Spell check Rep. Leah Vukmir's name in a Word document, and "vomit" is the first suggestion that comes up for her last name. Witness her boneheaded testimony at the Dec. 15 Joint Committee on Health and you will want to vomit. In her lap. The subject was medical marijuana, or, specifically, the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, which was jointly introduced by Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D. Middleton) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison). Pocan and now retired northwoods Sen. Frank Boyle introduced similar legislation in 2007, but it died in committee; Vukmir chaired the Assembly health committee at the time. [continues 616 words]
To celebrate his 54th birthday last April 23, medical marijuana advocate Gary Storck began lobbying for the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act at the state Capital with his friend Mary Powers, a wheelchair-bound U.S. Army veteran who was fighting AIDS, Hepatitis C and several forms of cancer. "By the summer's end we were there weekly, and I would make a short movie each week, just a couple minutes, 'The Mary and Gary Show'," Storck said. "There are seven on YouTube. Mary and I hit more than 80 offices, and soon other patients joined us. Mary was often having a hard time, but she was always there waiting for me in the rotunda on lobby days. She became a familiar figure in the hallways and offices." [continues 651 words]
Advocates Say Time Is Right For Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act An unusual world record was set last month by 56-year-old Florida stockbroker Irvin Rosenfeld when he smoked his 115,000th joint of marijuana grown and supplied by the federal government. He set the record on Nov. 20, which was the 27th anniversary of his first shipment of medical marijuana from the feds. Rosenfeld is among a handful of federal medical marijuana users who receive prescription marijuana monthly under what is known as the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, which came into existence in 1978 when glaucoma patient Robert Randall sued the government to allow him to use the only drug that relieved his glaucoma - marijuana. [continues 1205 words]
Sir, Thanks for the series on medical cannabis (October issue). May I point out that the complete report on the use of therapeutic cannabis you wrote about is properly titled, "Chronic Cannabis Use in the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program: An Examination of Benefits and Adverse Effects of Legal Clinical Cannabis." (Russo, Mathre, Byrne et al 2002) The complete study may be found at www.medicalcannabis.com. Patients Out of Time (Mr. (Gary) Storck is on our Board of Advisers) is a 501c3 educational charity. We educate medical doctors and registered nurses about the therapeutic applications of cannabis. [continues 287 words]
More than 30 states passed medical marijuana bills in the 1970s and '80s, including Wisconsin, but all of those left the responsibility of supplying the marijuana up to the federal government. "A bill was passed in 1981 with overwhelming majorities in both houses," said Madison marijuana activist Gary Storck. "It was signed into law by Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus in 1982, but, unfortunately, it was kind of a watered-down law that required the federal government to supply the medical marijuana, which the state would then dispense to approved patients who had glaucoma or were undergoing cancer chemotherapy. The bill was basically rendered symbolic." [continues 309 words]
After some research into the effects of marijuana, you might just begin to be convinced it is a miracle medicine, perhaps even Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth. The beneficial effects among patients with everything from AIDS to Alzheimer's have been documented by doctors and scientists around the world. It was a legal medicine from mid 19th century and well into the 20th century. Tincture of cannabis - marijuana in alcohol - was available in pharmacies and recommended for a variety of circumstances - as an analgesic, muscle relaxant, anticonvulsant, for asthma and rheumatism, to ease labor pains, migraines and menstruation problems, to name a few of the most popular medical uses. [continues 411 words]
Every month George McMahon receives a silver tin of prescription marijuana courtesy of the federal government. He is one of five survivors in the Federal Drug Administration's Compassionate Investigational New Drug program. "Personally, I won," said the Iowa man who has been receiving 300 free government joints every month since 1990. " I don't have anything to beef about. That's really hard to explain to somebody like Jacki (Rickert, for whom the new Wisconsin medical marijuana bill is named), who can't win." [continues 654 words]
Marijuana activists, advocates and adventurers will converge on Madison Oct. 5-7 for the 37th Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival. Political activist Ben Masel has been involved with the annual festival from the beginning. He was a fresh-faced freshman from New Jersey when he arrived in Madison to attend UW in 1971. "I just got to town as a freshman for that first one," he said. "It was more closely in context with the anti-war movement then." The Vietnam War ended and we've moved on to conduct wars in other parts of the world, but our internal war with marijuana goes on. [continues 753 words]
Need proof that marijuana has been demonized by your government? Consider hemp. Hemp is not marijuana. Hemp is a non-psychoactive plant that grows best in temperate climates like ours. It is a variety of the tropical cannabis sativa, or marijuana. Trying to get high on hemp is like trying to get drunk on NA beer. Your federal government makes us all look like dopes by being unable and unwilling to separate industrial hemp from marijuana. Forget that hemp was legal tender in the American colonies and beyond, that the first American flags were made of hemp, that both Washington and Jefferson raised hemp, that Ben Franklin printed publications on hemp paper, that American ships were caulked and rigged with hemp, and that hemp played an important role in both World Wars. [continues 1555 words]
Critics of "big government" point to the alleged excesses of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the 1960s to make their case. The critics have prevailed: by the late 1990s a Republican backlash aided by Democratic capitulation succeeded in dismantling the Great Society's "War on Poverty." By the mid 1990s the poverty war had become, in the words of sociologist Herbert Gans, the "war on the poor," with Project Head Start, Medicare, and Medicaid the only major surviving programs. [continues 797 words]
The People Want Medical Marijuana, but Uncle Sam Is Hooked on Demonizing Weed Someone has been telling lies about Mary J. Take, for example, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's position paper on medical marijuana (www.usdoj.gov/dea/marijuana_position.html). The lies are so blatant and self-serving that if there were any political leadership in this country, the DEA's bloated budget would be frozen immediately while it undergoes investigation into whether the public that pays its $2.5 billion budget and employs its 11,000 workers is best served by the agency's current policies and practices. [continues 2533 words]
