Cops Use Helicopter to Raid 81-year-old Woman’s Home, Cut Down Her Single Medical Marijuana Plant

This story sounds very absurd and senseless. The United States government has needlessly crack downed on marijuana users, taking it too far.

The country’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has continued to display its arrogance, refusing to remove marijuana from the schedule 1 of the Control Substance Act (CSA), despite the overwhelming evidence of the medicinal value of the plant.

This has made some states defy the federal government to make their own marijuana laws. In states where recreational and medicinal marijuana are legal, citizens get the opportunity to use the plant to cure their ailments.

However, despite the leverage to use marijuana for medicinal purposes in some states, citizens are still now allowed to cultivate the plant in their homes, no matter how small it is.

It has now emerged that armed police personnel with helicopters, raided the home of an elderly woman in the city of Amherst, Massachusetts, simply because of her single medicinal marijuana plant.

According to local media reports, on Sept. 21, 2016, the Massachusetts National Guard and State Police descended on 81-year-old Margaret Holcomb’s home, using a military-style helicopter to cut down a single marijuana plant that they claim was in plain view.  According to local residents familiar with the home of Holcomb, the plant was hidden away in her fence at the backyard. It is believed the police used a thermal imager to spot the plant, while flying above the area.

The police said the raid was part of a broader operation in which they seized 44 plants in the state. According to the police, none of the property owners were charged with anything, just their plants taken and destroyed.

When the news of what the police did in the house of Holcomb was made public, many residents in the state expressed outrage. Holcomb told local reporters she was growing the plant for medical purposes. In fact, she was relying on it to ease her arthritis and glaucoma pain, so that she could sleep at night.

The problem she had was that she does not have a medical marijuana card authorizing her to grow the plant. In 2008, voters in Massachusetts voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Massachusetts later became the eighteenth state in the United States to legalize medical marijuana in 2012.

But despite the lax in the law, it is still not easy for residents in the state to grow the plant on their own. Doing so requires a long procedure. The procedure is due to the DEA refusal to remove the plant from schedule 1 of the CSA.

Due to her old age and considering the hurdles involved in the process, Holcomb said she decided to grow the single plant in her house, in order to use it to cure her illness. According to Holcomb, the actions of the police will not deter her from using marijuana. She revealed she has received many goodwill messages from many people because of the incident. Currently, she is even planning to grow a new marijuana plant, no matter the consequences.

Many residents in the state have denounced the waste of time and resources by police, using a helicopter to raid a poor elderly woman and preventing her from taking a harmless drug for medical purposes.

Residents said they are just waiting patiently for November, in order to vote massively for the necessary changes to their marijuana laws. Massachusetts is among five states in the United States that will be voting on whether to fully legalize marijuana or not, this November.

Marijuana use has surged dramatically in the United States, in recent years. Recently, a poll by Gallup revealed that the percentage of American adults who smoke marijuana has nearly doubled in three years. The poll published on Aug. 8, 2016 revealed that among American adults who participated in the survey, one in eight – representing 13% of the population of the respondents used in the poll – reported current marijuana use. In 2013, the same Gallup poll revealed that 7% of American adults smoke marijuana. This means the figure nearly doubled within the last three years, since the first study was conducted.

Also, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 53% of Americans support the legalization of marijuana because of its medicinal benefits.

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