Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Back to Regular Programming

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.




16 comments:

  1. Fuck. I am screaming with you. I just can't believe what goes on in the government. I really can't.
    I am so sorry. I am so angry.

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  2. It's unbelievable. You are "spot on" about it all... cannabis, junk food, pharms... So many cities here in Cali have banned delivery of cannabis yet still delivering hoards of opioids from pharmacies. As tiring and maddening as all this must be for you at times, please know you are doing so much for children, for all of us. The world is changing and you are helping spread the truth.

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  3. This quote is not exactly on topic but I read it a while back and thought of you. It is from my most favourite suffragette, Nellie McClung.

    “Never retreat, never explain, never apologize. Get the thing done and let them howl.”

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  4. They might as well call it the Health Racket in this country, they are a bunch of racketeers. We believe in you and what you are doing for Sophie, Elizabeth. x0 N2

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  5. Do you watch Netflix's House of Cards? Need I say more? The money and collusion in politics is deep and wide. Fuck the people. Let's do what's good for our pocketbooks. What a racket. And of COURSE the rise in diabetes is due to soft drinks and fast food. But will that shit get outlawed? Okay, that's a rhetorical question.

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  6. Sophie looks mesmerised and Oliver looks so mischievous. Could that picture be any more perfect? What flavor was the cake? It looks so perfect and I guess it to have at least 4 layers.
    I'm too tired to comment about the "magical weed", but if I wasn't I would. Blessed, blessed stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I hear your scream! Did you follow New York City's attempts to regulate the sale of sugary soft drinks, for health reasons? I can't remember the specifics but I believe they were eventually shot down by the courts.

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  8. Keep speaking truth to power. To quote one of your favorites, Van Morrison;
    Rave on
    Rave on
    Rave on Elizabeth

    ReplyDelete
  9. I wish it didn't make me feel so defeated to think about all of this. The pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, the Surgeon General (don't get me started - ugh), the presidential candidates, the money, the money, the money. We just keep witnessing it over and over again, the power of cash to change public policy, and it makes me feel so impotent. Thank you for screaming on the days when I want to throw up my hands and crawl under a rock. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like screaming again.

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  10. Yeah. Total bullshit. If they were *really* worried about stoned and obtunded people running around, none of the current available seizure drugs would be allowed. (Being a partaker of both cannabis and seizure medications, i can tell you the medications can be waaaaaaaaaaay more debilitating.)

    All of the lack of research arguments are whacked too. Cannabis has been referenced in medical texts since 2000 BC, *they're* the ones who have staunched the investigation, plus it's my understanding they *still* don't know how and why a few of the anti-seizure drugs work (Sodium Valproate, for one).

    I'd be far more concerned about a child getting hold of all the colorful, potentially toxic, shiny pills laying around my house than i would about *all my bags* of weed.

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  11. Those Mormons have their hands in so many political pies that the church shouldn't be tax exempt anymore.
    - Karen

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