On Monday, December 8, Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator Paulah Dauns refused to give refugee status to Steve Kubby. Kubby is a US pot activist suffering from adrenal cancer, and the first American to get a license from the Canadian government to legally use and cultivate medical pot. If Kubby is returned to the states, he will likely be imprisoned for 120 days, several times longer than necessary to kill the activist, who needs med-pot almost hourly to survive.
Kubby’s 120-day sentence is for charges of possessing minute quantities of peyote, stemming from a politically-motivated raid on his home during his campaign for governor of California. The aim of the raid was to wipe out Kubby’s personal med-pot garden. Narks got permission for the raid by claiming Kubby was operating a massive grow op and commercial trafficking operation. Their proof: an anonymous letter.

The Canadian refugee board decision glared with contradiction. They acknowledged that Canadian law protected Kubby from being sent back if his life was in danger, and agreed that Kubby would die without pot. But then they claimed that recently passed Californian legislation, Bill 420, meant Kubby stood a good chance of getting pot in prison. The misreading of Bill 420 ? which says only that it neither prevents nor requires prisons to give inmates med-pot ? was but one demonstration of how the board refashioned reason to fit the ill-conceived ruling it devised.

“The authorities’ interest in him was likely prompted by his outspoken and vocal opposition on an issue that was controversial,” the board admitted, somehow concluding that Kubby was not at risk for further politically-motivated med-pot persecution.

Kubby’s wife, Michelle, and their two children were also denied refugee status. The Kubbys are appealing the decision, complaining that their immigration adjudicator, Paulah Dauns, was biased as she is a board member of a Catholic drug treatment program that opposes medical marijuana.