Is Joe Kelly Levasseur a Hypocrite for Attacking Mayor Joyce Craig Over Drug Policy?
Lawyer JKL Defended Store Sanctioned for Allegedly Distributing Synthetic Marijuana— OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — Another week, another rant by Joe Levasseur attacking Mayor Joyce Craig. Queen City Health Department Director Anna Thomas also was skewered by the poisoned arrow that is JKL’s scorn.
In a screenshot from his Facebook page, Alderman-at-Large Levasseur shared a release from Mayor Joyce Craig with the comment, “Ultimate hypocrisy: Craig takes credit 4 drug bust with Public Health Director — whose department hands out crack pipes to drug addicts.”
As any reasonable person knows, the provision of public health care to substance abusers is quite a different thing from the illegal trafficking in narcotics. The existence of drug dealers feeds if not expands a community of “drug addicts” (Alderman Levasseur’s phrase), creating a public health problem. The resulting public health problem necessitates non-law enforcement intervention by The City, namely, the provision of health and social services to substance abusers.
Where is the hypocrisy?
One might one ask if the true hypocrite is Joseph Kelly Levasseur, Esq., who in his professional capacity as a lawyer defended a convenience store accused of selling synthetic marijuana.
“Spice” Crisis
In August 2014, the City of Manchester and the State of New Hampshire became engulfed in a public health crisis, the so-called “Spice Epidemic.” The State and City experienced a surge in overdoses by users of synthetic cannabinoids.
Synthetic cannabinoids, commonly known as “synthetic marijuana,” “K2,” or “Spice”, are often sold in legal retail outlets as “herbal incense” or “potpourri”, and synthetic cathinones are often sold as “bath salts” or “jewelry cleaner”. They are labeled “not for human consumption” to mask their intended purpose and avoid Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory oversight of the manufacturing process.
Synthetic cannabinoids are man-made chemicals that are applied (often sprayed) onto plant material and marketed as a “legal” high. Users claim that synthetic cannabinoids mimic Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive active ingredient in marijuana. — Office of National Drug Control Policy
Granite State Governor Maggie Hassan issued an order declaring a public health emergency. According to the Los Angeles Times, “At least 41 people in Manchester suffered ‘serious medical reactions,’ and at least 20 of those were hospitalized.” Three people in Concord had become seriously ill from “Spice” ( a synthetic cannabinoid) in the 24 hours before the declaration.”
Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas immediately convened a task force to deal with the public health crisis.
In a video interview with Manchesterinklink.com, Gatsas said he had the authority under Manchester municipal ordinances to pull the licenses of stores selling Spice as the peddling of substances causing damage to people was a public nuisance.
The Manchester Police Department made a search of stores selling products suspected to be synthetic marijuana. The City Clerk’s Office subsequently revoked the business licenses of three convenience stores based on police reports the stores were selling “Smacked,” allegedly a brand of synthetic cannabinoid being marketed as potpourri.
Enter Joseph Kelly Levasseur, Esquire
Joe Levasseur, attorney-at-law, was engaged by one of the closed stores, TN Gas — a gasoline station and convenience store located on Bridge Street — to fight the business license revocation.
Levasseur — who at the time of the 2014 Spice Crisis had a contentious and antagonistic relationship with Mayor Ted Gatsas, then in the middle of his third term — believed that the revocation of the convenience stores’ businesses licenses was illegal under city ordinances.
Joseph Kelly Levasseur, Esq., prevailed over Ted Gatsas and the City of Manchester in court. The court held that no synthetic marijuana has been found on the premises of TN Gas. Was it just a technicality?
Hillsborough County Attorney Patricia LaFrance said it was difficult to ban Spice, legally, as the chemicals that caused intoxication used to create synthetic marijuana were changed often. Non-banned chemicals were substituted, giving Spice products legal cover until those chemicals, too, were banned.
The products using non-banned chemicals seemingly were as intoxicating and as damaging as the Spice products containing chemicals banned under the law, but technically were legal at the time they were sold.
The three convenience store owners subsequently went before a Board of Mayor and Alderman committee and pledged to no longer sell products suspected to be synthetic cannabinoids.
Joyce “The Pusher” Craig
A Joe Kelly Levasseur Facebook page fan (whose name I have redacted) responded to JKL’s “Hypocrite” post with the comment “Joyce ‘The Pusher’ Craig.”
Levasseur could have eliminated this provocative comments, but choose not to. He allowed the a smear of Mayor Craig as a “pusher” to stand.
But this is par for the JKL branded course, making initial attacks on Craig and others who have drawn his wrath, then allowing his FB fans to make attacks on his targets. Joe Levasseur, paragon of free speech, allows posts featuring obscenities and misogyny to remain.
After watching Levasseur’s online behavior, first on the Union Leader ‘s online site when it allowed comments, and then on Facebook, it is my opinion that JKL manages his FB page to serve as a platform hosting insults and slanders of his perceived enemies.
He makes a post raising an issue, and lets the JKL Brigade pile on.
If Joe Kelly Levasseur objected to the equation of Maor Joyce Craig with drug dealers, I feel he would have eliminated it. I believe that he revels in such character assassination, being a master of the dark art himself.
While one could argue that JKL is making the point that giving out crack pipes encourages the illegal trafficking in rock cocaine and thus Mayor Craig is a hypocrite, Levasseur on his Will & Joe public access TV show reportedly has claimed that an employee of the Manchester Health Department is handing out fentanyl to substance abusers.*
Levasseur seemingly wants to smear Mayor Craig as a drug dealer.
Ethics of Client Choice
In the United States, people are considered innocent until proven guilty. Lawyers take on a wide variety of cases under the law; a defense attorney for an accused murderer is not endorsing murder by representing his client before a court of law.
Yet, as the late William Kunstler often told those attending his lectures, an attorney does make a moral choice when they take on a client. However, the issue of initial choice by lawyers is covered by the American Bar Association Code of Ethics and is a source of ongoing debate.
American Bar Association guidelines encourage lawyers to take on unpopular clients. The American legal system is adversarial, with the parties to a case arguing before a judge or jury serving as arbiters. For the system to work, the accused must have access to representation.
Furthermore, “Under the professional rules, lawyers are to make decisions that are based on the impact on their client, not society. It’s consequences for the client, not consequences for society.”**
As an attorney-at-law, Joseph Kelly Levasseur did nothing wrong defending a convenience store owner over a business license revoked by the City Clerk for dealing in a product suspected to be synthetic marijuana.
Technically, under the law, the chemicals used in “Smack” were not proscribed, so the product could be sold legally, just as LSD was legal until it and other similar hallucinogens were banned by federal law when Congress amended the Drug Abuse Control Act in 1966.
Moral Choices of Citizens
The fact is, Alderman-at-Large Joseph Kelly Levasseur, a lawyer, chose to defend a client accused of selling a suspected synthetic cannabinoid during the “Spice” Epidemic of 2014. This was a public health crisis that triggered declarations of a state of emergency by the Governor of New Hampshire and the Mayor of Manchester.
I believe that in the realm of moral choice, there are distinctions to be made between one’s actions taken in one’s role as a professional legal advocate and those made when acting as an elected politician (aldermen are considered city officers under the City Charter), as a citizen — and as a human being.
While the issue of the ethical choice Joseph Kelly Levasseur, Esquire, made in exercising his discretion in choosing his client is complicated, Citizen Levasseur’s moral choice in managing the comments section of his Facebook page is much simpler to reckon with.
As pointed out earlier, a JKL Facebook fan responded to his “Hypocrite” post with the comment “Joyce ‘The Pusher’ Craig.”
The word “pusher” is slang for “a peddler of illegal drugs.”
In my opinion, with his Facebook post, Joe Kelly Levasseur the political demagogue, is trying to equate Mayor Joyce Craig and Manchester Health Department Director Ann Thomas with drug dealers.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s Thesaurus, “selling” is a synonym for the verb “dealing,” whether narcotics are involved or not.
So, in essence, we have the lawyer who defended a dealer of a substance that technically, under the law, was not at that time considered synthetic marijuana but which overwhelming evidence pointed to it being a dangerous substance injurious to the public health, allowing his Facebook page to serve as a platform for a comment smearing Mayor Joyce Craig as a “pusher,” a drug dealer.
Just who is the hypocrite?
Endnotes
*The May 17, 2023 Will & Joe Show in which Manchester Health Department Director of Overdose Prevention Andrew Warner was discussed is no longer publicly available on Levasseur’s Facebook page.
**Jennings, Marianne M., “Moral Disengagement and Lawyers: Codes, Ethics, Conscience and Some Great Movies” (Duquesne Law Review, Vol. 37:573, p. 576 ft. 18)
