Here in Oaksterdam, the cause is been totally appropriated by grinning stoners in their 20s and a bunch of pathetic burnouts who use easily purchased prescription cards to “treat” spurious ailments like back pain and depression. For every legit MM patient there are ten of these manipulative monkeys gumming up the works.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for MM. And I’m all for legalization. But conflating the two and using the pot clinics just to score is totally fucking up the program. I’m a recovering alcoholic and dope smoker; I’ve had and I have chronic back pain and depression, and I’m here to tell you dope does nothing for either of those conditions. In the case of depression, like the others substances used for self-medication, it aggravates the condition over long-term use.
When you look at the line outside the pot clubs and it’s filled with kids wearing Dead t-shirts and professional disability claimants, the cause is subverted. The face of MM should be those that truly need it, instead it’s morons like that.
If the Feds would get out of the fucking way and allow the state to regulate and administrate the MM programs throughout the state, it would be much easier to accomplish a successful MM program without the hucksters, phonies and addicts gumming up the works.
Instead, the state has put their hands up in the air, and for fear of reprisal has put the onus of regulating MM on the local communities. So now local communities all make their own laws and regulations regarding the matter, and generally makes enforcing ANY MM laws virtually impossible.
That’s a great point, GaWd. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Perhaps it’s because state’s rights is such a slippery slope for me, fraught with opportunity for situational ethics. It’s tough to support the issue when it seems as if it will be primarily used to promulgate anti-abortion law, state-mandated discrimination and freaky religious shit, but here is a legitimate (to me) situation when it could be useful.
I hate getting old. Nothing is black and white any more; nothing is easy or simple enough to make a decision and believe in it. Feh.
Another thing to consider, Soul Bro, is that 9 out of 10 legit doctors also won’t prescribe MM for fear of federal backlash against them, so the opportunists have come out. I know of situations where legit doctors will voice their unofficial opinion that a person belongs on MM for a certain disorder, but they will not take that extra step.
When I worked with NORML about 7 or 8 years ago, they had a real wacko doctor who would hand out Rxs like candy and he was seen as some sort of personal savior. IMO, many of the people at the function I attended were so abNORML( Hee!), and so on the fringe of life that I feel they have held back any pro-pot movement.
Hee!), and so on the fringe of life that I feel they have held back any pro-pot movement.