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veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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[MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony
#14078959 - 03/06/11 11:56 PM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony charges related to raid March 6, 2011 - Detroit Free Press
A Royal Oak man who organized Ann Arbor's Hash Bash for the last two decades -- and whom many Michiganders consider a leader of efforts to legalize marijuana -- is in legal trouble.
Adam Brook was charged Feb. 22 on eight felony counts, including possessing more than a pound of marijuana -- well over the 2.5 ounces allowed to medical marijuana patients in Michigan, court records show.
Brook said the arrest prompted him to drop his lawsuit last month against Royal Oak, which challenged the city's new medical-marijuana ordinance, he said.
Members of the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team raided Brook's house in January and found a triple-beam scale, marijuana and marijuana candy, a tally sheet of names and prices, two loaded handguns, a loaded shotgun and a bullet-proof vest, Undersheriff Mike McCabe said.
"I truly think this was political," Brook said of the raid. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard denied that this week.
Brook, 42, pleaded not guilty at District Court in Royal Oak to one count of manufacturing and delivering marijuana, three counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and four other firearms charges. He is free on 10% of a $5,000 bond set by District Judge Daniel Sawicki and faces a March 22 preliminary exam, records show.
For the last two decades, Brook organized Ann Arbor's spring Hash Bash, an outdoor gathering of marijuana supporters that drew 5,000 people last year to the University of Michigan's campus, where the crowd openly smoked the drug while police watched from a distance.
Brook said this week he still plans to lead this year's Hash Bash on April 2.
Scion of a family that for 80 years owned the Cadillac Luggage store in downtown Detroit's Penobscot Building, Brook closed the shop in 2006 when his back gave out. He walks with a cane and said he is a state-approved marijuana patient, although Bouchard said police found during the raid that his card had expired.
Because of a prior felony conviction on his record, Brook "can't be anywhere there's guns," Bouchard said.
The conviction was for carrying a concealed weapon in the late 1980s, Brook's lawyer said. Attorney Joe Niskar said he'd defend each charge.
"We believe the amount of marijuana has been grossly overstated," Niskar said.
As for the guns, "there's a question about ownership, and some of these were antiques, exempt from the firearms statutes," Niskar said.
The body armor is a World War II keepsake left by Brook's grandfather, he said.
Finally, even with an expired state patient's card, "I'm still what the law calls a qualified patient" and should be able to possess marijuana, Brook said. "This whole thing has been a nightmare."
Brook will let others carry on the legal fight to overturn Royal Oak's new ordinance, which bans growing medical marijuana, his attorney said.
Others have sued to overturn ordinances not only in Royal Oak but also in Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Livonia and Lyon Township.
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Darklight203
Same Shit
Registered: 08/14/10
Posts: 1,394
Loc: Nome, Alaska
Last seen: 4 months, 23 days
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Re: [MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony [Re: veggie]
#14079333 - 03/07/11 01:27 AM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Really? 1980's he had a felony which takes away his right to bear arms? If I were a political figure, living in Michigan, you bet your ass I'd have a gun at my home. I don't see in very many articles that people have guns and they don't mention it. Does marijuana = gun smuggling? I've read many articles and no one mentions guns without saying they're connected to drugs in any way. If you grow marijuana, which should be protected by our rights, and have a gun or two legally, does that mean we should punish everyone for having marijuana and guns just because we can?
-------------------- In ancient times, when demons roamed with man, They hunted, loved and lost, hand in hand, As time went on, the difference between them faded. You couldn't tell anymore, demons and man were related, and some would say the same, but who would like to claim? In time, Gods had even forgot, Demons, too, once love had sought. In times recent I remember, Once I was a man, In my heart I had an ember, I'll relate the best I can but it was snuffed, one distant December. And yet here I stand, no flesh, no bones, no seed or semen, All that's left is this Demon.
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downlowfunk
Retired Festival Veteran
Registered: 09/25/04
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Re: [MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony [Re: Darklight203]
#14081006 - 03/07/11 01:14 PM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Expensive products require protection. Being a felon sucks because you are left unable to protect yourself from other violent criminals who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a violent crime conviction. These people are in and out they know how to manipulate the system, because the system is corrupt and so are they.
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Darklight203
Same Shit
Registered: 08/14/10
Posts: 1,394
Loc: Nome, Alaska
Last seen: 4 months, 23 days
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Re: [MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony [Re: downlowfunk]
#14081098 - 03/07/11 01:30 PM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Which leads me to believe marijuana should be legalized for those over 18 or 21, there would be no market for robberies related to marijuana. That wouldn't solve everything. It's all really complicated.
-------------------- In ancient times, when demons roamed with man, They hunted, loved and lost, hand in hand, As time went on, the difference between them faded. You couldn't tell anymore, demons and man were related, and some would say the same, but who would like to claim? In time, Gods had even forgot, Demons, too, once love had sought. In times recent I remember, Once I was a man, In my heart I had an ember, I'll relate the best I can but it was snuffed, one distant December. And yet here I stand, no flesh, no bones, no seed or semen, All that's left is this Demon.
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Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist
Registered: 03/10/07
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Re: [MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony [Re: Darklight203]
#14081275 - 03/07/11 01:59 PM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Quote:
Darklight203 said: Really? 1980's he had a felony which takes away his right to bear arms?
Yes.
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Moonraker
Friend
Registered: 12/15/08
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Re: [MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony [Re: Darklight203]
#14081347 - 03/07/11 02:12 PM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Wow, this definitely had the potential for it to have been encouraged by political motives. I will for sure be attending hash bash this year.
-------------------- A human race with more highly developed spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of the depth and the incomprehensible wonder of being, would also have greater understanding of and better consideration for the biological and material foundation of life on this earth, Above all, for Western people with their hypertrophied rationality, the development and expansion of a direct, emotional experience of reality, unobstructed by words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance. Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. To fall in hell or soar angelic, You need a pinch of psychedelic.
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Humility
Working on it
Registered: 10/07/08
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Re: [MI] Hash Bash organizer and marijuana champion facing felony [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
#14081371 - 03/07/11 02:17 PM (13 years, 15 days ago) |
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Rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
I'd never allow myself to be permanently disarmed. If worst came to worst I'd move to another country and get fake papers and resume an armed life.
He should have hid his weed better.
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