Simple: recreational use just doesn’t matter. If somebody really and truly wastes their life feeding an addiction all day every day, that’s up to them, and chances are they’re already doing it. Maybe with illegal pot, maybe with legal alternatives like alcohol. Maybe with something totally unrelated like video games, internet porn, or whatever. But pot itself isn’t the problem with people like this – it’s about as addictive as caffeine. Only a handful of people will actually abuse pot to the point of it affecting their daily lives.

And heck, I’d rather see a bunch of people throwing their lives away to pot than alcohol. At least the high folks are fairly safe to be around.

Additionally, in places where cannabis has been legalized or decriminalized, use hasn’t skyrocketed. Depending on your source, you can find “proof” that use has gone up or that it’s gone down, but no studies even hint that the more 420-friendly nations have had concerning societal problems due to cannabis being more available and accepted.

So if we accept that recreational use is no big deal, then we still have one question: why not just be happy with medical cannabis laws?

Easy answers:

• The federal government is full of SHIT on this issue and won’t allow cannabis to be rescheduled, so medical laws are still at odds with the federal government – which means places like Alex’s home can cite federal law to avoid dosing a person who could truly benefit.
• Along the same lines, the government will push fake therapies on us like Marinol: a synthetic, pure THC pill which costs MORE than black-market cannabis, and lacks CBD, CBN, and other extremely beneficial cannabinoids! THC by itself is just unpleasant from what I’ve heard, and even the super-high-THC strains of cannabis still have some amount of the other cannabinoids. To put it another way, if nature offers us the whole plant, the government has no right to try and push synthetics that only have one small piece of that plant unless very clear and obvious evidence shows the other components are dangerous. (So far, the only cannabinoid anybody is actually afraid of is THC, and this plant has been with us since the dawn of man)
• Medical cannabis laws have been considered a joke by so many that some states are really cracking down – deciding who is “sick enough” to get medical cannabis. Even here in Oregon, we couldn’t have gotten Alex on the OMMP (Oregon Medical Marijuana Program) without his seizure disorder. Intense self-injurious behaviors wouldn’t be enough.
• In states where cannabis is now legal, a person in need can get a small amount of cannabis from a friend (or in CO grow their own) and try it THAT VERY DAY. We didn’t have that option – it took weeks to get an appointment, get approval from the doctor, and get a dose to try out. It’s impossible to say for sure, but we feel those weeks could have made a huge difference in terms of figuring out the right strain and dosing if we’d had better options like somebody in CO might have.
• We’ve given the government time to accept medical use, and they keep saying, “hell no”. Full legalization in CO and WA has forced a new conversation to take place, and the more states that force this conversation, the more likely kids like Alex will have a new option.

So whether it’s 2014 or 2016, if you live in a state that puts legalization on the ballot, please remember that legalizing can be of tremendous value to medical users, especially in states where medical laws are jumbled and confusing, or where patients are left with almost no guidance on the issue.

And for the skeptics: you pay for a pee test and I’ll take it. A few people somehow actually think Alex’s story is a front to get me high. It’s appalling, but I guess that’s what happens with nearly a century of propaganda against cannabis.

It’s hard to say that the tincture alone is responsible for his behavior, because they’ve reported a better mood at his home as well. But it’s also very unlikely that it’s just coincidence. While his overall mood has been better, we’ve now seen two or three situations in the recent visits where Alex started out unhappy and hitting, and turned calm and happy within an hour or so of the tincture administration.

Of course, since we can only dose him when he visits, we can only guess at what might happen if he could get this in his system regularly.

Even more unfortunately, our grower is moving out of the state within the next six months, showing us once again what a nightmare our restricted medical laws currently are. We’ll have to deal with setting up a new grower, and that is in addition to the new laws which make it a $250 a year expense to keep our OMMP card and name a grower.

The silver lining of all this is that our nation, and the west coast in particular, seems to finally be realizing the benefits of cannabis and the problems with prohibition. Oregon may have two pro-cannabis initiatives on the ballot this November. Colorado will definitely vote on legalization, and looks fairly likely to pass it: the Colorado democratic party officially supports legalization!

Here’s hoping 2012 is a better election year for everybody’s favorite herb. It won’t just help recreational users; the people who need it most, who have tried dozens of other medications and just need some pain relief, would benefit greatly from full legalization.

In Washington, another measure is going to be on the ballot. It’s got some concerning per se DUI law written into it, but I still urge people to vote for it. Why? Because that per se DUI law will likely go into effect eventually, as it has in so many other states

In California, there were a few ballot measures in need of signatures to get on the ballot. Unfortunately, the deadlines are too close, and it is being suggested that efforts be targeted to the Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act: http://repealcannabisprohibition.org/ or http://www.facebook.com/RCPA2012.

The Oregon Cannabis Tax Act still needs a ton of help and the deadline approaches fast. If you live here, help out!

Sign the petition to support President Molina’s efforts to discuss legalization in Central America. Put Biden in his place by stating that we have no business telling Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, or any other country how to deal with the drug problem that we have created.

As always, make sure your elected officials know how you stand on things like HR 2306, and consider letting them know you consider this issue important enough to not vote for them if they don’t support it.

Last month I made a big post on Huffington Post, and got a lot of traffic, but it turns out it was more due to a share on Reddit than anything else. So to all the fine people on r/trees, thanks! If you haven’t seen r/trees, it’s a great place for 420-friendly people to exercise their right to free speech, something cannabis consumers too often feel they can’t (or shouldn’t) do.

This month, Alex’s story appeared in Treating Yourself and we got another huge surge of traffic, and I’ve been trying desperately to keep up with the emails and comments, but I’m falling behind. All the same, it’s a small price to pay for giving Alex’s situation more exposure.

In addition, it appears my sister has done another Facebook bomb, bringing in a bunch of people as well. So thanks, sissy!

Here’s hoping this traffic can legitimize cannabis in at least a few people’s minds who would otherwise have been against it, or thought medical use was a joke.

People throughout the world need to ask themselves:

• Why is it we make an addict’s compulsion illegal instead of treating the problem properly?
• Why not spend our money treating people instead of putting them in jail?
• Why not regulate the supply of dangerous drugs, like we do with alcohol and tobacco?
  • Meth would never be as dangerous as it is without prohibition — it’s being made in more dangerous ways each time we shut one down
  • Look at the dangers of K2, or “fake pot” some time. That has actual dangers associated with it, and would not exist if pot were legalized — it was created to legally get a pot-like high!
• Why not sell and tax the drugs like we do alcohol and cigarettes?

Sure, we need gargantuan warning signs, and perhaps even regular consultations for people who voluntarily choose heroin and the like. Yes, we need safeguards in place. But there is absolutely nothing good about prohibiting drugs. Ron Paul has the balls to say this to the American people. None of the other candidates does (though Gary Johnson would at least talk about cannabis). Whether the people like what they hear or not, they will hear it if Paul gets the nomination. Some of them will have no choice but to consider it. Some people will convert, because enough thought on the matter and we realize prohibition is just wrong, period.

I know it’s tough to consider legalizing all drugs, but everybody should at least think it through. In the end, cannabis is really the one we need to get off the controlled substances act to help kids like Alex. Decriminalizing the rest would, in my opinion, help the country and help countless addicts, but they are not my priority right now. If cannabis gets to Alex regularly, I’ll change my focus.

We’re in this awful catch-22. We can’t take Alex home, because we don’t know what, if anything, will stabilize him enough for us to care for him. And we can’t try marijuana, the only medicine that showed any promise for his rage, unless he’s living with us.

The Washington legalization initiatives are spending more time with internal wars than coming together and just pushing for any small step forward. The OCTA here in Oregon looks like it again won’t gather enough signatures, and gets almost no press coverage (I see stories about the CA and CO initiatives, and sometimes about the WA ones, but never ours). Hell, we couldn’t even convince the voters to approve dispensaries when they were put on the ballot in 2010. As I recall, Oregonians favored our current “find a grower or do it yourself” approach by something like 65% to 35%.

I’m really hoping CA gets its initiative passed, but what will that mean for Alex? At a minimum, another two years before Oregon has a chance to move forward.

Sometimes it feels like we have absolutely no control over Alex’s life. Obviously we could try bringing him into our home again, but that’s just not realistic. I feel awful admitting it, I feel like I’ve failed him and there’s some way I could be stronger, but the fact is I know I can’t care for him again unless his rage is completely gone.

ABC interviewed us in April. They were going to run a story about Alex’s situation, and it was going to be aired nationally, not just locally. I wasn’t going to say anything here until we had an air date.

But I’m tired of waiting.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe somebody got scared by the controversial situation, maybe our interview didn’t give them the sound byte they needed, maybe they just legitimately haven’t had time to get it fully production-ready. I don’t really care at this point. I don’t even know if I want the story to air now.

One problem with not airing quickly is that things change so fast. At the time, I felt that a lot of blame lie on the state for not having good information about medical marijuana and for not enforcing its medical marijuana laws in the group home Alex lives. I also felt that we needed better medical laws, and that legalization, though important, wasn’t the most pressing matter to me.

Today I still blame the state for a lot of the information aspects, but I realize why the home won’t dose Alex. The recent raids in California have shown that the feds will put all kinds of pressure anywhere they want without regard for the patients in need. Because some people are abusing a system, they’ll use that as the excuse they needed to shut it down for everybody.

Also, because of these events, I no longer believe in medical marijuana legislation. We either fully legalize or keep letting the government decide everything for us. Who is sick enough to get medical cannabis? Who provides it? Novartis? Pfizer? Perhaps both… but I am willing to bet it won’t be something we’re allowed to grow ourselves.

So even if they do air Alex’s story, my current state of mind will not be represented.

The Discovery Channel, on the other hand, is taking the controversial stories ABC won’t. They aired Weed Wars recently, and I discovered it just featured a father giving his child medical marijuana for seizures. Bravo to Discovery for taking on such a controversial subject!

I wish it were Alex’s story, of course, but it’s still a great way to get people to understand that cannabis is a really good thing. I want people to see the good in cannabis, and then see Alex’s situation, because I want people to see that prohibition is doing harm to children like Alex. What if cannabis could help all the kids with self-injurious behaviors? What an impact that could have on the lives of tortured parents.

I don’t know how the rest of Weed Wars will play out, but I think it’s a big step for the network to take, and I applaud them.

Sign up, tell them your story. Maybe enough support for HR 2306 combined with other pressures will eventually cause the overturn of some rather scary laws.

Even so, it’s somewhat depressing that only 50,000 people have gone and signed a petition that polls suggest 35-45% of Americans support. 50,000 people signed, out of over 100 million adults who favor marijuana law reform.

If you haven’t signed and need reasons to do so, or if you can’t convince people you know, here are some things I often think about when I need to get angry (I’ve already highlighted some of this in my facts section):

• “So why are so many potheads in rehab if it’s so safe?” Ask those in rehab, if you really want to know. It’s often part of a plea bargain – go to rehab, get a reduced sentence. It makes the pot “addiction” rates look good, so the federal government keeps control. Sounds loony, but look into your local laws and you may be surprised.
• Cancer users finding relief in cannabis are now denied their second amendment rights, because the feds are insisting that use of marijuana, even medically, means you can’t have a gun.
• The Obama administration is now officially saying “go to hell” to medical marijuana users. Want real medical marijuana laws? Stop the federal government from choosing what we can and cannot do to our bodies.
• Even more scary: talking about using marijuana in another country could be illegal soon, thanks to Lamar Smith (he makes corrupt politicians look like saints) pushing forth a terrifying new bill. “The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they’re carried out.” Sorry, talking about pot is no longer legal.
• Most “major” crimes violate somebody else’s rights directly (murder, rape, theft, assault) or at least have a serious risk for doing so (DUI, wreckless driving, directly threatening somebody’s life). This is why we punish those crimes, so that people won’t be as likely to take away others’ rights. Nobody can answer what rights are being infringed when pot is smoked.
  • I have heard “you might drive while high”, “Some users end up neglecting their children”, and other, similarly nebulous statements. But how can we arrest people for potential crimes that are by far the exception rather than the rule? And even if they were the norm, we still don’t arrest until a danger is posed!
  • We don’t arrest alcoholics for driving to a bar. We arrest them after they drive away drunk.
  • We don’t arrest every angry parent with a short temper, we arrest only those few who turn that anger into physical violence.
  • We don’t arrest people for speaking favorably of terrorists unless they take action.
  • We don’t arrest people for racism, out of fear they might go commit a violent crime – we arrest them only after a real rights violation has occurred!
• Here in Oregon, more and more people are worried about abuse of medical marijuana and want to tighten restrictions. One of those restrictions would be to ensure children can’t get into the program. Reefer madness could turn our near-impossible fight for Alex into one that is truly impossible. Only by getting the federal government out of the way will we be able to properly study this medication, and create strains suited for specific ailments (i.e., high in specific cannabinoids, for instance)
• Legalizing doesn’t increase use long-term. See Portugal’s decriminalization, or our own legalization of alcohol compared to its use during alcohol prohibition.
• Around 10% of adults in the United States admit to being regular users. Do we really believe they’re all criminals?
• More than half of all American adults admit to having used it at least once. Where are these super-high addiction rates? Why haven’t these people turned to harder drugs based on the gateway theory? Why is it that so many have experimented with weed and given it up so easily?
• Florida recently found that welfare recipients are less likely to abuse drugs — so much for the claim that potheads can’t hold a job or lead a productive life.
• The “gateway” effect is only remotely possible because buying illegal weed exposes you to dealers of other illegal substances. There is no scientific evidence that simply using pot makes you more likely to use other drugs. In fact, as anti-pot people love to point out, since marijuana became “legal” in some states, its use has risen (very slightly) throughout the U.S. But other drugs’ use rates have decreased.

It needs to get 5,000 votes by October 22nd, and… oh, it’s nearly 10,000 already. So while it technically doesn’t need more votes, I believe it’s always good for the idiots in charge to see that we’re still a huge group looking to make some waves.

I encourage anybody reading this to please sign the petition.