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Activist Dana Beal Sentenced, Suffers Heart Attack

Submitted by Phillip Smith on (Issue #702)
Politics & Advocacy

Iconic activist Dana Beal suffered a heart attack while in a Wisconsin jail awaiting transfer to a state prison to begin serving a 2 ½ prison sentence for marijuana trafficking. According to Celebstoner.com and the Free Dana Beal and Free Ourselves Facebook page, Beal was stricken Tuesday morning, and at last report, he was hospitalized in stable condition under sedation at the Intensive Care Unit at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison.

Beal leading Global Marijuana March in NYC, 1994 (wikimedia.org)
Last week, Beal was sentenced to prison in Wisconsin after pleading guilty to trafficking 180 pounds of pot in a bust that unraveled when his 1997 Chevy van got pulled over for expired tags and no tail light. He also got 2 ½ years of probation to be served after his jail time. He got credit for 267 days already served.

Despite courtroom testimonials from Beal supporters, including "Guru of Ganja" Ed Rosenthal and Wisconsin medical marijuana patient Jacki Rickert, Beal got prison time. But it was less than the four years the prosecution asked for and well below the 15 year maximum allowable under Wisconsin law.

Beal was already on probation after being busted with another 100-pound-plus load in Nebraska in 2009. The previous year, the New York City-based activist saw more than $100,000 in cash seized in Illinois, although he avoided any convictions in that case. He also has previous drug convictions in 1971, 1987, 1993 and 2006.

When not fighting his own cases, Beal has built a career as an activist, first with the Yippies in the early 1970s, then as a founding organizer of the Global Marijuana Marches, and in recent years, as a crusader for the addiction-treating powers of ibogaine with his group Cures Not Wars.

Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Comments

W (not verified)

The link above for Cures Not Wars is the wrong link. The site you are  lead to is of a group with the same name but is not Beal's group.

Wed, 09/28/2011 - 11:02pm Permalink

 

Solid piece, but please allow me one, non-douche correction.  The cash seizure was in Mattoon, IL and not PA.  I spent a week there after Dana got busted looking into the case as a journalist.  That and other adventures with Dana are a large part of my new book, "Hill Billy Highway".  Thanks for covering his illness, though.  Would love to see the old man pull through.

 

Chad Nance

Editor- WLN

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Hill-Billy-Highway-American-ebook/dp/B005QC7ROE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317260029&sr=1-1

 

Thu, 09/29/2011 - 3:47pm Permalink

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