Though it’s unclear exactly what the hospital thought was happening in the room, according to Newsweek, “The officer said that the department had received a call from someone who said they smelled weed coming from Sousley’s room.” Officers ultimately found no marijuana or any illegal substance during the search, but did reportedly find CBD Oil (Cannabidiol oil), which is legal.
“If we find marijuana we’ll give you a citation,” an officer threatened as another family member tried to plead with police, saying Sousley’s extreme pain means that doctors allow him a variety of medications. Sousley denied smoking marijuana or ingesting ground-up plants, but acknowledged he uses THC containing capsules for pain management.
The family was visibly upset at the spectacle of multiple police rifling through the sick man’s things. “It’s the only choice I got to live, man,” Sousley told the officers in the video. “We’re Americans. I was born here, it’s my right to live.”
Things got tense when officers demanded to search a bag that Sousley said was filled with his medications and end of life related personal items. He said didn’t want police to “dig through that,” according to the video. “It has my final-day things in there, and nobody’s gonna dig in it,” Sousley said. “It’s my stuff.”
“My final hour stuff is in that bag” — he pleaded, but officers still insisted, and then proceeded to search through it.
Ironically Missouri voters late last year voted to legalize medical marijuana, a law which has yet to take effect (until July 4, 2019). USA Today presents one of the more outrageous moments of the video where police actually acknowledge this, but shrug it off and say “then it’s still illegal”, below:
At one point in the video, Sousley references the legal status of medical cannabis in the state. Last November, Missouri voters overwhelmingly chose to create a medical cannabis system, but the state will not be taking any applications for cannabis patient ID cards until July 4.
Referencing marijuana, Sousley says in the video “medically in Missouri, it’s really legal now. They just they haven’t finished the paperwork.”
“Okay, then it’s still illegal,” one of the officers replies.
“But I don’t have time to wait for that,” Sousley says “What would you do?”
The officer says he refuses to engage in “what if” games.
Shame on the nurse for wheeling in a “robodoctor”, shame on those “to protect and to serve” sorts for raiding a dying man’s hospital room because some twits in a legislature decided to make a plant illegal, and to legalize it on such and such a day, and then hiding behind the letter of the law to kill its spirit.
But beyond that, the pattern seems clear: corporate medicine teams up with bully government, and the people or any sense of common decency and humanity be damned. Dying family member? Wheel in the robodoctor to give them the bad news. Have complaints about our behavior? Contact the customer (non)service department, spend hours punching in numbers on the phone trying to find the right department and a human to talk to, and eventually wind up talking to a human in Nepal with an accent thicker than molasses. “So sorry you had bad experience. Thank you for calling our customer service hotline!”
What’s to be done? I honestly don’t know. Part of me hopes that the local communities in which these incidents happened will find out the names of the people involved, and just start shunning them. “You can’t buy your groceries here,” and “you’re not welcome in this coffee shop” and hopefully, if any of these people are local church goers, it’s time for the revival of the example of St. Ambrose of Milan, who once publicly sermonized against the emperor, with the emperor present. And if that doesn’t work, a good old fashioned excommunication of the “you’re not welcome here until you change your ways” sort of thing.