Killing Highlights Risk of Selling Marijuana

Here's a story on Ken Gorman that was published in the New York Times today. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Ken's family.

DENVER, March 1 — Ken Gorman, an aging missionary of marijuana, was found murdered in his home here two weeks ago. The unsolved crime is exposing the tangled threads at the borderland of the legal and illegal drug worlds he inhabited.

Some legal experts say Mr. Gorman’s death could lead to a reconsideration of how medical marijuana is administered here and elsewhere. Providers are often left exposed and vulnerable because of the nation’s conflicting drug laws, with marijuana use illegal under federal law but legalized for some medicinal purposes here and in 10 other states.

Since 1997, after the first medical marijuana law was passed in California, as many as 20 legal marijuana providers have been killed around the country, mostly in robberies, said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or Norml, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington.

Some in law enforcement, including Colorado’s attorney general, John W. Suthers, say the Gorman killing illuminates more clearly than ever that crime and marijuana cannot be disentangled.

“Mr. Gorman showed that the law is abused and can be abused,” said Nate Strauch, a spokesman for Mr. Suthers.

Many people in the medical marijuana supply system say the central risk comes down to the fact that they work in the shadows, where law enforcement officials are often either conflicted or hostile and crime is rampant....

The Denver police have revealed little about the murder investigation.

A spokesman, Sonny Jackson, said the police responded to reports of shots fired at Mr. Gorman’s home around 7 p.m. on Feb. 17 and found Mr. Gorman with a gunshot wound to the chest. He died shortly thereafter.

Mr. Jackson said that there had been an incident the previous night in Mr. Gorman’s home; someone had been arrested and neighbors reported shots fired. But investigators said they did not believe that incident and the slaying were connected.

Colorado’s medical marijuana law, enshrined in the state’s Constitution by a statewide vote in 2000, protects people from prosecution under state law. Acquiring the drug illegally, however, puts those people in very dangerous company.

Mr. Gorman’s home, still taped off by a police ribbon, has become a kind of shrine to the subculture he celebrated.

“He was the most compassionate, kind man I knew,” said a young man who identified himself as Vuddah, as thick curls of smoke shrouded the group. “We want to keep this place open so that the patients can keep coming,” he added. “That’s what we’re going to do.

“That’s what Ken would have wanted,” he continued. “To us, he was a medical marijuana freedom fighter.
NY TIMES article here