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This is the last bit of sweetness you'll see or read for today.

I've got the first of a regular column up on marijuana.com that I hope you'll check out. As I mentioned last week, I'll be writing regularly for them and eventually migrating over to cannabis.com. I'll be doing interviews, human interest and news stories as well as features. The column I envision will be a series and will chronicle our own path toward healing. It's very exciting and a tad intimidating, and I'm reminded every single moment I'm doing it how positively revolutionary this all is. Honestly.

Today I read yet another article about another state's legislature dithering around with medical marijuana laws. I've listened to presidential candidates, "top" neurologists and so forth and so on speak gravely of the need for more research and their fears and concerns about everything from predictions of a sort of stoned populace driving willy nilly to children accidentally ingesting giant cannabis edibles and the country's morals literally going to pot.

Can I hear a sigh?

Can you smell the bullshit?

May I rant for a moment?

Call me crazy, but these doctors, lawmakers, politicians, pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists don't give a "rat's ass" about the "dangers" of marijuana or the health of children. They care about power and money. Diabetes is one of the nation's leading health scourges, isn't it? And the numbers of children diagnosed with diabetes has skyrocketed. Let's not even get into how many children, at ever younger ages, are being diagnosed with various mental health disorders and learning disabilities and then given drugs to "help" and "control" them, even as the numbers continue to rise and no real long-term studies of the effects of these drugs over time exist. Any child can go into a 7-Eleven or some other junk store and purchase a Coke or a Slurpee or any number of chemical and sugar-laden drinks that rival the size of a grown man's head and drink it down -- hell -- a few times a day if that kid is so inclined. I believe a Big Gulp has nearly 5x the amount of sugar recommended as a daily allowance. I suppose it's still arguable whether the grotesque over-consumption of sugar, particularly in processed foods and sodas, is at the root of the diabetes and obesity epidemics, but you can bet those big companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald's are rarely admonished or restricted from hawking their wares in ever more sophisticated ways to children. Hell, there's a McDonald's in the lobby of the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, frequented by disadvantaged families visiting the MediCal clinics and bald children in plastic red wagons pulling IV poles. Children's welfare, my ass. In Utah yesterday, the Mormon-heavy legislature passed a bullshit and arguably useless cannabis bill, despite the entreaties of numerous patients and families. Guess who wrote the bill that effectively sabotaged an earlier, more scientifically sound one that patient and family groups supported? A legislator who is a pharmacist. Guess who advised the legislator and helped to write the bill? A doctor who founded a company whose mission is "to make quality of life better through oral, non-psychoactive cannabis products." Guess who put out a special edict several weeks ago condemning medical marijuana? Prophet Monson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

 I'm not making this shit up.

Every now and then, you have to get up off your knees where you've been for months and years, begging the Powers That Be to help me, please please help me, and stretch to your full height standing and ask them to disengage themselves from religion, special interest, power and cash.   Every now and then you might have to scream at them.

So, consider that a scream.