Missourri

[palmspringsbum]

<table class=posttable align=right width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_patterson-jacqueline.bmp width=260></td></tr></table>High Above the Law
<blockquote><b>She has cerebral palsy, four kids and loads of debt. Meet the unofficial spokeswoman for marijuana legalization.</b></blockquote>

By Eric Barton
Article Published Jun 8, 2006
The Kansas City Pitch - FEATURE

Hearing Room No. 7, in the basement of the Missouri Capitol, is beige. The walls, the floors, even most of the suits worn by the state representatives in the front of the room are beige. Then comes Jacqueline Patterson.

She wears a pink blazer, fishnet stockings and a pleated black skirt that looks more like a slip. Pink stripes line her hair. Somebody in the front of the room calls her name. She hobbles up to a microphone at a beige desk.

My name is, umm. My name is, umm, Jacqueline Patterson. I am, ahhh-umm, from Kansas City, Missouri. I have a severe st-st-stutter."

So far, the representatives at this early morning hearing in April have looked uninterested by the parade of oddballs. A severely obese guy came up to the microphone in a special wheelchair that looked to be made out of roll bars and ATV tires. Some kid who sounded stoned babbled about his sick uncle. A Navy vet strung together unrelated sentences. These speakers were supposed to convince the representatives that marijuana is medicine. A couple of reps started reading the paper. One munched on an egg sandwich. Another went outside to take a call.

<table class=posttable align=left width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_patterson-with_children.bmp width=300></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>Patterson with her younger children: 4-year-old Ulysses and 2-year-old Fiona.</td></tr></table>Now, every one of them has looked up to see 27-year-old Patterson struggle to speak.

"I came here today to ummmm, to ummm, to ummm, to ask you to put yourself in my shoes," she says, reading from a speech scribbled the day before in a spiral notebook. She asks the representatives to imagine growing up with cerebral palsy and being made fun of for having a limp, a right hand that doesn't work and a stutter. Even without the stutter, her voice sounds on the verge of tears or panic. Her nervousness aggravates the stutter.

She stops for a moment. She often gets hung up on words that begin with vowels. They get stuck in the back of her throat, and her face contorts, as though she has just tasted something awful. The state reps gawk as she struggles to expel a one-letter word.

"I — I — I smoked cannabis for the first time when I was 14," she says. "For the first time, my muscles were not tense. And words slid from my mouth, from gggghhh — from me at a fluid pace instead of sssss-stuck on my tongue like a g-ghh — like a train wreck."

Pot was the only thing that made her feel normal. But getting it, she says, meant hanging out with seedy people she didn't trust. She felt like a criminal.

Patterson takes them through the horrific details of her adult life. The rape. The time she broke her neck. Her husband's suicide. She's now a widowed mother of four. The politicians have put down their newspapers. The one with the breakfast sandwich listens intently. A woman in the gallery cries quietly.

Then things turn. Patterson launches into a tangent about her broken neck and how doctors had to drill holes in her skull. She follows that with a diatribe about the inconsistent quality of cannabis. At least a couple of the reps look disgusted as she describes the time she begged a friend to let her smoke a bowl with him while she was eight months pregnant.

<table class=posttable align=right width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_mcmahon-tin.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>George McMahon gets his weed from the government.</td></tr></table>She's lost all of them.

Even the committee chairman, Rep. Wayne Cooper, a physician from Camdenton who has sounded pro-medical marijuana all day, looks aghast. When Patterson finishes, Cooper quickly dismisses her by saying: "OK, thank you."

Patterson comes back to join her oldest son, 9-year-old Tristan, in the second row. "Oh," she says, "that didn't go so well."

The hearing on House Bill 1831, which would legalize medical marijuana in Missouri, ends with no discussion from the representatives.

The hearing has made it clear that those who would benefit most from legalized pot aren't the best at speaking to conservative lawmakers. They're the fringe of society, suffering from chronic pain or post-traumatic stress. They're weakened cancer or AIDS patients, strengthened by pot's ability to make them hungry. They're not the type who can connect with the beige representatives. If the pro-marijuana cause is to get a legitimate debate in Missouri, those who claim to smoke weed for their health need a lot of polishing.

After the hearing, Patterson takes her son to the Capitol rotunda for a tour. School kids on field trips turn to stare at her as she limps up five flights of stairs. She can't get her mind off the idea that she failed.

"I hate my speech so much," she says near the top of the Capitol. "I drrr- ... I dr- ... I drove my husband to suicide, you know."

<b>Patterson remembers the night</b> she first smoked weed the way others remember the loss of their virginity. She was 14 and living in Texas, where her mom had moved from Kansas City after divorcing her father. A friend named Tim asked if she wanted to go for a walk in the woods. Tim was four years older. It was late, maybe 10 or so. He pulled out a small metal pipe.

<table class=posttable align=left width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_mcmahon-rolling_1.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>McMahon doesn't have to worry about where he smokes pot.</td></tr></table>"Hey, do you want to smoke this?" he asked.

"All right," she quickly agreed.

Afterward, they sprawled out in a clearing to gaze up at the sky. It was a cool summer night. At some point in the conversation, she realized how easy the words were coming out. And her muscles, which normally felt cramped and pained, were loose. She'd never felt so comfortable with herself. "It was a release from the disease and from the emotional trauma," she recalls.

Her parents had divorced when Patterson was young, and she and her mother had moved around a lot. That meant Patterson didn't know many people to get high with. She did it only a few times as a teenager. She quit when the babies came.

The first was Tristan, whose father she met at a haunted house when she was in high school. She moved out of her mother's place, and not long after she graduated high school, her roommate raped her. She later gave birth to a boy she put up for adoption. (The rapist, Michael Scott Parker, is serving a 15-year sentence.) She had a short-lived marriage that produced a daughter, Jane, who's now 6.

In 1998, she enrolled at Northern Iowa Area Community College and later transferred to the University of Northern Iowa. Misfortune followed her there, too, when she flipped her Geo Tracker and broke her neck. She spent a week and a half in the hospital, much of it with metal screws drilled into her head to help heal her rebuilt spine.

In 2000, she was living with her two kids in a dorm when her future husband knocked on the door. There was something about Travis Patterson that made her think she knew him already, and she invited him in. It took a few minutes before she realized he was there to sell her magazines. He asked her out to a movie. She was a divorced mother of two who couldn't afford a baby-sitter, so no, she said, she wouldn't be going out to a movie. He came back that night with a DVD of <i>The Green Mile</i>.

They shared stories of rough childhoods. Her stories were full of alienation, kids making fun of her stutter. His were about abuses that came back in recurring dreams. To forget his childhood, Travis smoked pot. So they shared that, too.

<table class=posttable align=right width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_mcmahon-rolling_2.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap> McMahon doesn't have to worry about where he smokes pot.</td></tr></table>The couple moved to Kansas City in 2001, and Travis got a construction job. They had two kids: Ulysses, who's now 4, and Fiona, 2. Jacqueline took classes at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and eventually her father let them stay in the two-story Grandview house where her family had lived before her parents' divorce.

At UMKC, Patterson met Elise Max, a fellow student and an active proponent of legalizing pot.

The summer after high school, Max was busted with two roaches, and the judge sent her to rehab with hardcore addicts. She says the experience convinced her that pot users shouldn't be punished alongside hardened criminals. So she founded a local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Once Max got involved in the movement, she realized that few marijuana users participate in marches or rallies for fear of being stigmatized as pot smokers.

"It's just like when people talked about the abolition of slavery," says Max, who graduated this spring from UMKC. "It was taboo then, just like it's taboo now to talk about legalizing marijuana."

After Max got her involved, Patterson discovered a talent that made her a celebrity in the pro-pot movement. Many activists who claim that marijuana benefits them medically can't easily prove the point, but Patterson can do it by puffing on a joint and speaking more clearly as she gets high.

That's evident one afternoon at the small south Kansas City home that she rents from her brother. Patterson pulls a glass bowl out of a desk in the living room. She holds it deftly in her weakened right hand, her twisted index finger capping a hole in the side of the pipe. She uses her left hand to light it and takes her finger off the carburetor. She inhales deeply, holding in the smoke for a while. Her two oldest children are at school, her second-youngest is napping and the little one is eating a biscuit in a highchair.

After a couple of hits, the stutter nearly disappears. "People who have disabilities are ignored," she says. "The civil rights movement is not over."

<b>When Patterson first got involved</b>, there wasn't much of a pro-pot lobby in Missouri. Lawmakers with little influence in Jefferson City had introduced bills that quickly died without the first step of a committee hearing.

In 2004, however, the movement got a boost when two pro-pot city ordinances appeared on the ballot in Columbia. The first proposed allowing those who benefit medically from marijuana to possess up to 35 grams, about 20 joints. The second stripped police of the power to arrest somebody for that same amount; instead, those caught with small amounts would get a ticket similar to an open-container violation and face no jail time, just a fine and community service. The measures passed resoundingly.

<table class=posttable align=left width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_mcmahon-smoking.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>McMahon doesn't have to worry about where he smokes pot.</td></tr></table>In a practical sense, they haven't had much effect. Nobody has used the medical marijuana defense, says Capt. Mike Martin of the Columbia Police Department. The changes have simply reduced most possession charges to nothing more than a beer ticket.

The victory in Columbia motivated the pro-pot lobby to try for a statewide change. And they've picked up some unlikely allies, potentially leading to a legitimate statewide debate about medical marijuana.

Earlier this year, state Rep. Tom Villa of St. Louis agreed to sponsor House Bill 1831 — the proposed law for which Patterson testified. It would have allowed patients who have a doctor's prescription for pot to receive a special license from the state to grow up to three marijuana plants and possess up to 3 ounces of processed weed. Villa, who works at his family's business distributing light bulbs, is anything but a pothead. When asked whether he partakes, he points to his round belly and then to his bald head. "Do I look like I do?" he quips. "I'm 61. I'm pretty boring, I guess. I have no experience with it at all."

It was a sense of compassion that moved him to sponsor the legislation, Villa says. Besides, Villa is a former majority whip and has served eight terms as a Democrat from liberal south St. Louis, so he doesn't fear conservatives attacking him for a pro-pot stance.

Wayne Cooper, the chair of the House's Health Care Policy Committee, seemed receptive to the medical marijuana bill during the hearing in April. He's a Republican and a former Christian missionary to the Philippines — not exactly the type to favor medical marijuana. But advocates often find allies among physicians, who know that weed is beneficial to glaucoma and cancer patients.

Cooper was alone in voicing his support during the April hearing. Most of the other 10 representatives looked as disinterested as Rep. Kathy Chinn, a 52-year-old pork farmer from Clarence. Chinn says she's against legalizing any drug. "I thought she had things she needed to express," Chinn said when the Pitch asked what she thought of Patterson's testimony. "I do not judge her. That is not what I do."

Cooper had scheduled the hearing with only two weeks left in the legislative session, meaning there wasn't enough time for the bill to get a full vote from the House. But getting a hearing is something, Villa says. "There is some light at the end of the tunnel," he says. "Just not this year."

This summer, proponents will hone the bill's language in hopes that the committee might send it on to the House for debate.

<table class=posttable align=right width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_mcmahon-kansas_city.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>McMahon takes in the atmosphere at the pro-pot rally in Kansas City.</td></tr></table>And a debate over medical marijuana on the House floor of a state controlled by conservatives would get the movement some needed attention, says Dan Viets, a 54-year-old lawyer from Columbia. Viets has spent 20 years defending kids busted with small amounts of dope and is one of the state's most active pro-pot lobbyists. It's unlikely that Missouri will soon join the other 12 states with some form of medical marijuana law, but Viets hopes to at least send a message. "Why in the world would we not trust our doctors with marijuana when we trust them with morphine, codeine and amphetamines?" he says.

Patterson has already experienced what it's like to smoke medical marijuana legally. In April, while traveling to California for a conference put on by Patients Out of Time, she visited the office of a Bay Area doctor who's known for prescribing cannabis. She smoked a joint with him in his office. She says the doctor estimated that her speech improved by 75 percent.

Even more than helping to stop the stutter, pot does something else: It helps her forget.

<b>Tension between Jacqueline and Travis</b> Patterson started building during a long cold spell back in December 2004. Travis was working construction, but the severe cold had kept his job site closed from late November. Jacqueline was six months pregnant with their fourth child, and the bills weren't getting paid.

On Christmas, the kids came downstairs to find a bunch of poorly wrapped gifts under the tree. There was one for Jacqueline: gold butterfly earrings with amethyst and peridot stones. Jacqueline knew Travis had spent his last check on the presents. It was sweet, but it was also the last of their money.

A couple of weeks passed before the fight broke out. Patterson accused her husband of squandering money. Another couple was staying with them at the time, so they tried to keep their shouts down to keep their friends from hearing the argument. At some point, Jacqueline took off her wedding ring and threw it at Travis. He answered by making fun of her speech, something he hadn't done before.

"He stuttered the way I do," Patterson recalls. "As soon as the words left his mouth, he looked like, 'I can't believe I just said that.'"

She didn't talk to him the rest of that night or the next morning. By then, the cold weather was over, and he went to work. When he came home that night, Patterson was cooking a boxed dinner, a Skillet Sensation, with green beans on the side. Travis tried to apologize, but she pushed him away. "It was just the sweetest apology in the world, but I was too mad to accept it."

<table class=posttable align=left width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_patterson-at_mike.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>Jacqueline Patterson found a more receptive audience in Southmoreland Park than she did in Jefferson City.</td></tr></table>After dinner, Travis approached her again. She was in the kitchen struggling to take off a necklace. She's stubborn about that sort of thing. It'll take her 10 minutes to screw the cap on her youngest child's bottle, but she keeps turning until she gets it on. As Travis tried to help with the necklace, Patterson hit him with stinging words. "I would rather be raped again, a thousand times over, than get help from you."

Travis went into the basement, where their friends were staying. One of them was packing a bowl of weed and offered some to Travis. Instead, he went upstairs and locked himself in the bedroom. Jacqueline stayed downstairs that night.

Travis didn't come down the next morning. When Jacqueline went upstairs, she could hear a fan going inside the room, which was strange, because he hated that fan. It was around 7:30 on January 7, 2005. Jacqueline tried the door and found it locked. So she crawled out the bathroom window and shimmied along the roof outside.

She could see him from the window. "The first thing I thought was, When did he get so good at doing costume makeup?"

His face was blue. His purple tongue dangled from his mouth. He had taken off his wedding ring, placed it on a bedside table and used a belt to hang himself from the frame around the bathroom door.

Jacqueline knew his upbringing had been tragic, but she says there's no question that she was responsible for his suicide. "If I had gone to him that night and taken his apology, he wouldn't have done it," she says. "You know, you only find the other half of you once. It might be a fucked-up other half, but I can still feel the hole from where he's not attached to me anymore."

Later on, she kept thinking about how their friends had asked Travis to smoke a bowl with him. If he had stayed downstairs, if he had gotten high, perhaps he would have calmed down.

It's not exactly an argument that would convince conservative lawmakers to legalize pot. But it was Patterson's motivation to get serious about the cause.

<table class=posttable align=right width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_villa-tom.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>State Rep. Tom Villa says he's never smoked dope, but he wants to legalize it for use as medicine.</td></tr></table><b>George McMahon plops himself down</b> on the small stone wall that outlines the grounds of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. He folds a rolling paper in half, takes a pill bottle out of his pocket and pours some weed across the crease. As he runs his tongue lengthwise along the joint, a wedding party strolls past. Bride, groom, bridesmaids, dad, mom. They all stare, baffled.

"Oops," he says, giggling as he stuffs the pill bottle back in his pants. He decides that he ought to go someplace less conspicuous. So he walks across Oak Street and sits on the wall of Southmoreland Park, a few yards away from the wedding party.

His reason for being so brash: Sitting on the wall next to him is a tin canister that looks like a large can of tomatoes. Once a month, the federal government sends him a canister stuffed with 300 joints, along with directions that he should smoke 10 of them a day. He has used the can to prove to cops that he can smoke legally.

In drug circles, McMahon — a 55-year-old former ditch digger — is a living legend. He's one of five Americans who receive dope directly from the government. He takes part in a little-known Food and Drug Administration program that started in 1978 but was discontinued in 1992; those already enrolled were allowed to continue. McMahon credits the government-grown cannabis with helping him endure the chronic pain caused by a genetic degenerative disease.

McMahon has come to Kansas City from his home in Iowa for this May 6 rally, where he'll give a speech in front of about 200 people gathered on the lawn of Southmoreland Park. Headlining the event is Patterson.

Patterson talked him into coming by promising him gas money, but a week ago, she called to tell him she was broke and couldn't come up with it. McMahon drove down anyway.

Patterson is near financial disaster. Her first husband sends her child support; the government sends her food stamps and a $900 disability check. But she owes her brother $500 in back rent. The phone company recently cut off her service. She can't afford to register her van. Even worse, she knows that at any moment, the government could discover her role in these pro-pot activities and take away her benefits.

"Can you believe a rapist or a child molester can get out of jail and get benefits, but if they find me with pot, they will take my benefits away?" she asks. But she believes that her dead husband is watching over her. "I'm pretty sure Travis is going to keep me safe."

Besides, the rally is beginning, and thinking about finances is a downer. "Hey, that's not sssss-something to worry about today," she says, standing near tables full of pamphlets promoting legalization. She takes the black wrapper off a peanut-butter-flavored marijuana candy and plops it on her tongue.

"Please get wise and legalize!" the event's master of ceremonies says over the PA system. He's wearing an Uncle Sam hat, a blue blazer with white stars, and shorts and boots that look like they've been stolen from a pro wrestler. He gives McMahon a quick introduction. "McMahon, come fill some time."

<table class=posttable align=left width=260><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/missouri_chinn-kathy.bmp width=260></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>State Rep. Kathy Chinn is against legalizing pot, as most of her colleagues in the House probably are.</td></tr></table>As a speaker, McMahon rambles. "If humans don't have some of the chemicals that are in cannabis in their body, guess what? They die," he says. Without pausing, he launches into a monologue on women being more affected by weed because they have babies. As he speaks, some people lounging on blankets share sandwiches they've grilled on a camp stove. A few people collect stickers from the tables. Patterson and her kids sit under a maple tree and dip bread into a jar of peanut butter. Few in the audience clap when McMahon finishes.

Patterson is a reluctant public speaker, and the crowd's reaction to the infamous McMahon makes her even more nervous. A punk band takes over to warm up for her. She remembers her speech before the Missouri House committee. "I did horribly bad. I really bombed," she says, the words flowing easily now that she's stoned.

At 4:20 p.m. — the international time for potheads to light up — Uncle Sam introduces the headliner. "Jacqueline, get up here," he says to sparse clapping.

Patterson wears a pair of cowboy boots that she inherited from a grandmother. She made her skirt from a pair of Travis' jeans that she cut up and paired with frilly pink material. Atop her blond, pink-striped hair is a crown of plastic pot leaves.

She begins by reading from the spiral notebook. "'The way we treat you is criminal.' That is the words uttered to me by aaaaa — by aaaa — by a committee member during a hearing for House Bill 1831." The microphone is too tall for Patterson to read her speech while also stretching up to speak.

She abandons the notebook. Unlike her stutter-filled diatribe in the Capitol basement, Patterson ad-libs with clarity. She punches words for emphasis. Soon, she has the crowd cheering with her.

She promises to get medical marijuana legalized.

"If we don't do it this year, we will do it next year!" she screams into the microphone. The crowd reacts with loud approval. "We need you guys to get fucking involved!"

"Yeah, Jacqueline!" somebody yells.

Uncle Sam introduces the next band. Patterson limps to the back of the crowd to collect her kids. Along the way, she passes a lonely-looking woman seated at a folding table. In front of her is a stack of unsigned voter-registration cards.


<center>©2006 Village Voice Media All rights reserved. </center>

[palmspringsbum]

Pot Roast
Letters from the week of
Article Published Jun 15, 2006


Straight dope: As a leading advocate for the reform of policies governing medical marijuana, I believe Eric Barton's "High Above the Law" (June to be one of the most skewed articles on the subject I've ever read.

And to refer to sick and dying patients as a "parade of oddballs" was deeply offensive. It seemed to betray an inability to empathize with the suffering of others.

Barton spoke of federal marijuana patient George McMahon's ability to smoke marijuana and "get high" wherever he likes, conveniently failing to mention that prior to being accepted to the government program, McMahon had lived through 19 major surgeries, been declared clinically dead five times, and was taking 17 different prescribed pharmaceutical substances daily. For the last 16 years, McMahon has smoked 10 government-issued cannabis cigarettes daily. During this time, he has had NO surgeries or hospitalizations, and he has no longer takes ANY pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps Barton should take time to investigate the vast amounts of international clinical and empirical research data supporting the therapeutic value of cannabis. He spends more time focusing on the odd appearances and mannerisms of people who support medical marijuana than he does providing scientific information. But sick and dying people aren't often too concerned about image. They are patients out of time, fighting to find peace and justice in an absurd system that criminalizes their relief.

Christopher Largen
Denton, Texas

[budman]

Friday, August 04, 2006

“I’m 100 years old. I can say what I want.”

Musician, minister, activist stands by her experience, beliefs

By Justin Ludwig/Lake Sun
Published: Wednesday, August 2, 2006 9:32 PM CDT
The Lake Sun Leader

CAMDEN COUNTY — Hands that once made gunpowder during World War II turned 100 years old last month. But the woman behind them feels a lot younger.Mildred McAllister, or frugal Millie as her friends used to call her, says she’s lived a happy, full life. On a friday afternoon, the ordained minister is eager to be interviewed and happy to chat, she says. Family is her main focus — she’s had three husbands, five children, 14 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, but it isn’t easy to remember them all.“Was that the one I couldn’t stand?” McAllister asks, trying to remember her first husband.“I’m 100 now, but I still don’t remember it all.”

It doesn’t take her long before her memory rushes back. It was the husband she was thinking of, and “his family said they couldn’t blame me,” she jokes. McAllister says she likes remembering old times and striking up conversations with her family to keep her sharp. She also enjoys shopping, road trips and afternoon walks. “She outwalks me, and I’m half her age,” her daughter-in-law, Deborah, says. McAllister enjoys playing an organ inside her rural Climax Springs home. Her family encourages her to play an old tune, and McAllister is happy to oblige, she says.“That’s torture when I play the organ. But they put up with me,” McAllister jokes.

Her sense of humor is one of the things first noticeable about her personality. If anything, her humor has only ripened with age, her family says. There were several close calls throughout her life, but she’s able to joke about those now, too. “I caught everything but the sociable disease, because I wasn’t sociable enough to get it,” she jokes. McAllister was a sickly child growing up. She caught scarlet fever, among others, she remembers. “I caught everything that came along. I just grabbed onto it,” McAllister says. “[My parents] never expected to raise me.” Her health is pretty steady these days. Aside from the arthritis in her hands, she isn’t bothered by much. She broke her shoulder last year, but has since recovered. “That’s all I can ask for. Just to be healthy,” she says. McAllister moved to Missouri just over a year ago to live with family. Nearly 100 friends and family members wished her well July 21 at her birthday party. Some came from as far as Texas and Indiana. “It was lovely,” McAllister says.

During most of her life, McAllister lived in Indiana. She was born to a loving home, she says.

“I wish everybody had as good of a mother and father as I had,” she says. When her brother crossed the Atlantic Ocean to fight for America in WWII, McAllister felt the need to support her country in any way she could. A gunpowder manufacturing facility in a nearby county was looking for workers, so McAllister enlisted. “I knew I had to make gunpowder. They had to have it,” she remembers. Unfortunately, her brother was killed on the beaches of Italy by a 50-caliber machine gun.“They cut him in half with a damn machine gun,” McAllister says, before quickly apologizing for her language. It’s a hard subject to talk about, she explains.

Most of McAllister’s career after the war — 25 years — was spent at the Miles Laboratory in Indiana. She bottled vitamins and Alka-Seltzer. In her later years, McAllister became a social and religious activist, vocally opposing laws that prohibit farmers from growing hemp, which is currently harvested for commercial purposes in 30 nations, including Canada, for food, biodiesel, fabric and plastics. McAllister is also a strong supporter of medical marijuana initiatives, which voters have passed in nine states. Doctors, not politicians, should decide whether to prescribe medical marijuana to their patients, she says.

“They’re our people and we should take care of every one of them and give them the best,” McAllister says. Along those lines, McAllister has even protested outside her old workplace because the company, like other pharmaceutical companies, lobbies against medical marijuana — the plant would cut into their profits, she says. Her experiences protesting marijuana prohibition stem from her involvement with the Missouri THC Ministry. Believing marijuana to be a miracle plant with hundreds of beneficial uses, McAllister became an ordained minister in the church along with her son and daughter-in-law. “I’m 100 years old. I can say what I want,” she jokes. According to the ministry’s Web site, the faith-based group practices across the country, providing education in practical cannabis spirituality and a legitimate religious ‘defense to prosecution’ for sincere people more than 21 years old. On the net: http://www.thc-ministry.org

Contact this reporter at justin@lakesunleader.com

[palmspringsbum]

Published October 15, 2006 01:00 am -

Guest column: Legal marijuana would help millions


By Ron Hutchinson
The Joplin Globe
Ocober 16, 2006


Globe guest columnist

Have you heard the news? There is now a low-cost drug proven to ease a cancer patient’s suffering. Not only does this drug reduce the physical and psychological pain of cancer, but, more importantly, it restores a chemotherapy patient’s appetite.

The drug, of course, is marijuana.

Unfortunately, in a 6-3 ruling last year, the U.S. Supreme Court turned thumbs down on the drug, overturning laws in 11 states which allowed doctors to prescribe the medication to their cancer patients.

Pouring salt into the wound, the U.S. House of Representatives — in a preposterous 273-152 vote — opted likewise to outlaw the drug for cancer patients. Representative Roy Blunt, R-Mo., turned his back on cancer victims, as did Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., and Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Rep. John Boozman, R-Ariz., also agreed that marijuana had no earthly medical benefits, despite the anecdotal evidence from thousands of cancer patients. (Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see M.D. behind any of these congressmen’s names.)

One of the amendment’s co-sponsors, Rep. Rohrabacher, R-Calif., broke down in tears during his speech in support of the bill. Talking of his mother who died of cancer, Rep. Rohrabacher questioned the rationale of jailing people whose only crime was the overpowering need to relieve their pain.

I’m guessing none of the shortsighted lawmakers voting against the amendment has ever been attached intravenously to a chemotherapy drip. Probably never been in a room full of bone-weary cancer patients — expressions grim, hair thinning — stretched out on recliners as the chemo-poison drips into their vein. (Oncologists don’t like to talk about it, but a chemotherapy patient can die from the complications of starvation. The thing is, you don’t have an appetite when you’re on chemo. Patients often lose 20 percent of their body weight thanks to an unwelcome companion: debilitating nausea. Marijuana helps to restore this loss of appetite.)

This archaic intolerance for doctor-prescribed marijuana is even more difficult to swallow given the results of a recent Gallup Poll. The poll revealed 80 percent of Americans favor doctor-prescribed marijuana for cancer patients. Apparently, neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the U.S. House of Representatives are reading polls these days. Or they simply don’t care.

Remember, this is doctor-prescribed marijuana. I’m not talking about a cancer patient making a desperate, late-night drug buy in some seedy downtown Joplin alley. It is prescribed by a doctor in a clinically controlled environment like any other drug. Why is this concept so difficult to accept?

I’ve heard the argument against condoning doctor-prescribed marijuana. It goes something like this: Providing medical marijuana to cancer patients is the first step toward legalizing the drug. Nonsense! That’s like saying morphine should be outlawed as a pain reliever for fear it, too, will become legalized. Both arguments are classic examples of circular logic. A person makes an assumption that can’t be proven, then derives a result from this assumption to prove a point. Political doublespeak.

To say the argument for outlawing medical marijuana is dangerously flawed is like saying the sinking of the Titanic was an unfortunate accident — a towering understatement.

I’m not suggesting marijuana be legalized. Not now. Not ever. But honestly, can’t our elected officials show some compassion for the 1.4 million new cancer patients each year who have no voice of their own.

To deny medical marijuana to cancer patients is simply wrong. The objections are irrational. The suffering is needless.

Ron Hutchinson is freelance writer and lives in Joplin.

[palmspringsbum]

St. George Mayor Admits To Marijuana Use

by Chris Regnier, KTVI - MyFox St. Louis
October 25th, 2007


St. George Mayor Harold Goodman admits to Fox 2 that there was marijuana in his apartment when cops arrested him there Monday.

This comes as questions still swirl about why St. Louis County Police were at Goodman's apartment in the first place.

<table class=posttable align=right width=320><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/goodman_harold.jpg alt="Harold Goodman"></td></tr></table>After a meeting Wednesday afternoon, St. George city leaders announced that Goodman is on an indefinite leave of absence.

But we're told the 64 year old former police officer who was elected in April of last year has not resigned.

Goodman was arrested Monday on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge.

Goodman refused an on camera interview, but he told Fox 2 on the phone that the small amount of marijuana discovered by police had been in his apartment for at least two years and that he used it for medicinal purposes.

Goodman says he suffers from Crone's disease and at times smoked the marijuana to relieve his nausea and help him eat.

St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig confirms St. Louis County Police were serving a search warrant on a different issue when they found the pot.

But he won't reveal what that other issue is.

Uhrig said, "It's an ongoing investigation. Until they've either completed it or issued warrants we can't divulge any information regarding it."

Many people know St. George for a run-in this past September when a St. George Police sergeant berated a driver after a traffic stop.

The sergeant was fired.

Now, it's marijuana and the mayor- not the image this small town wants.

Acting Mayor Heather Hediger told us, "It does put a bit of a black eye on our city again. But is doesn't represent the citizens of this town. "

Officials say Goodman's legal troubles have nothing to do with St. George.

But some residents are concerned.

"There's a lot of stuff been going on that kind of at least to me is kind of strange and worries all my neighbors at least. They wonder what's going on with everything," resident Tim Warzel told us.

Fox 2 tried to get a copy of the search warrant that authorities served Monday.

But it's been sealed by the court.

Other court documents aren't yet available because warrants haven't been officially issued against Goodman.

He has been released pending any warrants.

A special meeting is set to take place at the St.GeorgeCity Hall Thursday night so city leaders can talk with residents about Goodman's situation.

[palmspringsbum]

"Unfortunately I Will Not Be Supporting Your Efforts To Make Marijuana Legal Alternative Medicine"

The Great Western-Pacific Coastal Post
By Jacqueline Patterson
March, 2008


The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted on a resolution last week condemning the Drug Enforcement Administration for the threatening letters that were sent to the landlords of medical cannabis dispensaries all across California; personally, I've got to hand it to the DEA, those sneaky rascals finally conjured up an effective inexpensive plan to rid California of many of its "distribution centers", their term for what rational and compassionate people call "medical cannabis dispensaries" but what's in a name, right? The point is that while this tactic has been by far the DEA's most successful strategy, it will have no lasting impact on medical cannabis in California.

Not only does the DEA lack the resources to actually follow upon the potentially illegal threat to relieve landlords of their assets, but the distribution of said letters drew the attention of many members of Congress who are already impatiently awaiting the DEA's response as to why they will not reschedule the herb so that doctors and scientists may research the potential for therapeutic use of cannabis and its compounds.

Alice O'Leary, widow of the first man to receive his cannabis from the federal government, says that if cannabis didn't carry the stigma attached to it today, if it was an unknown plant found in some far away rainforest, it would hailed as a medical miracle. Research shows that cannabis and/or certain compounds in the plant retard tumors, slow the progression of Alzheimer's, protect the brain in the event of a stroke, and even combat cancer despite the DEA's maliciously unfounded stance on the issue. And they have the nerve to call us criminals.

The simple truth of the matter is that the DEA will never shut down medical cannabis in California just as they will never dismantle the black market that supplies truly dangerous hard drugs to millions of miserable American addicts; the difference is that the medical cannabis debate has displaced governmental authority and created a potential crash for the revenue streams of local and national law enforcement, especially in the Midwest.

Drug dealers feed off of the desperation and hopelessness that creates the destructive product niche whereas cannabis patient collectives overgrow the government with truth, radiant beauty, and compassion.

In San Francisco's grossly underprivileged Tenderloin district, few businesses make improving the community a top priority, but in December, when Sanctuary owner, Michael Welch, found that he had a little money left over after paying rent subsidies for many of the dispensary's low-income patients, he spread a little Christmas cheer to the residents who live above the shop and right now, he is busy developing two new programs: one to help homeless families transition to stability and the other to offer treatment that compliments cannabis therapy.

One of the biggest problems for a medical cannabis patient is that proponents often identify the herb as a cure-all while opponents do everything in their power to further stigmatize persons living with disabilities or diseases who choose to empower their lives and their health with the use of this nontoxic plant; these patients, even here in California, become reluctant to discuss this particular treatment with their healthcare providers and families so cannabis never really is fully integrated into the patient's disability/disease maintenance regimen.

This breakdown in transition from theory to practice enables small-minded Republicans such as Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton to defend his refusal to place Missouri's medical cannabis bill into committee with this statement: <blockquote><i>"Unfortunately I will not be supporting your efforts to make cannabis a legal alternative medicine this year. I certainly feel for the pain of the people you mention in your letter, however, I am not convinced that there is no other medicine or treatment available to alleviate their pain other than an illegal drug. We should be doing all we can to eradicate this harmful drug that has done much to poison the youth of our state not trying to make it more easily available."</i></blockquote>What Representative Jetton may or may not know is that a man much like himself breathed life into Missouri's medical cannabis movement. A legislator by the name of Ronnie DePasco inspired the first medical cannabis bill in Missouri; he was one of Missouri's most vocal supporters of cannabis prohibition until he had to do his time in the cancer ward.

I doubt, as devoted to the law as he was that he ever used cannabis, but he did see that the herb effectively relieved the suffering of his chemotherapy comrades and a bill was introduced the following year and the year after that and after that.

I lobbied and testified when the bill got into committee and I made every effort to educate my neighbors and local doctors, as have many advocates in Missouri so what we have now is a (mostly) great bill in the hands of a really misinformed man who has demonstrated his desire to remain ignorant on this issue.

I represent a patient who gave birth to her little girl in prison because after trying several dangerous pharmaceuticals to control a nasty case of bipolar, she discovered that cannabis helped her lead a full and happy life. She's ostracized from the mainstream community of her small town and on indefinite parole because cannabis prohibition creates revenue for the state of Missouri. Another would-be patient would love to give her son a sibling but would never survive pregnancy without cannabis and already experienced the fear of losing her first child to the court system; I'm morally obligated to do everything in my power to afford them access to the same freedom and holistic health that I enjoy in California.

The DEA's landlord letters have generated discussion of city and county run collectives, which seems quite unlikely given California's saturated cannabis market but in states, such as Missouri or Michigan, where patients can only pray that compassionate legislation passes into law, such a design would enable the state to not only research the medical application of cannabis using the individual study method recently recommended by the American College of Physicians in their paper supporting therapeutic cannabis, but also to reevaluate current drug education and make the modifications that will truly help end teenage drug abuse.

[palmspringsbum]

March 24, 2008

Medical marijuana, Missouri

KansasCity.com

I was born with cerebral palsy and discovered early on that cannabis mitigated the most painful physical and emotional manifestations of my disorder. I later learned that cannabis can help stutterers speak more clearly and that decades ago, doctors discovered the herb's ability to alleviate muscle spasms, from which I also suffer.

A year ago my children and I reluctantly fled our home in Kansas City and headed for the sanctuary of California's Compassionate Use Act.

Although 12 states have enacted medical cannabis laws that protect patients against state penalties, patients in the remaining states risk losing their careers, their freedom and even their families because they use a natural, nontoxic medicine to treat illness rather than expensive and addictive pharmaceutical drugs.

Now that a bill to protect medical cannabis patients has been introduced in the General Assembly, Missouri has an opportunity to step up and do the right thing.

Patients all over the state are anxiously awaiting the assignment of House Bill 1830 to the Health and Public Policy Committee. Please contact House Speaker Rod Jetton and ask him to open his heart to Missouri medical cannabis patients so that they may stop living in pain, fear and misery.

Jacqueline Patterson
Bolinas, Calif.

[palmspringsbum]

The Kansas City Pitch | April 7, 2009

Maybe if Missouri and Kansas legislators were high, their actions would make more sense

By C.J. Janovy

<span class=postbigbold>Dying Seniors to Be Denied Weed</span>

If the econocalypse has done anything, it has given us new respect for the men and women who grew up in the 1920s and '30s. Be a cynic about that Greatest Generation title all you want — it's a damn fine way to sell books — but the people in that generation survived crap economies and fought off Nazism. Now that the few remaining old warriors are spending their twilight years battling their own failing organs, can't we finally give them a break?

Apparently not. Because politicians are gutless.

Once again, a bill has been introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives that would legalize the use of medical marijuana. And, once again, it's probably going nowhere because the politicians are all afraid that, come re-election time, anyone who votes "yes" will be attacked as pro-junkie.

The bill is HB 277. Its co-sponsor, Democrat Jason Holsman, who represents southwest Kansas City, spoke candidly with Pitch writer Peter Rugg last week about why people who are suffering with terminal cancer will just keep right on suffering. We really hope this story doesn't get quoted in Republican campaign literature next time around. Jason Holsman wants your grandmother to chief the chronic. ... Can we really trust Jason Holsman?

"I'm supporting it because more than 70 percent of all AARP members polled want to see medical marijuana become legal in the United States," Holsman said. "That's my constituency, and I'm honoring their wishes."

The survey takers, all of whom were over 45, overwhelmingly agreed that patients should have access to marijuana if a physician prescribes it.

"The majority party isn't interested in moving it along," Holsman said of his bill. "It seems like there isn't a willingness to listen to senior citizens." The Legislature's refusal to even think about medical marijuana is "a real farce," he said. "There's Valium, Vicodin, all sorts of psychotropic drugs available through prescription. If marijuana helps a patient's appetite, their glaucoma, why not? And with terminally ill patients who are going to die anyway, what does the threat of prison do?"

Holsman says the bill's best chance is through a citizen referendum.

Come on, guys. Think of everything your grandparents have done for you. They're nice people. Do them this one favor, OK? We promise that when you get to be their age, you'll be glad you fought now.

<span class=postbigbold>On Inhaling ...</span>

Last week, folks who showed up for a speech at the University of Kansas got their first good look at their soon-to-be-governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson.

With Gov. Kathleen Sebelius heading to Washington after holding the line against new coal-fired power plants in western Kansas, environmentalists have been hoping that Parkinson would step into his predecessor's eco-friendly shoes. So they were eager to hear what he had to say in a speech titled "National Policy and Climate Change" at KU last week. The room was packed, reported Pitch writer Carolyn Szczepanski.

Parkinson started out strong. Unlike some other Kansas politicians who don't believe coal-fired power plants cause any worrisome pollution, Parkinson gets the issue. Reputable scientists, he said, have determined that the world must reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere to maintain life as we know it.

But then Parkinson suggested that elected officials can't be held responsible for what happens to the planet.

"Politicians cannot solve the problem," he announced.

The trouble is that billions of people in the developing world still live without electricity, he explained. By 2050, the global demand for electricity will double. Renewable power is making strides in Kansas, but sources like solar and wind aren't as cheap and reliable as fossil fuels. "It is supremely naïve to believe the developing world will pick the 40-percent solution when a 100-percent solution is out there," he said.

The solution isn't international treaties like the Kyoto Protocol or economic mandates like Europe's cap-and-trade carbon market.

The only solution: science. Science has the potential to make clean coal a reality, to figure out a way to safely dispose of nuclear waste, and to discover how to store electricity from wind and solar power. "Another possibility is that someone comes up with a breakthrough we haven't even considered, some form of non-emitting energy or a way to manipulate the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Parkinson added. "Which is kind of a scary thought, but something we might get to."

The good news, Parkinson said, is that the Obama administration has started to open the financial floodgates for research money. Without research money, Parkinson said, we can't have a scientific breakthrough. And "without a scientific breakthrough, we can't solve the problem."

When Parkinson opened the floor for questions, there was plenty of skepticism. What about conservation, several people in the audience wondered. What about using political policy, like gas or carbon taxes, to help us break our dirty habits?

Parkinson reiterated that we're paying way too much attention to political options.

"But we're not going to invent our way out of the problem," one person pressed.

"The only way to get out of this problem is to invent our way out of it," Parkinson countered.

At one point, Parkinson asked who, among the students in the room, was pursuing a science-related degree. About half the audience members raised their hands.

No pressure, Jayhawks. But you're our only hope.