He was just trying to seek relief from his ongoing battle with leukemia, with a prescribed personal garden of marijuana at his home.
But fourteen months ago police stormed his home, confiscating his medical marijuana garden and put him behind bars. But Bob Crouse can finally put the memory behind him now that an El Paso County jury delivered a “not guilty” verdict in El Paso County.
Representation for Crouse explained he needed to cultivate as many as 75 plants just for his personal stash to achieve a popular cancer treatment, “phoenix tears,” which Crouse made by boiling about a pound of marijuana into an ounce of oil, which Crouse took in doses of about a gram a day. His representation said most cancer patients can’t afford enough marijuana to continue the process unless they grow their own. Crouse said he had no intent to distribute anything he had grown, he told the DENVER HUFF POST.
“They thought I was a criminal. I tell you it was real intimidating when they showed up with eight or 10 agents,” Crouse said. “I’m a 63-year-old leukemia patient fighting for the right to fight for my life.”
State law allows prescribed possession up to two ounces of marijuana or three plants, but also allows patients to possess whatever is medically necessary for their symptoms, a provision referred to as “affirmative defense.”
Judge Timothy Schultz agreed with Crouse, who said he was only using what was necessary, even though Crouse’s defense told him it wasn’t his best defense.
But it wasn’t just the medicinal aspects of marijuana but also the growing itself that Crouse found to be healing.
“You can lose yourself in a little garden. When I was in there working with my plants I would forget all about what was going on inside my body,” he said. “I was beating [cancer.] The effect medical marijuana had on me, on my life, was huge. I felt like I was being healed. I could feel it working in my body.”
Crouse said the treatments helped him to maintain a stress free environment that helps him heal, and during the trial President of Cannibis Science Bob Melamede, Ph.D testified that marijuana has been known to cure some forms of cancer.
“This is a journey I didn’t choose,” Crouse said. “If I wasn’t sick I wouldn’t be using marijuana and I wouldn’t be facing incarceration,” he said before the acquittal.
Crouse is now considering civil litigation seeking compensation for his lost medicine.
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