| The Tulsa Frontier reports that Attorney General, Scott Pruitt, has taken it upon his office to rewrite the description of the citizen initiative effort to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis derivatives for certain serious medical conditions. How much would Pruitt change the language of State Question 788? Pruitt, a long-time Southern Baptist, has made no secret of his opposition to any change in the state's prohibition on any cannabis, in any form. He even took on a lot of ridicule for attempting to take the state of Colorado before the nation's high court in an attempt to prohibit Colorado from changing their state law. "The diversion of marijuana from Colorado … is particularly burdensome for neighboring states where law enforcement agencies and the citizens have endured the substantial expansion of Colorado marijuana," the legal challenge stated. Pruitt was unsuccessful in that attempt. Read the full report at the Tulsa Frontier |  |
  | Further Reading: The Top 3 Myths About Medical Marijuana Patients: by Bryan Punyon The first Myth of the Medical Marijuana Patient is the perception that all legitimate medical patients are chronically ill, routinely hooked up to machines and pumped full of drugs, taking a hit off a joint that helps relieve and manage their excruciating pain as they lay infirm in bed. There are a lot of snide remarks made on the sly about people who have an MMJ authorization but lack one of the Big Diseases; if you’re not a Cancer, AIDS, Crohn’s, or have some other media-publicized disease, then you’re immediately suspected of not getting any “real” benefit from it. The truth is that many of the conditions that cannabis treats and relieves are what are known as “invisible illnesses”, conditions like Lupus, PTSD, or back and body pain, and many others are “undiagnosed”; medical professionals cannot find a definite reason for a patient’s pain, nausea, or other symptoms, even though the patient is undeniably in suffering. Read more.. |
The second Myth of the Medical Marijuana Patient is that they and they only should be allowed access to Cannabis for necessary medical use, and that all forms of recreational usage should still be looked down on as “getting high” and a form of addictive behavior.
Even if it’s legal as an essential medicine, we have to constantly be suspicious that someone might be abusing the pot laws just to get stoned, because even if sick people need it, certainly there’s no reason for a healthy person to smoke pot! I look at it like this: Cannabis has psychoactive properties that cause a head-change and relaxation.
Even if the medical properties of cannabis don’t directly affect your ailments and illnesses, isn’t relaxation a medical necessity when you’re sick or stressed? If your sober headspace is filled with illness or negativity of any kind, what’s wrong with wanting to change that using a natural substance?
People already do it with alcohol in a publicly-approved way, and that causes far more social and legal issues than cannabis ever has (other than to the people arrested and prosecuted for pot, of course). Read more..
The third Myth of the Medical Marijuana Patient is that MMJ patients are all somehow complicit in the business model of the MMJ industry.
Look, for years I had to self-medicate on the sly, because even though I was in pain, I had no access and no way to get access to a Medical Authorization, and the dissemination of the knowledge of how to find a cannabis-friendly doctor was so “insider” and limited, I had no idea that I even qualified.
Once the authorization clinics and dispensaries started opening, more information started getting out, and I was able to finally get safe and legal access. So, is it my fault, as an MMJ patient, for seeking out treatment and relief when it’s finally openly available to me? Am I at fault because they’ve chosen to operate in a business model that the state, for the most part, seems to be okay with? Read more..
Summary:
It suggests that all of our work to help medical marijuana patients might have been simply a political tactic to gain legitimacy in the first place, and if the public believe that cannabis activists may have been deceptive about the medical benefits of the plant, it makes them less likely to support the idea of responsible recreational use.
Perpetuating the Myths of the Medical Marijuana Patient only serves to strengthen the Myths of the Recreational Cannabis User. Read more..
