Comments on some factual discrepancies will be under the comments on this post.
BY AARON W. JACO • AJACO@DMREG.COM • JANUARY 19, 2010
The boyish young man in the khaki slacks and brown sweater looks Warren County Attorney Bryan Tingle straight in the eyes and declares that his constitutional rights are being squashed.
He tells Tingle from his seat in the courtroom that Iowa’s legal system is treading on his freedom of religion, and on the freedom of science and medicine to explore treatment alternatives for the chronically and mentally ill.
With eyes gazing intently through his curly black hair, he tells Tingle that he’s not afraid of going to prison. And there’s a distinct possibility that, within a few weeks, he could land himself there for five years.
He tells Tingle, who stands over him in a suit and tie, that if he were to receive a prison sentence, he’d like to be held in contempt of court and serve additional time.
“I’d have serious contempt for that decision,” he says.
This is Jason Karimi, a 21-year-old Milo native whose allegiance to the illegal drug marijuana has nearly landed him in prison on multiple occasions since 2007, most recently during the above-outlined Jan. 5 probation revocation hearing.
Karimi’s is the story of how an honor student became a twice-convicted criminal. How a young man decided to treat his own mental illness with an illegal drug. How an aspiring computer technician became an amateur advocate for medical marijuana.
“I’ve had a crazy last couple of years,” Karimi said Jan. 6, leaning forward in an armchair in a friend’s Altoona apartment. “People don’t believe me, sometimes, when I try to tell them what’s happened.”
Karimi was an honor student during his senior year at Southeast Warren High School. School records for 2006-07 show he made “A” honor roll the first semester and “B” honor roll the second semester.
Also that year he played a trumpet solo, “Rock Around the Clock,” during halftime at a Warhawks football game.
Earlier in his academic career Karimi wrote an article for the district newsletter. It promoted the use of vending machines as a school fundraising source.
Meanwhile, by his own account, Karimi rarely paid attention in class. He knew answers without studying the subject matter.
On a history assignment, he used a Web site to gather information about Napoleon Bonaparte – he still pronounces it “Bonapart-ay” – and passed the information off as a report on a 1,000-page book.
Karimi was a small-time trouble maker since elementary school, but also one of the smartest kids in class, said Milo native Victoria Taggart, 21, a friend and classmate since kindergarten.
“He would always get in trouble for reading books instead of paying attention,” Taggart said. “He was such a nerd, but at the same time he was hilarious. He always had smart-ass comments, and he was so quick with them.”
During their high school years, Taggart knew that sitting down with Karimi at a party meant long conversations about “random things,” often including politics.
“I didn’t go there with Jason because it was like, ‘First of all, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and second of all, you’re going to talk forever.’ ”
The two friends split paths after high school, except for a brief encounter in late 2008. The first time they talked at length was in October 2009, when Taggart was surprised to hear Karimi’s story.
During a long phone conversation, Taggart lost Karimi’s train of thought.
She put him on speakerphone and let him ramble.
“He’s changed,” Taggart said. “I don’t know if he’s just got super smart, but I can’t follow half the things he talks about now. Maybe he just forgot my language.
“He’s always had that serious like goal-set mind and everything, but he kind of seems like he has lost a bit of his personality because he feels so strong about it,” she added. “That’s pretty much all he thinks about. But, I think it’s pretty cool. In a small town everyone’s like a little clone of their parents that graduated 20 years before they did. He actually doesn’t really care about that, and feels this strongly about an issue.”
Go Jason!
He’s a good guy, and I’ve talked to him at length about his problems, his struggles, and his GENUINE belief that he needs to fight until his proverbial “dying breath” if he has to, to make sure people who are SUFFERING HORRIBLY can choose a(n often) safer, superior medicine.
Sure, Jason made a few BAD mistakes, but he SINCERELY does have a bad emotional/mental problem, and I believe with all of my heart that Medical Marijuana is the right medicine for him, because I’ve seen the difference that it makes in him, and it was SHOCKING, to say the very, very, VERY least!
It really does make him function better, it really does make him “leveled out”, and on my brother’s grave, it really does need to be made available to him, because it’s a LIFE-saver for him – and it IS to many people.
This, well, this is coming from a young man from a state without Medical Cannabis available. A young man who had his life RUINED by opiates, because he was too scared initially to keep trying cannabis to treat his pain conditions. If this young man had just been allowed cannabis, and not afraid of breaking the law to use proper, less harmful medicine to get out of his wheelchair and manage his (often CRIPPLING) degenerative muscular pain, he wouldn’t have ended up so dependent on opiates that… well, leave it to your imagination. The doctors made me an addict, and Cannabis can and has done more for my pain than even the strongest narcotic.
Please think to yourselves: “What’s safer, OxyContin, Morphine, Oercocet, and Fentanyl (yes, this young man was on ALL of them at once)… or Cannabis?” Because the latter does far more for my pain than the former ever did, and the former (while being a HORRIBLE call on this young man’s part), led this young man to wrongly, and against doctor’s advice, to use syringes to get enough medicine to have quality of life.
Go go go, Jason! Here’s to hoping this ignorant war on the innocent ends soon, and the restriction of good medicine and the freedom of the sick to choose how they want (and often NEED) to medicate with Cannabis ends soon.
Because… I need it. It helped me off the opiates, and it makes my life nearly pain-free much of the time… all at doses that are much less than “getting stoned” doses. Two hits every hour or two, as opposed to all those horrible, horrible narcotics, with just a few Vicodin a day (some narcotics are required, unfortunately) gave this young man clarity (being an opiate zombie is no fun!) and peace of mind, and his life back… and it’s terrifying that I could go to jail for helping myself the best way I can see. I’m getting ready for college… and if it were not for Cannabis, I would still be in a haze from all the opiates, and would not even be able to learn… ;_;
-Y’skrel, aka virus gift
PS: I want a world where I have my basic HUMAN RIGHT to make myself less than an invalid, shouldn’t you too, reader?
Thanks for listening to my story, and for thinking, even for a second, that maybe, just maybe, Marijuana isn’t the demon drug the government wants you to believe!
Posted by Y'skrel | February 4, 2010, 2:08 amI personally took Jayman home from the Council Bluff’s meeting with the board of pharmacy. He is my friend. This man is very much a victim of the system. Me, too. My daughter, Crystal Leann Manke is, too. the state of iowa murdered her at age eleven and paid no attention whatsoever to the fact that i was overdosed on the same drug she was and they sent me up the river after they murdered her. see manke v iowa if you have any doubts as to my veracity.
I, too, have a script for fentanyl and moron-phine and percocets. right now. I smoke and eat cannabis because it Helps me, unlike those ugly downers that blob over my symptoms.
“Stout isn’t a strictly anti-drug person. She would likely advocate for marijuana usage if she had seen any studies that show benefits for patients, she said.
The fact is, she hasn’t seen any such studies.” Why not, dearie? could it be because you don’t want to?
How does the good doctor “feel” about Jason and bob manke’s victory with the board of pharmacy? does she consider that the Unanimous decision by the board that medical cannabis is legitimate medicine means Jason should Never have gone to jail for pot because he was, indeed, so smart that he figgured out how to self medicate and help himself while these toadie doctors went along with all the enslavement crap???
Medical Cannabis is coming, Jay! I will not let you take this by yourself, buddy! You have real freinds! You are Not by yourself even tho you are in jail. OK?
I hope you read this when you get free. there is a matter between us, But…Forget it! I was trying to help you when the shit was deep and i still am. OK?
Peace and Grace, buddy
bob manke
Posted by bob manke | March 28, 2010, 4:38 pmyou might have an important blog right here! would you prefer to make some invite posts on my weblog?
Posted by acne | February 5, 2011, 11:25 pm