Pubdate: Sun, 30 Mar 2014
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.torontosun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Michelle Malkin

MY TRIP TO THE POT SHOP

Medical Marijuana Effective for Many Patients

PUEBLO WEST, Colo. - It's 9 a.m. on a weekday, and I'm at the Marisol 
Therapeutics pot shop. This is serious business.

Security is tight. ID checks are frequent. Merchandise is strictly 
regulated, labeled, wrapped and controlled.

The store is clean, bright and safe. The staffers are courteous and 
professional. Customers of all ages are here.

There's a middle-aged woman at the counter nearby who could be your 
school librarian.

On the opposite end of the dispensary, a slender young soldier in a 
wheelchair with close-cropped hair, dressed in his fatigues, consults 
with a clerk.

And then there's my husband and me.

The dispensary is split in two: "Recreational" on one side, "medical" 
on the other.

Medical customers must have state-issued cards and doctor's approval.

The inventory is not taxed, so prices are lower on that side.

On the recreational side, where I'm peering at mysterious jars of 
prickly green goods, "Smoke on the Water" is thumping from stereo speakers.

But the many imposing signs posted on the wall emphatically warn: No 
smoking, no open drug consumption, and absolutely no entry allowed 
into the locked lab where the cannabis plants sit under bright lights.

Before I tell you how and why my hubby and I ended up at Marisol 
Therapeutics, some background about my long time support of medical marijuana.

More than 15 years ago in Seattle, while working at the Seattle 
Times, I met an extraordinary man who changed my mind about the issue.

Ralph Seeley was a Navy nuclear submarine officer, pilot, cellist and 
lawyer suffering from chordoma, a rare form of bone cancer that 
starts in the spine.

He had undergone several surgeries, including removal of one lung and 
partial removal of the other, and was confined to a wheelchair.

Chronically nauseous from chemotherapy and radiation, weak from a 
suppressed appetite, and suffering excruciating pain, Seeley turned 
to marijuana cigarettes for relief.

Seeley was far from "wasted".

While smoking the drug to reduce his pain, he finished law school - 
something he couldn't have done while on far more powerful 
"mainstream" narcotics, which left him zonked out and vomiting 
uncontrollably in his hospital bed after chemo.

He took his plight to the Washington state supreme court, where he 
asserted a constitutionally protected liberty interest in having his 
doctor issue a medical pot prescription.

The court rejected Seeley's case for physician-prescribed marijuana, 
arguing that the government's interest in preserving an "interlocking 
trellis" of costly and ineffective "War on Drug" laws trumped his 
right to individual autonomy and physician treatment.

Seeley died in 1998. But his spirit persevered. He bravely paved the 
way for medical marijuana laws in nearly two dozen states.

This brings us back to Pueblo.

For the past three months, my mother-in-law, Carole, whom I love with 
all my heart, has battled metastatic melanoma.

After a harrowing week of hospitalization and radiation, she's at home now.

A miraculous new combination of oral cancer drugs seems to have 
helped enormously with pain and possibly contained the disease's spread.

But Carole's loss of appetite and nausea persist.

A month ago she applied for a state-issued medical marijuana card. It 
still hasn't come through.

But thanks to Amendment 64, the marijuana drug legalization act 
approved by voters in 2012, we were able to legally and safely 
circumvent the bureaucratic holdup.

Our stash included 10 prerolled joints, a "vape pen" and two 
containers of cheddar cheese-flavoured marijuana crackers (they were 
out of brownies).

So far, just one cracker a day is yielding health benefits.

Carole is eating better than she has in three months.

Do I worry about the negative costs, abuses and cultural consequences 
of unbridled recreational pot use? Of course I do.

But the legalized marijuana entrepreneurs here in my adopted home 
state are just like any other entrepreneurs: Securing capital, paying 
taxes, complying with a thicket of regulations, taking risks and 
providing goods and services that ordinary people want and need.

Including our grateful family.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom