Legalize..just respect patients in the process..

Washington State has written their cannabis rules. Most will need legislative approval. Personal growing has been banned. Evidently this would apply to patients as well. Current law allows up to fifteen plants. Once again, legalization is accomplished at the detriment of patients. Not everyone buys their meds at a dispensary. Many of us grow our own. Oregon just decided to legalize dispensaries, which will help the existing dispensaries that started under the guise of "clubs". We voted no last time on dispensaries. But that didn't stop enterprising dispensary owners from opening businesses. Depending upon where they opened, some were harassed and raided, and some weren't. It probably would have been better to wait until they were legal, but those of us who really understand the benefits of cannabis on our health sometimes become exuberant and do things anyway. I'm not talking about drug traffickers here. Some of these dispensary owners are patients themselves. They only want to help people and have taken the risk to do so.

I have said many times that I believe in ending prohibition. It was based upon a lie anyway and countless lives have been ruined to further that lie. But to legalize at the expense of patients doesn't make sense. We don't have to make patients' lives more difficult by allowing the recreational laws to influence or apply to the medical laws. Patients use cannabis to become healthy. I know for some this seems odd. But that's why we do it. And it works! We get healthy! I'm living proof of this.

Also, current law allows patients or caregivers to possess 24 ounces of useable cannabis. The new rules would drop that amount to 3 ounces. Here's the problem with that. Many patients process their cannabis into other forms for medicating. Some make oil, tincture, or capsules to medicate with. This takes more than 3 ounces to do. Expecting this from patients doesn't make sense and could change the course of their return to health. Some patients also use raw cannabis in their diet. They include it in smoothies and juice. The health benefits of raw cannabis are only now being discovered and the news is great! I use raw leaf and small buds in my morning smoothies. Ingestion in some form is typically more effective than smoking for many conditions. Using raw cannabis, for example, doesn't even result in a high. And now growers are creating varieties that are higher in CBD and lower in THC which will also have less of a high. Tinctures made from high CBD varieties are what parents are giving to their kids with constant and severe seizures. It stops them. (Watch Sanjay's special)  Smoking or vaporizing is optimum for some kinds of pain as well as muscle cramps. It's great when you need to relax and to clear your mind of troublesome thinking as many survivors of PTSD have discovered. And yes, you'll get high from that. And you'll feel better. Trust me on this. I'm a survivor and cannabis has helped calm my mind without the resulting side effects of an anti-depressant.

The point is, patients figure out what works for them and then they get well. Colorado left patients alone. I hope Oregon does as well when we legalize. I know letting go of long-held beliefs is at the bottom of these decisions. Sanjay Gupta's special aside, people still believe in the whole "reefer madness" propaganda.  It's not easy to suddenly believe that cannabis is a safe plant that should be available to everyone.

But as we legalize, please leave patients alone. In the mean time, we need to reschedule cannabis federally so that research can begin in earnest. We did this in Oregon and rescheduled from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. Cannabis is a safe plant and should be scheduled even further down the list, if not removed completely. Stop trying to control something that is a personal decision. I still use Humira for my RA, but cannabis is what put my disease into clinical remission. I was so ill for so long that it may take time to discontinue the Humira. I also take Sulfasalazine, although it's been reduced by half. It would be nice to only take that one. The Humira scares me. I was also able to discontinue the anti-inflammatory drug, the narcotic, both blood pressure pills, and I'm down to 1 Metformin, which is also ending soon. This would have not happened without cannabis. I have no problem with western medicine. I just wish medical schools also included natural medicines in their curriculum. My medical experience has been lop-sided and would have been richer if I could have had meaningful conversations with my doctors about all forms of medicating. They shouldn't have to fear losing their medical license for talking to me about cannabis. So I don't tell them. And that's sad. It's not what I want. 

Prohibition must end. Simple as that. No one needs to freak out about it. States with existing medical cannabis laws must either leave them alone or make them better. States without medical cannabis laws need to enact them. And for pity's sake, keep the pharmaceutical companies out of this. It's the whole plant that heals. Not an unreasonable facsimile of, which is what these pill factories pump out. If what they produce isn't what we do in our kitchens, then it's not medicine. Sorry about that. A guy in front of a booth at Hempfest this year stopped me and try to sell me some cannabis oil. I thanked him and said I make my own. And you know what? He got a really odd look on his face. And it didn't seem like he was puzzled. It seemed like he understood what I was saying.

States should take a lesson from my experience at Hempfest and never underestimate the empowered patient. Because guess what else we are? Voters. Yes, we vote, among other things like raising families, holding down jobs, and helping our communities understand the truth about this wonderful plant. We're chatty like that..

Legalize..just respect patients in the process.
 

Stop comparing the Affordable Care Act to sexual assault.

Bill O'Reilly compared Obamacare to a vicious motorcycle gang coming after your daughter. The brothers Koch sponsored an anti-Obamacare ad that depicts an over-sized Uncle Sam with a speculum in hand, ready to do untold things to the college girl on the table. GOP governors are signing transvaginal ultrasound bills into law, because after all..freedom. They're also trying to circumvent a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion if she chooses. 

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?????

As a survivor of sexual assault, I take issue with these derelicts who equate anything that isn't sexual assault with anything that is. I'll be 56 in a few days. I live with what my father did every day of my life. It has controlled everything about me. In many ways it ruined my chance of ever having a normal life. But then, I don't know what normal looks like anyway. Now that he's dead, you'd think I could move on. But it doesn't work that way. These days, I take it a day at a time, sometimes a minute at a time. Because life goes on and you have to deal with all of it.

We need to be so careful when we compare one thing to another. Pennsylvania's Governor just compared gay marriage to incest. Trust me when I say that it's not. This idiot needs to be thrown out of office. Would he like me to explain the difference? Would he like details? Because if an incest survivor knows the difference between that and two gay people getting married and the Governor of Pennsylvania doesn't, then he shouldn't be allowed to govern anyone.

Go visit that Sandusky guy in jail. That's what a predator looks like. It's not the Affordable Care Act. The only predators there are the ones who are lying about it. You have to ask yourself, why? Why would anyone want people to suffer without health insurance? What's in it for them? Is it money? Is it power and control? Honestly, I don't care what it is. I just want it to stop. Life is tough enough. When lawmakers in Congress lie about our new health care law, all they do is hurt the very people who need it the most. This should be a criminal act. They should be arrested, prosecuted, and then thrown in prison. You don't lie to the American people about anything, but certainly not about a law that can actually enhance and protect their lives.

And for the love of all that is holy, stop stressing out survivors with this crap. We have enough to deal with. And there's a whole bunch of us out here. And guess what else.. We're consumers and voters. We can stop buying all kinds of things, stop watching all kinds of channels, begin voting for better legislators.

Yes. We. Can.

As the shutdown looms..

My husband is a disabled Vietnam veteran who receives benefits from the Veteran's Administration each month. This is what happens when something goes wrong while in service to our country. We promise to take care of our veterans. They take care of us and, in turn, we take care of them. 

Unless you're a Tea Party Republican. Those people don't care about anyone. It's almost as if they're living in an alternate universe that's bleeding into ours. They don't make any sense and clearly do not understand what governing is. These mentally challenged individuals believe that they can control spending by not raising the debt limit. Trying to reason with them only falls on deaf ears. It's a fairly simple concept, really. I'm sure they all have credit cards. If they don't pay off the balance each month, they have to pay, say it with me now, interest or finance charges on the remaining balance. Or, say you finance a car you want to buy. You'll pay a certain amount of interest on that loan. Same thing happens when you buy a home. It all adds to the debt you owe. That's what the debt ceiling thing is. Voting each time to agree to simply pay the bills we've already agreed to incur is stupid and pointless. We owe the money. And although I know that old school Republicans exist, they're either too intimidated by these people, or they just don't care anymore to stop them. And now the Tea Party Republicans want to bail on our fiscal responsibilities. How can they hold office if they don't understand this? If this were a business, they'd be fired.

Somehow, they've even managed to incorporate the idea of freedom, into the equation. Unfortunately all they've really accomplished in my estimation is reducing freedom to an unrecognizable slogan or buzzword. And yet, they seem to be the biggest control freaks around. They want to force women to have vaginal ultrasounds before having an abortion, a constitutionally protected medical procedure. They know they can't win elections so much anymore because of how insane they are so they re-draw the districting lines or find other ways to suppress the vote. It's always in areas that typically vote for Democrats, so I guess they think if they stack the vote in their favor, they'll be back in control.

But let's look at what they do when Republicans (Tea Party or not) are in control. They lied us into two wars. They ended the Assault Weapons Ban. They crashed the economy. They enact laws typically on the state level that endanger workers' rights and women's rights. They seem to favor only protecting corporations instead of protecting people. They don't believe in climate change and they don't care if the earth is polluted out of existence. They pay homage to the 1% because that's who fills their election coffers. And then there's the racism. That filters into everything. It's part of why they voted to reduce the SNAP program by almost 40 billion. And don't even get me started on immigration reform or the whole, corporations are people my friend crap. This is compassionate conservatism at its finest.

And now they want to shut down the government unless we defund the Affordable Care Act. Never mind that the ACA is covering kids until they're 26. Never mind that pre-existing conditions will be covered. Never mind that it's going to save people money. Never mind that millions will have health insurance for maybe the first time ever. Never mind the facts, because as we all have seen, the GOP doesn't ever let facts get in the way of decision-making. Instead, they make stuff up out of whole cloth and expect the rest of us to buy it hook, line and sinker. Well, we're a whole lot smarter than that.

The country is in a mess. Crazy people always come out of the woodwork when these things happen. Many of them were elected to Congress. If we don't get them out of office, our country will never get back on track. The American people deserve better than these lunatics. We cannot stay home in 2014. We have to stand up and tell these morons that we deserve better than what they've given us. Vote.