Cruel Treatment
Norml News 1994 Autumn
Daniel has been tetraplegic since breaking his neck while travelling in Greece. He lost the use of his legs and fingers, and almost 'all sensation from the neck down. He has also been on a variety of pills to help with a bladder problem and body spasms. The best medicine he can use, though, is marijuana.
Towards the end of last year Daniel's house was raided and his cannabis and indoor growing system was confiscated. In court he produced a letter from his doctor describing the medication he had been prescribed and what the side effects are. "Sedation, nausea, weakness, dizziness, psychiatric manifestations - they're pretty hard out pills really," says Daniel. "And the anti-depressants, when you go off them you go through really heavy depression.
I don't need my other medication if I smoke weed. The medication is to flush your bladder through and stop the spasming. I don't have any control over my bladder, see, since my neck was broken. It goes into a leg bag. If I'm not using the pills or weed the muscles tighten up. The bladder fills up and fills up and gets full and I get hyper-reflexic - the head starts to pound at the back and it can throw you into a stroke. So the weed helps that out. And also with the spasms - because your legs jump around and you can throw yourself out of the chair. They put you on these pills, and they're all right for a week but then they have to increase it and it just gets worse and worse. And your urine - it's like you're pissing paste. They're not really an alternative, y'know.
I don't go to sleep after I've had a smoke, I don't have wicked mood changes. With these pills, you lose motivation. They're not really good for you."
Daniel can't understand the reasoning that led to his house being busted. If the law is supposed to protect people's health, it has a strange way of going about it. - "I don't see why I can't get some kind of legal dispensation. But then I couldn't really see what was wrong with growing it either. I've got to do what's best for my body - instead of having all these doctors pumping me full of pills. I was supplying my own medicine.
With those other pills, I used to get really depressed. Sometimes I'd stay in bed for 3 weeks without getting up. That's not healthy. I've been getting out and about heaps since I've been on the weed. I've done a dive course and been diving and all sorts of stuff. Most of the other guys (with spinal injuries) don't get up to that sort of stuff."
Daniel cottoned on to the benefits of using marijuana by accident. He found that the more he used it, the better he seemed to feel. Then he noticed that if he was late with taking the pills, he didn't suffer ill- effects.
"I wasn't really getting stoned off it, but it was keeping everything at bay. Once I went off it (after the bust) I lost my appetite and everything. I was having a hard time eating and breathing and I got dizzy because I went back on the pills for a little while."
Karen Williams, Daniel's partner agrees. "He had to go back to the hospital because he was having constant headaches. He had complete X rays, and they said that his stomach was bloated and all that, but they can't find out why. They don't know what's causing it. But everything seemed to just go smoothly when he was smoking. Maybe it was because it just relaxed all the muscles so the system flowed nicely and he didn't have any trouble. But now it's not flowing properly. Because he's not smoking."
Since getting busted, Daniel has had to go back on the pills, because he can't afford to buy marijuana. NORML News asked how much he was using when he was growing his own. "About half an oz a week." he told us. "That was of nice tops. I was getting into it quite heavily, but that was just keeping things at bays. I'd smoke regularly over the day from about 1 0 o'clock onwards."
Growing outdoors presented obvious difficulties for Daniel, so he had invested some money in setting up a grow room in his house. "The grow room was 1700 by 1700 blocked off and I had four plants in there. There were two 400 sodiums and two 250 sodiums. In the wardrobe I had four clones that I took about 7 or 9 days before, which were just starting to spit roots out. I had them two weeks apart. I also had another one there that I'd done a T graft on. So I was pulling them out' every two weeks, on an eight week cycle, and averaging about 80z a plant".
The bust, when it came, was at about 10.30 in the morning. "We got a knock, knock, knock at the door. The dog was going nuts. Two detectives came running around the back, and came straight in the back door - they said that there was another guy at the front with a search warrant. The first thing I did was ring NORML.
All I told the police was my name and address. I wouldn't say anything else. The lawyer Steve Cullen was there in about quarter of an hour, he was really on to it. So they went through the place. They didn't really make that much of a mess - they were pretty good about it."
Although Daniel said that the attitude of the police was pretty good, he was annoyed about one aspect of the search. "They took all sorts of stuff that they shouldn't have. Like they took photos of Karen naked and them had nothing to do with the case. Then when we went to pick up the stuff that they weren't supposed to take - we got home and the photos were in the letterbox. They'd made an appointment for me to go down at about ten 0' clock and when we came home they were in an envelope in the letterbox. So some scumbag had been going through them."
The police originally wanted to charge Karen as well, but Daniel told them that he had been helped by another friend. "When I went to court I entered no plea because it was no good for Steve to be there at that tinnie. They put the case off till the 23rd Dec. I was hoping that the judge would be in the Christmas spirit, which she was."
Daniel was unable to be given periodic detention or community service, because they didn't have the facilities to take him. The probation officer eventually decided on six months supervision and a drug rehabilitation programme. Because the office is on the first floor, and the building doesn't have a lift, this means he just rings in once a week.
"The supervision guy asked me 'are you going to stop smoking?' and I said 'no, because it's better for me than taking the pills'. So he said 'oh well, he'd talked about it with his superiors and they'd decided there was no point sending me off to the drug rehab', so I just have to ring in once a week for the next 6 months. But the worse part was losing about $2000 worth of gear. That really stung."
Daniel believes that about 90% of the people he knows with similar injuries use marijuana to help their condition. "The only reason they don't use it all the time is because they can't afford it. Like myself, once my rent comes off I get $130 a week to live on. And that's just ridiculous. I can't buy my weed with that, that's why I was growing it. But I couldn't believe those people when I was busted, talking down to me. They don't have the right. They don't even know me. They don't know what I've been through."
Daniel's accident happened when a ute that he was traveling on in Corfu, Greece, overturned. He was flung out, but his neck was broken. His condition was not realised at first, and his early treatment may have contributed to his injury. "When I was lying in the road after the accident they just grabbed my arms and legs and threw me in the back of a Ford econovan. It had nothing in the back - just a stretcher. Down at the hospital they x-rayed my head and neck. They rolled me around, y'know, and I'd just broken my neck. 75% crushed on to my spinal cord, with compressed damage where it was pushing onto it.
Now I can't feel my fingers, my arms, my elbows. I can feel a little bit on my thumb, but it feels like I've been sleeping on it all night, a strip up my arms and the top of my shoulders, and my head. That's all. So I don't get too much of a body stone!
It was really painful though. I was sitting on the bed going' 'nero, nero" which is water, and they came in with this cup and held it in front of me. I couldn't - I still can't - bend my fingers. So the nurse held it in front of me and then just put it down next to me and walked off. Then she came back about an hour later with a teaspoon and gave me two spoons of water and went away again."
When they wanted to inject something for the pain, they pulled him over by an arm, causing excruciating pain. "That was the bad hospital. Then we went to the good hospital, after the British consulate got onto it." The British consulate organised for Daniel to go to a private hospital. The New Zealand consulate had refused to assist Daniel because they were shifting.
"In the hospital nobody would tell me what was going on. They took me up to this room with all these lights. Then they just grabbed my hair and started cutting it off and shaving my hair off and pushed my head around. I was in agony. Then these two guys got hold of my arms. They were holding things in front of my face, like scalpels and stuff. Then the next minute I felt 'slice' - they didn't give me anything for it. I tried to move around and so they thought they'd be clever and tie my arms down. Then I was lying there and I closed my eyes and water was pouring out - not trickling but pouring. I was gritting my teeth and groaning while they sliced. They had these kind of egg flipper things which were bent over and I felt some pulling. Then I heard like a battery drill drilling into my skull and my ears popped.
You see all these movies, y'know, about mad scientists and people being made into half robots. I thought 'oh man they're probably experimenting on me'. Because they were all talking in Greek and they kept looking at me and going 'tsk' and that. I was sure I was going to die."
After drilling two holes in his skull, the doctors clamped in a device and attached a 20lb weight. This was to keep his head still, so that the spine could heal.
After being moved first to Athens, then London, Daniel was flown back to New Zealand. On his arrival, the government presented him with a bill for $48 000 to cover hospital fees and airfare.
"The government wouldn't even look after me anyway, once I was here. The social welfare didn't want to do anything. Like I need someone to after me, but tile government wouldn't pay anyone to help look after me. And now they turn around and do this to me, y'know. That's not fair. They should have just left me over there."
Karen agrees that he probably would have been better off in England. "The hospitals are all covered over there like they are here, and they have a really good hospital over there."
"When they brought me over here" says Daniel "they said 'no we're not going to give you an operation'. I was supposed to have an operation over in England to fuse my neck because I was in so much pain. But over here it was 'oh, you'll come right'. It took over a year, and I'd get dizzy and just couldn't bear the pain any more and I'd have to go rest my neck."
That's when he started to need all the pills. Until he discovered the benefit of using marijuana. "You get all your dignity stripped away, y'know. You can't look after yourself; you've got no independence. Then they take that away from you as well. It's crazy. This government is...it's just crazy. "
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