since I was in jail and my medications strictly
regulated. Similarly, no one can accuse the jail's medical director of
being pro-marijuana.

So, I think we proved that marijuana really does lower my blood pressure,
and I really do have a life-and-death medical necessity.

I might have stayed in jail two-thirds longer, but I was released early
after receiving a personal visit from the Placer County Sheriff Ed Bonner,
who commended me for my work on behalf of medical marijuana. Sheriff
Bonner said law enforcement had learned a lot about medical marijuana
through the course of my prosecution, and said he was honored to meet me.

Sheriff Bonner then told me he would talk with the district attorney and
presiding judge, and advise them to "bury the hatchet."

My arrest at the San Francisco airport and incarceration in Placer County
were big news. Articles have appeared in the L.A. Times, San Francisco
Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee and Fox News, and noted
by CNN. In a story carried by the Associated Press, I was described as a
"medical-marijuana champion," while a feature story on page one of World
Net Daily hailed me as a "crusader for medical marijuana."

On Jan. 30, Technorati.com identified "Kubby" as the most-researched term
on the Internet, outpacing I-Pods and Ted Koppel.

All this media attention represents millions of dollars of ink and TV time
to educate the public on our issues.

Let's list the accomplishments that you have helped make possible with
your support of the Kubby Defense Fund.

. We raised and spent nearly $500,000 for our defense;
. Successfully defended a 265-plant garden based on limits for federal
patients;
. Discredited the state's expert witness on plant yields and limits;
. Reduced law-enforcement opposition to statewide regulation;
. Gave hope to patient groups that supported our cause; and
. Forced Placer County authorities to soften their medical-marijuana policy.

Along with the politics came light-hearted moments as well:

. Ryan Landers' continually spilling his joints in front of courthouse
security;
. Deputies asking Elvy Musikka to not show them her government-issued pot;
. The late Jane Weirick and her contingent of Incredible Toking Nuns; and
. The fabulous parties at Fred and Carol Colburns, celebrating our
courtroom victories.

For seven years now, I have stood up for the rights of sick people who
benefit from the medicinal properties of this healing herb. By speaking
out, I incurred the wrath of those in power who believe medical marijuana
is a hoax, and that my advocacy threatened their way of life.

Fortunately, those seven years of bad luck have come to an end, because I
have made peace with the criminal-justice system that persecuted me.
Although I still face more than two years of minimal supervision before I
am truly free, for the first time in seven years, my family and I are
looking forward to resuming a normal life.

It might seem that we have successfully completed our mission, if for no
other reason than I am alive and free. However, the constant threat of
arrest, incarceration and even the possibility of death, have taken a
terrible emotional and financial toll on my family. I need to get back on
my feet and start providing again for my family - before I can get on with
the never-ending struggle against omnipotent government.

Of course, it goes without saying that I am not abandoning the battle for
freedom. When I was fighting for my life, the focus was necessarily on the
medical marijuana issue, but now we can go on the offensive against the
abuses of our legal system by those who are supposed to uphold the rule of
law. More and more Americans, including many in law enforcement are
recognizing that the so-called "drug war" is a counterproductive fraud
that is a threat to everyone.

That has always been our message.

Let freedom grow,

Steve Kubby

MEDICAL MARIJUANA REFUGEE SENT BACK TO PLACER JAIL

Auburn, CA. MAR. 14th. Medical marijuana prisoner Steve Kubby was sent back to Placer County jail March 14th to serve the remainder of his sentence. Kubby had been temporarily released March 8, on account of overcrowding . After having suffered severe medical problems upon his initiial arrest, Kubby has been able to manage his medical condition by use of Marinol. Kubby expressed gratitude toward Sheriff Ed Bonner for having treated him considerately and professionally. "I have developed a profound respect for the professional and highly dedicated staff and officers here," he said. Kubby's sentence was halved to 60 days in view of his good behavior.

IMPRISONED IN PLACER COUNTY JAIL (Feb 2, 2006)

Medical marijuana refugee Steve Kubby was taken to the Placer County jail on Jan. 27th, 2006 to begin serving a 4-month sentence on drug possession charges. Supporters are fearful that he will not survive in jail without access to medical marijuana. Kubby has used cannabis exclusively to treat a rare form of adrenal cancer, pheochromocytoma , since the 1980s, and is thought to be the longest living survivor of the disease.

Placer County jail has agreed to let Kubby use Marinol, but it is not clear that this will adequately control his disease. He suffered severely during the first couple days of his imprisonment, when he had no access to any medication. Subsequently, on Feb 2nd, Steve reported that he was feeling better with the Marinol and that thanks to an outpouring of protest from supporters he was being treated well by prison doctors.

Kubby was arrested Jan 26th at the San Francisco airport on returning from Canada, where his appeal for refugee status was rejected. He was arrested on a warrant from Placer County, where he had been sentenced to four months for possession of minute quantities of psilocybin mushrooms and peyote discovered in the course of a 1999 raid on his medical marijuana garden. Kubby and his family fled to Canada, but were removed by order of the Canadian Immigration Ministry, which rejected his claim that serving jail time would endanger his life.

His attorney Bill McPike, has petitioned the court to allow him to be released on electronic monitoring so he can resume treatment with marijuana.