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.
 

I wish Ron Paul would stop giving homeschooling a bad name..

When my boys were at the end of 7th and 4th grades respectively, we decided to homeschool. I didn't like the environment they were in. The older boy was in a junior high school that had become so violent that parents were staying at school in shifts to act as monitors. One little boy didn't show up for his last class. He was in my son's home room at the end of the day. The teacher finally went to look for him and found him in the commons area sitting on a bench, bloody and crying. It seems that six eighth grade boys surrounded him and beat the crap out of him. I refer to him as little, because he was smaller than many of the kids there.

In addition, the school had a policy of bathroom hall passes if a student needed to use the bathroom during class. You could get a pass ten times a year. The school was huge and if the kids had to go back to lockers to get more books or anything and had a class at the other end of the building, there wasn't enough time to do all of that and not be late to class. So, my son was told to use up a bathroom pass if late or pay a quarter to the teacher, or pay a fine or push a broom at lunch when his ten passes were gone. 

Now, I found all this irritating. Mostly I found it irritating because my son didn't tell me about any of this until he needed money to pay the teacher for being late to class. This was at the end of the school year. And then that funny E word kept coming out of my mouth. You know the one. Extortion. And yes, I used that word when speaking to the vice principal. So imagine my surprise when he retaliated by bringing my son into his office and reading him the riot act about reporting this to me. Then he demanded to know what teachers were doing this. So, my son told him exactly who took money from him and who didn't. This resulted in his Science teacher accosting him in the hallway, yelling at him for telling that she did that when she didn't. So, once again, my son had to be the adult in the room and carefully explained to her that he specifically said she did NOT do this.

Now, over at the grade school where my younger son attended, he was in the TAG program. That's the Talented and Gifted program. My older son was apparently one point off on the testing, probably due to the cold he had that day, and was being watched for future inclusion in the program. (I didn't know that until I spoke with the program director, because no one tells parents anything) So, he's in the fourth grade, being taught by a kindergarten teacher. Yes, that mattered. She was opposed to TAG, even though the entire class was taught the same lessons. The TAG kids were just given separate assignments. So it had stopped being a pull out program. But she felt it was intrusive and preferred to treat the fourth graders as 5 year olds. Note to anyone who hasn't spent time around gifted children: you don't do that.

So when I asked the boys if they'd like to homeschool, they jumped at the idea. My oldest was relieved. My youngest was thrilled because he didn't apparently like his chair at school. We didn't do this because we were mad at the government. We didn't do it because we wanted to have some fundamentalist religious curriculum. We just did it because I didn't think they received the education they COULD receive, or be treated with the respect they deserved. Because my boys were always the students teachers wanted to have. They were nice kids. So no one was happy at the school district when we did this. It was a statement on their worth in their view. I guess in some ways that's true. But I don't think as Ron Paul does that parents are failures for sending their kids to public school. Not everyone can do what we did. Or should. The boys had good teachers for the most part when they attended public school. We live in a small town though, so I'm sure that had something to do with that. Parents were involved in their kids' education. We just decided to try something different.

And it worked! The boys discovered interests and I was more of a facilitator than a teacher. We adopted mostly an unschooling approach, with some directed subjects that they would need to learn skills for college. Math was Saxon math. History was Zinn's, A People's History of the US along with Lies My Teacher Told Me. Okay, I'm a liberal hippie, and yes I disagree with Mitch Daniel's attempt to eradicate the world of the works of Howard Zinn. I re-took Writing 121 and the boys used that as their writing curriculum. We read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. They both became interested in computers and the oldest ended up graduating from college with a dual math/computer science degree and the youngest graduated with a degree in computer engineering and a full minor in computer science. They both work in their chosen fields. 

The best thing about homeschooling is that your children will have the chance to explore their interests and develop their natural love of learning. They will understand that learning is not something that is done TO them, but BY them. It's their responsibility to embrace education. And if nothing else, as long as they learn that, then it's a complete success. My oldest started taking classes at the community college when he was fifteen. The youngest began attending classes at sixteen. They could do that under high school concurrent enrollment. My oldest was the only one to do that, however. They both took their GED tests at sixteen and either worked in the case of my oldest, or began attending college full time. By the time both were seventeen, they were in college full time.

One last thing. My boys are martial artists. We ran a kenpo school and they trained with us. I had no qualms about their ability to defend themselves should it become necessary while at school. One problem. The school district didn't share my viewpoint. If either of them had been involved in any altercations, they would have been expelled and arrested. The martial arts part has nothing to do with that. It was just a policy of expel, arrest, and sort it out later. I didn't like that. Here we were, training kids to defend themselves and at the one place they would likely experience an attack, they couldn't use what they had learned. And I'm not just talking about my kids. I'm talking about all the kids we taught over the years. So you know, when I hear this ridiculous second amendment argument about needing to have assault weapons so that we preserve our freedom, I have to laugh. Or scream. How do you tell a child he or she cannot defend themselves? How can school policy not preserve the rights of the victim? What message to they really want to send here?

People homeschool for lots of reasons. Sometimes they do it for Ron Paul's reasons. But to me, there's a little brainwashing there. I view my kids as separate entities from me. They have their own views, their own needs. It wasn't about me. It was about giving them what they needed, standing back, and watching the magic happen.

I cherish those years my boys were home. I witnessed what most parents never get to see. I witnessed first hand how my children learned and processed the world around them. You miss that when they're at school. So believe me when I say, I am the luckiest mom ever. 

More Roadside Cavity Searches in Texas???

Mercy sakes. What the hell is going on in Texas? Why are cops doing cavity searches on women by the side of the road? I read yesterday, that a female cop who did this was reinstated on the force because the powers that be decided that in view of the fact that she's a trainee, it was the responsibility of her training officer to stop her from doing the cavity search.

SHE'S A WOMAN. SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER.

I don't care if she was a trainee. She needs to lose her job along with her idiot training officer. Does anyone take responsibility for their actions anymore? What difference does it make if she was a trainee? Don't we want our police officers to have the intelligence to think for themselves? If she can't figure this one out without someone else telling her what to do, then she shouldn't be trusted to protect and serve. Because this doesn't serve the public at all. This was a criminal act. Just like in the military. It's no different.

Let's recap a little.. Texas has a problem respecting women. Whether it's the legislature, the governor, or law enforcement, for whatever reason, women are being targeted by abusive behavior. A woman's right to be safe from harm is being systematically destroyed by this state. But they're not alone in this effort. It's almost as if some of these conservative controlled states are vying for the most abusive state award. Their behavior is reckless and destructive.

Do we really need to have 50 states in our union? Secession is looking pretty good at this point. 

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's message: We Are One...

I was blessed to see His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama today in Eugene. He's surprisingly direct and funny. His message was simple: we are one. Problems happen when we forget that. We become self-centered in our attitude. He said there's too much I, I, I in our attitude. We focus on perception instead of reality. We forget that love and compassion are part of our collective essence. He said we cannot exist in isolation. We are social in nature and we need each other for our very survival. 

So the title of the lecture, "The Path to Peace and Happiness in a Global Society," was particularly appropriate given the fact that a global society, like it or not, is exactly what we are.   Although it begins with the individual, it doesn't center there..instead focusing on how each person can extend love and compassion to others. He said it doesn't even matter if those you are kind to react positively or not. Extending compassion helps our own spiritual development which, in turn, extends to the world. When people feel valued and respected, the world becomes a better place.

His Holiness discussed the need for mothers to give as much attention as possible to their children in their early years. He believes that mothers create balance in their children that cannot be created any other way. He said that male dominance tends to make things worse in the world, and we need feminine energy to bring peace. He cited people under the age of 30 as part of the 21st century and the key to peace in the world. Their ideas are more progressive and balanced than those from the 20th century. And he's just fine with the idea of a female Dalai Lama. He went on to say that women are a different sort of "hero", that we perceive problems in ways that men don't, resulting in a better outcome.

His Holiness spoke of the need to be respectful of other views, including religious views. He said that there are many paths to God and that all paths essentially share the same message. Sometimes when we see others, not as simply our brothers and sisters, but as a particular religion, race, gender, etc., we create an us versus them feeling. Seeing others as fellow human beings fosters genuine respect and appreciation of individual differences instead of allowing them to divide us. Love and compassion toward others is the result.

The problems we have are caused by mankind. The answer is universal: We are one. When we acknowledge that and live accordingly, division ends and unity prevails. We all deserve that.