“Each person who suffers has different levels of how they’re impacted and what it takes to recover,” said Rep. John Lively, D-Springfield, who said he used naturopathic medicine to treat his post-traumatic stress. “This is about providing a legal avenue for people suffering from (post-traumatic stress disorder).”
Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, said that there was lack of scientific studies on the issue because the federal government still considers marijuana an illegal drug.
Greenlick, chairman of the House Health Care Committee, said that committee members heard “a mountain” of testimony from medical professionals and post-traumatic stress sufferers who addressed the benefits medical marijuana offered when treating the illness.
Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group with over 26,000 members, which advocates for medical marijuana patients, and caregiver rights. Michael is also the host of Planet Green Trees Radio, a marijuana reform based show, which is broadcast every Thursday night 8-10 pm EST. Follow Komorn on Twitter.
Prohibition creates, sustains and handsomely rewards the illegal drug industry while pretending to fight that very same industry.
By Michael Komorn
10. The benefits of hemp are denied. Hemp can be used for paper, paneling, plastics, clothing and thousands of other useful products. The seeds are highly nutritious and can be used to make flour, cooking oil and cattle feed.
Hemp is an environmentally friendly plant that grows without herbicides, nourishes the soil, matures rapidly and offer high yields. It’s the number-one biomass producer in the world – ten tons per acre in four months. It could be a highly proficient fuel-producing crop.
Hemp, often referred to as “nature’s perfect plant,” could rain favor to suffering American farmers in addition to reducing America’s dependence on fossil fuels, which could play an integral role mitigating climate change.
9. Prohibition consumes billions that could be used to help the needy. More than 50 government agencies feed at the drug war trough. An average of $2.4 billion is spent annually in the U.S. on the War On Drugs. Food stamps and other social programs are being slashed while billions are spent trying to stop adults from using marijuana — a plant that grows naturally..
8. Prohibition is undoubtedly counterproductive. The certainty of lucrative profits for anyone on who can produce and deliver marijuana to the streets assured that even more will be produced and delivered.
7. Criminalizing marijuana is without moral justification. Real crimes require both a victim and a perpetrator. Can you imagine being tried for robbing yourself? Our government has done the equivalent by making adult use of marijuana a crime.
6. Marijuana users are not debased human beings. Billions around the commonly enjoy positive benefits from mind-altering drugs (especially from alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and marijuana).
Demonizing and criminalizing some drugs, while approving others without rational criteria, is arbitrary and ill-calculated. Why are marijuana users criminals while alcohol and tobacco users are not? Why are marijuana dealers demonized, but alcohol and tobacco dealers are not?
5. Marijuana is effective medicine. There’s overwhelming documented evidence that marijuana can safely relieve pain, nausea and vomiting caused by various illnesses. In fact, marijuana is patently and naturally safer than most commonly prescribed drugs.
4. Promising medical research is condemned. The discovery of naturally occurring marijuana-like substances in the human body that activate so-called cannabinoid receptors has opened up vast possibilities for new medicines derived from the 66 or so cannabinoids identified in marijuana. These receptors are not just in the brain, but also found in many other parts of the body including the immune, endocrine and reproductive systems.
3. Billions in potential taxes go to drug cartels. Our cash-strapped states are being cheated out of billions that could be obtained by taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol.
2. Thousands of prohibition murders occur each year. Mexico is the world’s largest exporter of marijuana (most goes to the United States). There were at least 24,000 prohibition-related murders in Mexico since 2006. Thousands more died here, also a direct result of marijuana prohibition.
1. Prohibition denies our most basic human right. Prohibition takes away our right of sovereignty over our own bodies and gives this power to government. Does any other human right make sense if we don’t have sovereignty over our own bodies?
The drug war is a futile and perpetual effort that not only furthers the very effect it seeks to diminish. Our government deprives the needy in an effort to control the masses and fuel pharmaceutical dependence.,
Despite 40 years and $1 trillion-plus of taxpayer money spent trying to stop – not robbery, not rape, not murder, not even shoplifting – but mostly trying to stop adults from using marijuana; despite draconian punishments; despite jailing millions of nonviolent Americans; despite thousands of prohibition-related murders each year, illegal drugs are cheaper, purer and more readily available than ever.
Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group with over 26,000 members, which advocates for medical marijuana patients, and caregiver rights. Michael is also the host of Planet Green Trees Radio, a marijuana reform based show, which is broadcast every Thursday night 8-10 pm EST. Follow Komorn on Twitter.
Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group with over 26,000 members, which advocates for medical marijuana patients, and caregiver rights. Michael is also the host of Planet Green Trees Radio, a marijuana reform based show, which is broadcast every Thursday night 8-10 pm EST. Follow Komorn on Twitter.
In dramatic fashion, 52-year-old Curtis Kile, who is afflicted with cerebral palsy is rolling his wheelchair to the White House to advocate for medical marijuana users.
Kile departed his Taylor home June 14 and inched his way down sidewalks, through traffic, across mountains and through cities and small towns from Michigan to Washington.
He intends to tell President Obama, face-to-face, that marijuana should be legalized in the United States. He believes sick people should have safer and cheaper access to the drug that he believes has been critical to his health.
“The alcohol industry doesn’t want it legal, and the pharmaceutical and the tobacco companies don’t want that, because it’s going to bite into their profits.
“It’s the money that’s stopping it, and that’s wrong,” he said.
Whether Kile is ever granted an audience with the President or not, remains to be seen, but there is strong symbolism in his will.
“His story has inspired people all across the country,” said Rick Thompson, Flint-based editor of the Compassion Chronicles, an online news source for the cannabis community in Michigan. Thompson wrote about Kile last week.
“I don’t know that he’ll get to speak to the president, but there’s no denying his passion,” added Southfield attorney Michael Komorn, host of Planet Green Trees, a weekly Internet interview show about marijuana.
The man on a mission has long depended on marijuana to control the severe muscle spasms and other symptoms his condition. His sole desire is for sick Americans to have low-cost, legal access to the medicine they need.
A new leaf in the medical marijuana conversation has been turned over as parents desperate to help children with diverse health issues, from autism to severe epilepsy, are turning to medical marijuana to provide relief.
Currently, 18 states, plus Washington, D.C., permit medical marijuana. Among them, a number provide prescriptions to children, with parental supervisions, to treat a host of conditions ranging from autism to cancer to seizures.
Medical marijuana is received differently in different places, by different people. But it certainly draws praise and thanks from one mom, whose little boy can have hundreds of seizures a days and has been unable to find relief despite the array of medications prescribed to him to control seizures. Since treating his condition with the use of marijuana in syrup form, he hasn’t had a seizure for months, she said.
NBC News reports that the boy uses medicine that was grown on a legal, for-medicinal use pot farm. Dr. Margaret Gedde of the Clinicians’ Institute for Cannabis Medicine said it was bred to help control pain, nausea and seizures without being psychoactive, so the child won’t get high.
But not everyone is convinced. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that medical marijuana use was not tested in children and shouldn’t be used that way with further study.
“I worry that we just don’t know enough about it,” Dr. Sharon Levy of the Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School told NBC. “I think they’re putting their child at risk of long-term consequences of marijuana use that we don’t fully understand.”
Contact medical marijuana attorney Michael Komorn, at 800-656-3557 for a free consultation.
This Sunday, CNN will air an hour long documentary on Marijuana, entitled “Weed.” CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta traveled the globe for nearly a year highlighting how the drug is perceived and used all over the world. More interesting to me than the pot shops and cafes that are opening up in places like Colorado, is the story of Charlotte Figi. Charlotte suffered from Dravet’s syndrome, making her prone to up to 300 seizures per week. Her parents, like many patients in Michigan, tried every possible medicine before turning to marijuana. When nothing else was working, Charlotte’s father began doing some research and found that marijuana had been helpful in reducing others’ seizures in places where medical marijuana was legal.
Check out this video of Charlotte’s amazing story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH5yzEu3JGQ
He dug deeper, and learned about 6 brothers in Colorado who are considered some of the best in the land. They produced a strain of marijuana specifically for Charlotte and others who suffer from the same or similar ailments. Dubbed “Charlotte’s Web,” the strain is high in CBD content, but low in THC. THC is the ingredient that has made the drug so controversial, and produces the psychoactive, while CBD receptors are located all throughout your body and when stimulated, have been proven to have palliative effects. CBD receptors are found in especially high numbers in the brain, and since she began using oil made from “Charlotte’s Web,” her seizures have declined from over 300 a week, to 0-1 a week. Be sure to check out the documentary this Sunday at 8:00 PM.
