Legalize Pot

One of our clients is running for Congress and among his issues is support for drug reform. Yeah, I know, I thought the same thing until I actually toured a dispensary in Oakland and actually saw patients coming in to get help. These weren’t the people I knew in college or the surfer dudes like Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. They were people who had terminal illnesses; they had glaucoma or they were in so much pain they could hardly walk.
Sure, in some dispensaries in the L.A. area people aren’t exactly sick but then again, how many college kids across the country are walking into clubs with fake I.D.’s and getting drunk every weekend? So Roger Goodman did a press conference on Wednesday to highlight the fact that at least in the Seattle area, medical marijuana is an important part of health care. And it was covered not as a stoner issue; it was covered seriously as a health care issue. Kudos to the media which so often just go for sensationalism.
Guess who showed up to support Roger? Stoners, surfer dudes and college kids looking for free samples and to score some pot? Not exactly. I met one person who is dying of leukemia, another who opted for marijuana rather than become addicted to painkillers and another person who can barely see. And no one flames up at the dispensary, they have to take their medication home and come back when their prescription runs out.
I’ll be the first to admit that until Steve D’Angelo gave me the tour in Oakland and certainly until the face to face reality I hit on Wednesday, I was still a bit skeptical. But when I was standing there talking with someone who is dying of leukemia and thinking about babysitting my granddaughter on Friday knowing that he’ll never have that same pleasure, well all of a sudden medical marijuana made a lot more sense.