
Missouri Police Search for Marijuana in a Stage 4 Cancer Patient's Hospital Room - kyleblarson
http://time.com/5548593/police-cancer-patient-marijuana/
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alphabettsy
The whole incident is shameful especially the hospital staff that called the
police.

We talk about police being brave and courageous, but I wish these officers had
the courage to say this is wrong and I don’t want to be part of it.

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thoughtstheseus
Hospital staff has every right to call the police if they believe someone is
using an illegal substance (state & federally) on their property. We should
just fix the laws.

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aaomidi
No one here is talking about legal right. We're talking about moral right.

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quakenul
Expecting a few human beings, who all are involved in a stressful situation
and have probably no philosophical inclinations, to come up with a morally
sound choice on the spot seems like a tall order.

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aaomidi
I think it's fair to expect people to think morally. It should be the default
way of thinking, not something you spend energy on.

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itchyjunk
Maybe not consenting to it would be better. I understand he probably thought
it was better to just let them search and get it over with. But forcing the
cops to get a warrant would have been better, imho. Of course, I am not the
one in hospital fighting for my life.

On the other hand, the cops have to do their job. Till it's legalized, part of
that job is to search for illegal substance. But maybe refusing a search would
have made the choice easier for them as well. They decide not to pursue a
warrant.

I heard that it's `treaties` that USA has with other countries that
complicates legalizing medical cannabis at federal level. I am not sure about
all the reasons though.

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aaomidi
They had "reasonable doubt." He basically couldn't do anything about it or
he'd be arrested.

~~~
Canada
I think you mean "probable cause"

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LyndsySimon
I have no specific knowledge of this case, but I live about two hours south of
where it occurred so I'm somewhat familiar with the culture of the area.

It strikes me as highly likely - especially given the fact that there was one
bag that was searched by a single officer alone in the room with the patient -
that there was in fact marijuana in their possession, and that the officers
overlooked it.

If they're called by the hospital, they respond. Most of the police officers I
know^† would be likely to judge a situation like this with compassion, not
necessarily a black-and-white view of the law. Either refusing to search the
room or acknowledging the existence of a controlled substance and refusing to
act would put their career at risk; going through the motions of the search
and "missing" it would give plausible deniability.

†: I'm no fan of cops in general, and certainly no "police apologist". I'm an
Ancap, and both distrustful and resentful of police. I'm also a human being,
though, and judge others based on their individual actions. I know a number of
officers, some of which I consider fairly close friends. I don't agree with
their choices, but am intellectually honest enough to recognize that they do
in fact have a large positive impact on the world around them, and do what
they do out of a sense of honor and duty to their fellow Man.

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root_axis
Well, he wasn't shot, assaulted, arrested or even issued a citation. You can't
really ask for a better outcome.

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jniedrauer
Warning: Link is not HTTPS. Even if you manually change it, it downgrades.

Kind of shocking that a website would downgrade connections in 2019.

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bonestamp2
Agreed, and the reason is probably equally as bad... I mean, it's probably
because they use cross-domain requests for advertising and/or tracking and one
of those isn't HTTP so they don't want warnings/errors from some requests not
being HTTPS.

