comment: >
  
  Evangelicals are calling for the death penalty in this case.  MAGA!, they said.
context: He should have been in an elementary school. The cops would have just waited at the door for backup and never went in. >
  
  Land of the free, home of the brave >
  
  We just call our kids 'The Brave' so we don't have to think too much about trying to recognize school shootings don't need to be a thing >
  
  I for one am glad that tax dollars are funding police to go after dangerous hardened criminals, like checks paper a terminal ill cancer patient vaping weed.
  /s >
  
  Why hasn’t Biden rescheduled cannabis yet? I get that he and Kamala are very pro-police, but the War on Drugs is a clear failure. >
  
  He only has indirect control of it happening. A lot of it, because he's the president, but not everyone who works for the presidency is loyal to the president, especially at this point in time. Like, he straight up doesn't trust the secret service enough to speak openly around them after the Jan 6 cover-ups. A lot of people are actively fighting any progress even under him, and he doesn't have immediate say. >
  
  Does he not have the power to fire those people? Like, he is in charge of who is in charge of the department of justice, so what's the holdup? >
  
  Nope. Can't say for certain about whatever department is in charge of rescheduling drugs, but the USSS only "listens" to the head of the Department of Homeland Security - as in, they explicitly refuse to take orders from the president or anyone under their "protection" - and they have a horrible track record of even listening to the DHS. They're effectively loose cannons. Biden can order a clear out of them, I think, but they normally just shuffle each other around, and bring more MAGAts in, because they have final say over who takes their place.
  Did some research, the people in charge of rescheduling drugs are the DEA, who in turn report to the attorney general. AGs basically never force anyone to do anything without going to court, and again, the DEA mainly only reports to them, they can choose to take orders, but they have a concerning amount of power to just... Do as they wish.
  Moral of the story, the president only really has indirect power over things except executive orders, and only has semi-direct power if the people who he can't easily get rid of are loyal to the office and just the person. >
  
  So you're telling me that if the president ordered the AG to deschedule it, the DEA would just refuse to listen to them? >
  
  Attorney General can't do shit about that other than give an order to look at it, not full on reschedule it because the attorney general doesn't have that power, which they can then "take" and stall into oblivion. >
  
  So the DEA just operates without oversight? >
  
  Kinda, yeah. More like "plausible deniability in the eyes of the law", though. The fact that you don't know this tells me you should probably dig into the history a lot of departments under the president have. This is kinda a pattern throughout time where they just do shady shit and get away Scott free. Fuck, our own military pulls shit like that all the time. It's why there's sometimes talk about them assisting a coup, including the Jan 6 coup attempt, because we don't know how many of them are actually loyal, and how many of them just keep up appearances. >
  
  Interesting, you'd think the president would want that resolved. I guess it gives them the ability to deny responsibility as well and the people get fucked either way. >
  
  ACAB >
  
  ACAB >
  
  2 things here:  
  Hospitals never want outside meds interfering with their treatment plans (and probably profits).
  In a heavily oxygenated room, fire becomes a greater risk, but as a caregiver, the inevitable explosions from oxygen portrayed in movies are just not at all common.  I can see why they took the vape as combustible devices are not permitted in hospitals (and we do have plenty of examples of them exploding).
  
  Bretz was cited for drug possession and is set to appear in court after the new year on January 2nd, 2023.
  
  This is where shit gets really stupid.  What are they going to do, sentence him to prison while he's dying? >
  
  I feel like the cops probably had to give a citation because he was breaking the law? I hope they weren’t all happy to do it. 
  The person that called the cops should be ashamed of themselves if they did so without first trying to reason with the patient >
  
  I blame the cops more than the hospital worker.
  They're under state health and hospital regs and those often stipulate they call the police over anything.  
  Cops don't have to cite people.  For plenty of cases, they'll just take the small stash and destroy it, and I think that's what should've been done here. >
  
  See I thought they had to cite if they found something illegal but if they don’t then yeah, they are scum >
  
  I'd worry about the cops being worried about liability but since they basically have to be a serial killer to be held accountable (off the clock), I can't give them the benefit of the doubt here. >
  
  That's not entirely true, but okay. People forget that media against the cops are like negative reviews on Amazon. A few hundred bad cases spread out against hundreds of thousands of cops but all cops are bad...
  This narrative is honestly tiresome af. >
  
  Because the ones that are bad are severely bad and it's common enough that it is something you need to be concerned about. >
  
  and the supposedly good ones do fuck all about the bad ones.  Also known as ACAB >
  
  when I was hospitalized they said I couldn’t use it because it could get into the rooms of other patients through the ventilation system or something. I got in a lot of trouble when my nurse saw it. I’d eaten my last edible earlier thankfully >
  
  I mean, he's vaping in the hospital. I'd wager he was asked to stop doing it, and refused. I seriously doubt the cops were the first step here.  
  He should have asked to be discharged and just spent his final days vaping at his house. >
  
  Yeah. I was totally ready to be outraged, but you CANNOT be doing unsanctioned drugs in a hospital. For your care and their liability, they need to know exactly what you’re on. And you have no idea how your vape is going to affect other patients. 
  I’m very sorry he’s in pain, but there are reasons for these rules. >
  
  Read the article.
  
  Bretz told the Kansas City Star that his doctor told him to use whatever was necessary to relieve his pain, including products containing THC — the active ingredient in cannabis. >
  
  His doctor in the hospital? Or his GP? Because the GP doesn’t have any say in hospital rules. He may have just told him that as general advice, not saying “vape like mad in a hospital.” >
  
  I think either way we can agree he shouldn't have been charged with a crime >
  
  We can also agree that he shouldn’t be smoking/vaping in a hospital. >
  
  We don’t! >
  
  Man I am as Pro marijuana legalization as anybody but this is just catastrophically fucking stupid. You absolutely should not be smoking or vaping in a hospital. There's no reasonable debate there. It is both a medical Hazard to other patients and a fire hazard around all the oxygenated equipment. >
  
  Smoking around oxygen dumb every time!
  Vaping around oxygen totally fine!! It’s physics dog, it doesn’t care if you’re pro marijuana  or otherwise.
  Edit: what a clown. Blocks me and reports me to Reddit for suicide lmaoooo. Sorry for living in real life buddy! >
  
  You clearly don't know how vape pens make vapor and yet you beblown yourself lecturing someone else on what you think "physics" is.
  They work with an electrical potential that can often spark internally and which can start an out of control reaction rapidly in an oxygen saturated environment.  Vape pens, while "rare" do catch fire disproportionately relative to other electronic devices and both the risk of that happening and the risk of it causing a larger fire increase significantly when the oxygen level elevated.  Increasing oxygen saturation lowers the ignition temperature of almost everything.
  It's physics, "dog" and it doesn't care that you have the scientific literacy of a held back 5th grader.
  Maybe if your parents bother to help you with your homework instead of letting you lick lead paint chips off the walls you might know that. >
  
  The charges were dropped :) IMO, take the vape away if you have to, but the cops shouldn’t have been called >
  
  Fuck conservatives.  Fucking freaks >
  
  Working in EMS I am considered a mandatory reporter.  That is, if I witness things like child/elder abuse, drug abuse, etc I have a legal obligation to report it to the authorities.  If I don’t I could be found criminally liable.  Which most times is a good thing; we want to make sure child abuse is reported if seen.  
  A handful of times I have been on calls for patients with terminal conditions who have a couple of plants etc.  I have never reported that because this is the dumb shit that would happen.  It’s absolutely inhumane for the cops to do this.  Unfortunately, it’s no shock to anyone seeing this kind of police behavior at any given time. >
  
  The article says they took away his vape pen because of the fire itself in a high oxygen environment. >
  
  Does the hospital ban all rechargeable batteries?  Because it's not the vape that causes the fire, and multiple cell phone brands along with laptops have known to cause the same fires. >
  
  Not sure the state (DA) has any expectation that a terminally ill patient confined to a hospital room will (can) show up for arraignment. My guess is DA chooses not to pursue and leaves this poor dying man alone. >
  
  Lock that criminal up for life >
  
  Did they even bother to get a warrant or does this fall under the "I smelled weed" cop exception to the 4th amendment?
  Probably more of a crime in progress given some crank nurse ratted him out. >
  
  The comments on this are so dumb. You shouldn’t vape in a hospital for the safety of other patients who may be sensitive to the unknown chemicals in it. >
  
  Police motto, "Always escalate " >
  
  Jesus.
  I live in TN, where marijuana is illegal and there is no exemption whatsoever for medical purposes - or any reason. Even possession is taken very seriously and a lot of places in the state and will catch you actual jail time. They have literally conducted SWAT raids on families, even ones in "nice suburban upscale neighborhoods"  because they had a small backyard garden, which, amongst all that tomato and zucchini plants, was a single hemp plant that the husband had planted hoping to see if he could make actual fiber from it as a little science experiment to show his toddler. A single, completely legal, hemp plant. They did multiple helicopter flyovers before conducting a full raid on the home and property to find that single legal hemp plant. That's how Tennessee feels about marijuana in a nutshell.
  That said, I am terminally ill. I'm a young adult as well. I am in a palliative care program that is a sort of bridge to hospice. I could switch to hospice whenever I wanted and I would be able to keep the same physician and so on, and I also use now, and will use then, the palliative care wing when I am in the hospital for anything or if I finally decide to do hospice because of my unique situation of dependence on a ventilator. At that point, certain treatments will be stopped and basically I will wait for my breathing to fail enough to where they sedate me and remove me from my ventilator. So hospice will be very short-lived and I stay technically in palliative care until that time, but I am essentially treated as if I am in hospice and kept mostly under the same treatment ideals by my doctor and the hospital. I am on opiate medication to help control a lot of the severe pain that I have. It barely takes the edge off because I still wish to be able to function as I feel that is the whole point, the pain was so severe that it kept me from being able to function on any small level that I can still do and generally just made consciousness torturous. So it at least mitigates that.
  Physicians do occasionally dance around the topic of marijuana here and discussions with me. I don't see it as much of an option in my case because it actually does not do well with me because of some mental health problems I have, mainly that I have type 1 bipolar disorder and it causes me to have auditory hallucinations whenever I have had edibles or any such and generally has not helped me with pain or anything else. I very much wish that it did, but it has not...and the side effects that it caused me were too troublesome. So it's not an option for me anyway, but even if it was, it is still very taboo even for people that they know are dying because it is illegal and they do prosecute it here. I would not be surprised at all to see such a news article from Tennessee. I could very much see them doing such a thing. But the vast majority of people in healthcare in this state do not agree with that at all. Virtually all of them, especially those involved in end of life care or even many involved in pain management would like to see the laws change drastically because even with just pain management, it causes a lot of sticky situations on drug screens and what they have to do about terminating patients who test positive for THC.
  For a few weeks, I tried some legal, over the counter CBD oil. It didn't do anything for me, but suddenly I was popping positive for THC on drug screens. I had some severe seizures and ended up in the hospital - and they did drug screens (which I almost never ever have when admitted, but they do it if you have seizures) and found that. I had never tested positive for THC in my life and I hadn't had marijuana/THC edibles, etc in the past 7 years at least, probably 10yrs+. I was dumbfounded.... And really scared. I was afraid that I was going to get booted from palliative care and generally blacklisted. It was never mentioned, not even by the physicians during my hospitalization where the results came from. Literally no one cared. I thought I would head off any issues by telling my psychiatrist at the next appointment, but he thought it was hilarious. A huge grin spread across his face and you'd think I told him the best joke ever lmao. I took the same approach with palliative care and told him, he also laughed a whole lot just at the fact that I tested positive from that and, I think, at how nervous and worried I was over something that he gave not a single shit about. Then he just waved his hand as if to dismiss the whole thing and then changed the subject to find out how our other med changes had done recently. And it was never brought up ever again. It's probably not even mentioned in my records as the results were from another hospital. It seems like the only people who give a single crap about marijuana use at this point are the police and lawmakers who insist upon keeping it illegal and paying tons of money, tons of tax payer money, to imprison people for even just using it or possessing it. When my doctors just thought the whole thing was a big joke and even the physicians during the admission for which I tested positive never even mentioned it, with me only finding out because I looked through the records and found the test results. That was really telling to me about what kind of harm marijuana can do... Not really any as long as it is regulated as they do cigarettes or alcohol.
  As long as people observe the same precautions with alcohol, like not driving while their judgment and driving abilities are impaired, then there is a lot of tax revenue to be made... And a lot of money to be saved by not spending tens and hundreds of thousands to imprison even just a single person over the possession or use of marijuana, which also can destroy a person's life because of the record and the trouble it would cause not only getting gainful employment, but even now, renting an apartment. Finding housing is becoming increasingly difficult if you have any kind of criminal record. Such a small thing can completely destroy someone's life and turn them more to a life of crime because it is so difficult to live by working a normal job because no one will hire you, then you can't afford to live. That's the sad reality. And these people could be working and paying taxes and being regular, contributing members of society. It's a waste from all angles. Just stupid as hell.
  Anyway, sorry for the long fucking book. But this is one of my pet peeves, which is ironic since I don't even want to smoke marijuana. Or vape it. Or eat it. Or whatever. But I think other people should not be penalized for responsible use. It's just ridiculous at this point. Especially when you're talking about pain control, and even more so when you're talking about pain control or nausea control at end of life care. I mean, come the fuck on. >
  
  Insane. Just a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars. >
  
  This is the way to do it right here. Go after extremely vulnerable people and make a news story that exposes how ridiculous the law is. Agitate the public until they overwhelmingly support legalization rather than just slightly support it. I'm hoping that down in Texas there's new stories about 10 year olds being forced to give birth to rapists children in the daily newspapers regularly. Show the public what their laws do. >
  
  And they will be reincarnated as cockroaches in the next life.
  Justice will be served, eventually. >
  
  If only. >
  
  Bad person we want you to die with opiates how dare you
  We can't make more monies from you unless you take our legal heroin >
  
  You're grossly overthinking this. He shouldn't be vaping anything in a fucking hospital setting. The electric discharge of a vape is a fire hazard around oxygen equipment and no other patient should have to breathe in his Vape output. Look it sucks that he's terminally ill but he's not the only person sick or dying in that hospital and there's people there literally to take care of him who have to be considered as well. The "legal heroine" in the hospital isn't going to be breathed in by everyone nearby the person taking it. 
  As for the cops, there's no mystery here nor is there any conspiracy. They're fucking cops. By definition they are carceral Thugs who think the answer to everything is in a rest. They are very much the hammer that thinks everything in front of them is a nail. >
  
  For them to make him suffer is ridiculous and the nurse should be fired could of simple took pen and said violation of policy but no called the police where her compassion she needs a new career >
  
  Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
  It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
  Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
  Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me. >
  
  That's a bit excessive, innit? >
  
  Depends on the color of their skin >
  
  Exactly, because otherwise they would get a get out of jail free card in exchange for an international arms dealer. >
  
  Oh yeah, I forgot were only supposed to rescue the white ones. 
  But I bet you’re not racist at all and
  Your best friend is black , amiright? >
  
  Woahhh there killer, just to conclusions much? I was talking about women, I’m just sexist. Are you racist? >
  
  I’m anti racist but a little sexist, men piss me off >
  
  Get a room, you two. >
  
  The big question here that's being missed is: who was responsible for authorizing this 'bust'? Did the hospital administration call it in, giving law enforcement no choice? Or, was it some high-horse sergeant that wanted to make a point?
  There's someone beyond mention in this article who's an asshole.
  ​
  EDIT: as far as safety around oxygen is concerned, the hospital staff could have likely handled this without need of law enforcement. Take the damn pen away or explain to him why he can't and monitor he doesn't use it. >
  
  Based on the absolute fucking entitlement awesome of a vape obsessed assholes in this thread and basically every time this conversation comes up on Reddit, I would not be at all surprised to find out that he ignored prior instruction. >
  
  Kansas is one of those freedom loving places that wants government to stop interfering right? >
  
  ACAB >
  
  I wonder why people hate cops? >
  
  Could have sworn the US was more free than my country.. that's what I heard anyway. >
  
  They really wonder why people don't like them. Lol >
  
  I live about 15 minutes away from Idaho. I reside in Washington state. People from Idaho always like to tell how free their state is. I always have to remind them it’s free but as long as you’re not smoking marijuana or needing abortion. But yeah, it’s free I guess and they have better gun laws I think. >
  
  Cops are out of control in the US. We need to get rid of them all and only hire them back after further training and psych testing. >
  
  I'm not a fan of doxing,  but it the rat got doxed, I would not be sad.