Sadly cannabis oil activist and Crohn’s disease patient Shona Banda surrendered herself to authorities on Tuesday. Banda not only lost custody of her son, she’s facing over 30 years in prison after he spoke out in favor of pot at a D.A.R.E meeting on March 24. However Truth in Media reports that her attorney, Sarah Swain, announced that she intends to challenge cannabis’ classification as a Schedule 1 drug as a part of her defense of Banda’s case. She also said that she’s willing to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
“I’m going to litigate this issue even at the district court level as if this is a case that can change the law, not just here, not just in Garden City, not just in Kansas, but throughout the entire country,” Swain said during the press conference. “That’s what our goal is, and I know it’s a lofty goal, but I think that it’s an incredibly important goal.”
Swain’s comments were captured on video by Jennifer Winn, a well-known Kansas-based political activist who mounted an unsuccessful-but-serious run for the Republican nomination for governor of Kansas in 2014. She tells Stuff Stoners Like, “I really believe that this could very well be the end of Prohibition.”
Swain, who’s dad is a Vietnam vet using cannabis to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, tells Stuff Stoners Like; “The fact that this country continues the War on Drugs, which is really just a war on families and a war on the poor is absolutely ridiculous, and it’s our goal with this case to, not just to change the way that Shona Banda is treated here in Garden City, KS, but to take this case every step of the way to litigate it all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, if we need to, to make sure that this drug is no longer classified as a Schedule 1 drug, and as soon as it’s classified as something less than that, millions of people’s lives will be positively affected by that change.”
Swain noted that Banda could be facing over 30 years in prison and likened it to a death sentence, “She’s 38, so not only is it essentially a life sentence, but this is a woman who was using cannabis to treat a disease, Crohn’s disease, that’s absolutely debilitating, so not only is it that she’s facing life in prison just due to the years, but, essentially, it’s a death sentence if she is sent to prison and does not have access to the treatment that she was using that cured her of her Crohn’s disease and allowed her to live a somewhat normal life.”
Banda could face additional personal risk for allowing her case to be a battleground for the legal fight over the federal government’s classification of cannabis—meaning more time in prison and potentially losing custody of her son—but that’s a risk Banda is willing to take.
A GoFundMe page has been started to help Shona Banda with her legal defense and the dismantling of marijuana prohibition—please make a donation if you can.
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One Response to “Shona Banda’s Attorney to Fight Cannabis’ Classification”
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This is just absolutely absurd. Marijuana should be legal everywhere. We shouldnt even need to vote on it. We didnt vote Tylenol onto the shelves and it kills 100’s of people every year. This is frustrating. You can buy hemp derived CBD oil from places online like http://discovercbd.com and thats good but you should be able to buy just straight marijuana from them too!