News
MED-POT ACTIVIST SISTER SOMAYAH KAMBUI IN HOT WATER AGAIN
Wed, Jun 12, 2002 12:00 am
Peter Gorman
LOS ANGELES -- The trial of medical-marijuana activist Sister Somayah Kambui, who was arrested in October 2001 for growing dozens of plants in her back yard near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, began Jan. 18.
Activists around the country fear that the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney John Kildebeck, may push to try her under California's "three strikes" law. That would mean that Kambui, who has two felony convictions stemming from her involvement in the Black Panther Party during the 1970s, would be facing life without parole. Kildebeck is on record, however, as denying he will press for a "three strikes" charge, as he recognizes the validity of both California's medical-marijuana law and Kambui's use of marijuana as medicine.
Kambui is noted as the first person to publicly speak out for marijuana's use in the treatment of sickle-cell anemia, a debilitating disease in which red blood cells get deformed into a sickle shape and block blood vessels, causing intense pain and eventually organ damage from lack of oxygen. The standard treatment is morphine or other opioid painkillers, which has produced thousands of medical junkies. Marijuana substituted for opiate-based medicines, however, dilates the blood vessels, allowing the cells to flow more freely, lessening the pain without narcotics addiction.
The disease passed largely under the radar of medical-marijuana activists for years, because they were largely white and sickle-cell anemia affects almost exclusively blacks. About one out of 12 African-Americans carries the recessive gene that causes it; the gene apparently helped carriers survive malaria.
Kambui started a medical-marijuana compassion club for other sickle-cell sufferers and had about a dozen members when she was raided in October. The pot plants in her back yard were the club's annual supply.
Activists around the country fear that the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney John Kildebeck, may push to try her under California's "three strikes" law. That would mean that Kambui, who has two felony convictions stemming from her involvement in the Black Panther Party during the 1970s, would be facing life without parole. Kildebeck is on record, however, as denying he will press for a "three strikes" charge, as he recognizes the validity of both California's medical-marijuana law and Kambui's use of marijuana as medicine.
Kambui is noted as the first person to publicly speak out for marijuana's use in the treatment of sickle-cell anemia, a debilitating disease in which red blood cells get deformed into a sickle shape and block blood vessels, causing intense pain and eventually organ damage from lack of oxygen. The standard treatment is morphine or other opioid painkillers, which has produced thousands of medical junkies. Marijuana substituted for opiate-based medicines, however, dilates the blood vessels, allowing the cells to flow more freely, lessening the pain without narcotics addiction.
The disease passed largely under the radar of medical-marijuana activists for years, because they were largely white and sickle-cell anemia affects almost exclusively blacks. About one out of 12 African-Americans carries the recessive gene that causes it; the gene apparently helped carriers survive malaria.
Kambui started a medical-marijuana compassion club for other sickle-cell sufferers and had about a dozen members when she was raided in October. The pot plants in her back yard were the club's annual supply.