Victims

Every week, we at the Marijuana Policy Project confront extreme government abuses like the ones you'll read about below, as the war on marijuana users rages on. This war is littered with casualties — and even fatalities.

With the help of our dues-paying members, MPP is working to end the persecution and destruction of people like you'll read about here.

Palm Beach County, Florida, school raid
Fifteen high school students in Palm Beach County, Florida, were arrested in January 2005 for selling drugs on school property. Some of the teens had sold as little as $10 worth of marijuana to undercover police officers who had befriended them. The teens, who will be tried as adults, face up to 15 years' imprisonment.

Matthew Ducheneaux

In July 2000, 36-year-old Matthew Ducheneaux was arrested for smoking marijuana in a park in South Dakota. Ducheneaux was a quadriplegic who used marijuana with his doctor's permission to treat violent muscle spasms. Ducheneaux, unable to tell the jury that he used marijuana for medical reasons, was eventually convicted of marijuana possession and forbidden from using his medicine for a year.

Marisa Garcia
In March 2000, 19-year-old Marisa Garcia lost financial aid for college because of a federal law that denies financial aid to those convicted of drug offenses. Garcia, who had paid a $415 fine after a police officer found a pipe with marijuana residue in her car's glove compartment, nearly had to delay college for a year because of this punitive federal law.

Lester Siler
In July 2004, Lester Eugene Siler, 42, was brutalized by five rogue police officers in his Tennessee home. Siler, who is illiterate, was beaten and threatened with shooting and electrocution and had his head held underwater in a toilet after refusing to sign a search consent form that he could not read. Siler's wife caught the incident on an audiotape which was later used to convict all five officers.

Kathryn Johnston
Members of a Georgia narcotics investigation team shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a drug raid in her Atlanta home November 21, 2006.