Marijuana is recognized by some doctors, native Americans, and patients to have medicinal like qualities. It helps them manage illnesses, mainly associated with intense pain which can debilitate people; while others use it to help control anxiety or depression. People have used it as a substitute for costly prescriptions they can barely afford these days. A majority of, Michiganders do not consider the use of marijuana for disabled people, to be criminal. The rules are simple; patients get 12 plants and 2.5 ounces of product without counting seeds and cuttings. Patients in the program are required to be certified and licensed each year.
When Michigan voted in favor of allowing the use of marijuana for qualified patients, they neglected specifics, leaving solutions for the needy. Since marijuana cannot be sold, it had to be obtained. Many people turned to dispensaries, where many of the staffers are volunteers.
Now, the state legislators want to regulated and further discourage users from using marijuana. They want to shut down dispensaries which are also compassion centers. They wish to treat marijuana as, commerce without funding. That was not the intention of, Growers Association (anybody can belong), and Church of Tolerance, two organizations that formed to create a source for product among the needy. They maintain that marijuana should be free and available in sufficient quantities, based on the needs of patients who are unable to afford other medications. Marijuana is not a drug or intoxicant such as, beer, which must be manufactured. It can grow wild, often along highways. Poor people who can grow it appreciate its medicinal qualities that they absorb, while often growing it for themselves. It is generally a low profile plant that attracts little attention when properly maintained.
Some of the problems that were left to be solved by, Church of Tolerance and, Growers Association, such as, how to assist patients who wished to be legal, as the state wouldn't address those issues. They proposed a safe-house dispensary where patients with overage could legally drop off extra amounts of product, or products they did not use, to be dispensed by other places such as, Hospice. The state was disinterested in assisting in any way. They created a bottleneck system for applicants. Thousands of people are waiting to be processed, all while making eight million dollars in profits, which was supposed to be earmarked in part to help the program. They spent it in other ways, part of it in new legislations to effectively stymie the program. It is called sabotage by most definitions, when you use funds for reasons other than which they were created.
Church of Tolerance and Growers Association assisted patients in finding local dispensaries and compassion centers. It is interesting to note that most insurance companies do not help fund compassion centers of any kind. Compassion is the one thing most terminal patients and people with long time illnesses need, combined with medication that they often cannot afford. People who are against the program are homophobic in nature. They lack both understanding and compassion for poor people who are ill. After all, why should their taxes be used for dead beats? They forget that people on the program are also taxpayers and community members, who go to their churches and work in their stores; where they pay no medical benefits and flat minimum wages. They think they should not be responsible for helping the poor, even though they may go to church with them, and their minister still request tithing from them, even though poor people have always given more than rich people who prefer to lavish themselves in luxuries. After all, they created factories for us. They bought our farms, some by eminent domain, for projects that ended nowhere. They drove us from the country and into their cities for cheap labor. Then, they moved our factories to cheaper countries where pollution standards do not matter and poor people will toil for less money and labor in deplorable conditions, with no benefits. Now we are displaced, they want us to vanish as if we never existed.
Early proposals of legislation by some Republicans would have allowed them thousands of acres, fenced off from public to grow marijuana, for profit. Those suggestions were quickly dashed as organizations like, Church of Tolerance and, Growers Association, protested that marijuana should not be raised as a cash crop for a wealthy minority. Marijuana should be known as the poor man’s medicine. It should be free for many who cannot otherwise afford costly medications from pharmacies, that insurance companies will not cover. Insurance companies are corporations interested in large profits. Long term illnesses are often neglected by those companies. They fire their workers rather than assist them; the bottom line is their top dollar. If insurance companies were compassionate they would take better care of sick and elderly people. Compassion groups and dispensaries are different. They offer counseling and encouragement, bringing ill people together to share. Insurance companies might argue that it takes business away from them, but that would be inaccurate.
With all the problems we have across our nation and around the world, with job losses and increasing numbers of poor people, with thousands of homes dumped on the market by banks who were unwilling or unable to work with their customers, we have millions to spend, searching for marijuana, and to intimidate and harass patients and doctors who recommend using marijuana. Corporations are funding some expeditions as well. They can afford it. It’s a deduction, and they can take tax breaks as well, even on multiple homes they have around the country. Taxes are for poor people to pay. Sacrifices are for poor people to make. We do not deserve to be abused by our governments. Our constitution guarantees us the right to govern, free of religious persecution, and to be free to form our own decisions about what might be best for our bodies. Legislators who wish make laws against marijuana usage, are the same people who believe we should not be insured, if we are ill. They are the same people who close their eyes to massive numbers of unemployed workers. They blame health problems on self abuse or neglect. People are responsible for their own health. It is up to them to eat right. Our legislators forget that some people are born with illnesses. They forget about old age, reasoning that people should work harder and longer hours to save for their own retirements, if that exist for them; they forget about 15% of our incomes that are supposed to be earmarked for, Social Security. They would like to eliminate the program entirely, so we can have nothing. After all, we could pay 15% of our wages to help them fund other corporate projects we are less familiar with, like mass genocide in Africa and Syria.
Organizations such as, Church of Tolerance and, Growers Association were created because the state would not assist licensed people. They established order in an otherwise chaotic situation, relieving the state of responsibility they were unwilling to accept. Now, current legislators want to dismantle the networks. They say there is plenty of money to fund the dismemberment of help organizations that were created because people were denied assistance. After all, poor people do not deserve compassion.
When Michigan created its marijuana law, it also created a new group, of people who had no previous experience with it. Many of them are non-smokers. They use other methods of ingestion, often experiencing little of no psychological effects. It is used for pain and helps to control muscle related problems. They range in age from young adults to older people. Many patients are seniors with terminal problems. Most of them have been visited or intimidated by local authorities and people opposed to marijuana. The state makes millions on license fees but they want to use to money collected to dissolve the program, instead of working with the people.
For those experiencing psychological effects, it is ephemeral and usually last only a couple hours. The result is that patients are able to be more productive than while using narcotics. Unlike narcotics, the effects do not linger as long and patients are less incapacitated. Some people claim to experience freer muscle movements and greater coordination, because of marijuana. More than a million people in Michigan use marijuana. Thousands of people are registered users (our current legislators are protesting). There is a huge backlog of patients waiting to be processed. Compare it to a set of false teeth that is more functional than trying to swallow whole food, but cannot compare with the real thing. We’ve all heard folks comment, if you took care of your teeth, you would not have problems with them. That is wrong. Some people have accidents. Some people have cancer. Many things can happen to people who took the best care that they could and did not deserve their final sentence. Truly, my mother was a living saint. She felt like she should live forever. Her greatest pleasure derived from helping people. She took better care of herself than most people, getting up for the better part of eighty years early in the morning to pray and take care of chores. For years, Mom used an old gas washer with a hand wringer. I remember it was a lot of work. I got a finger caught in the wringer. One could say that if I had not stuck my finger in there it would not have split. It happened when I was six. I remember standing on a chair while balancing cloths for the wringer. I slipped. That finger remains crooked to this day. I was not playing with the laundry, but working. Work could be dangerous. Fingers were not the only things that could be broken, dinged up or donked out. Among the injuries suffered in youth, a split skull, broken teeth, busted limbs, melted palms from a hot iron and finally a broken neck. In spite of all my iniquities, I managed to overcome many obstacles, while performing as a military technician and later my completion of a graduate school. I ran the gamit from student to teacher. I know that not everybody gets the same chances that I got, or the loving and supporting family. People usually do not want to be poor. We should help the poor. Their needs are always greater than ours. We should not even joke about eliminating Social Security, let alone making threats of snipping bits and pieces from the program, while absconding with the funds, giving raises, making contributions and allowing the genocide of millions of people in places like, Africa and Syria.
Mom said she had nature’s drier, preferring to air her precious few items outside on a clothesline. She walked several miles a day, usually on an old logging road that ran alongside the house. Truly, she was a talented woman who expected nothing less for her children. Mom was the ex-marine lieutenant who marshaled her children as if they were her troops. She sacrificed countless hours for charitable causes and giving all her money. That was her life style. Her satisfaction was in giving; and, it reflected in the writings of her diaries. Some people prefer to live that way, but, should people be forced into poverty? Our legislators would like us to believe that is OK. They worked countless hours in their corporations, setting up our government for us. We should trust them, they know the ropes; they know all the insiders, they’ll fix our government for us. The first legislation they will pass will be against marijuana dispensaries, and their tax cuts will be attached to the bill.
