Pubdate: Thu, 15 May 2014
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2014 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Note: Prints only very short LTEs.
Author: Margery Eagan
Page: 4

TAX ON PRESCRIPTION MARIJUANA A SICK IDEA

State Sen. Brian Joyce wanted to take away senile grandma's driver's 
license. Now he wants to tax sick grandma's weed.

I was with him on his driving bills - but not on taxing medical 
marijuana. We've heaped enough abuse already on grandmas who say 
medical marijuana relieves their pain.

Between hysterical politicians and hysterical police (it was "Reefer 
Madness" at the Boston City Council pot dispensary debate), you'd 
think grandmas, or anyone seeking medical marijuana, were thugs, 
lepers, carriers of the plague.

Don't let them near our schools! Our downtowns! Keep 'em away from 
methadone clinics, or they'll deal drugs to addicts!

These pols and cops seem convinced people are "faking" diseases. So 
why not ship the stoners off to dispensaries on the outskirts of town 
in some scary, windswept industrial park with locked gates, massive 
security and a million metal detectors?

But I don't think most people who need medical pot are "fakers." If 
you saw the folks with ALS, MS, seizure disorders and Crohn's disease 
lined up at State House marijuana hearings last month, you wouldn't either.

The fact is Massachusetts' voters are way ahead of hysterical pols 
and cops who predicted Armageddon in 2008, when voters overwhelmingly 
approved decriminalizing marijuana, then in 2012, when voters 
overwhelmingly approved legalizing medical marijuana. Voters in 2016 
may very well approve legalizing marijuana altogether, at which point 
we can tax it to the moon.

But recreational marijuana - fun marijuana - is one thing. Medical 
marijuana is another. I don't want sick people taxed on prescription medicine.

One grandma I know - a great-grandmother, actually - has been a 
tireless crusader for medical marijuana. Allison Jones of Rutland 
fractured her spine, pelvis, ribs and both collar bones, and suffered 
collapsed lungs and a traumatic head injury. The registered nurse had 
stopped to help an injured motorist when a second car hit the first 
car, crushing her. Prescribed Oxycontin, Percocet and many other 
legal painkillers, she was depressed and in pain. Then she tried marijuana.

"I feel like the luckiest person in the world," Jones, 60, told me 
yesterday, crediting caregivers at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, 
where she saw many marathon survivors.

"But I am not the stereotype that people are afraid of," she said. "I 
would just like a safe, clean (dispensary) where knowledgeable people 
can advise me on the best strains of marijuana for my symptoms."

And she should have it - taxfree.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom