Azzariti eventually was approved for a card on the basis of another issue, chronic nausea, with which he's also afflicted. But he says cannabis did an infinitely better job of addressing his PTSD issues than Xanax and the other prescription meds ever had.

"It really helped me," he says. "It saved my life, really -- made it so I don't have to take any of those pills. It's kind of a miracle."

Despite his improved health, however, Azzariti remained troubled that he couldn't be approved for a card based on PTSD alone -- and his rejection "really set me on the road to advocacy. I was afraid that if other veterans got turned down, they might never find out how much cannabis can help -- and that's not right."

In the years since then, Azzariti has joined the medical marijuana industry -- he's a budtender at Kind Love -- and collaborated with cannabis advocates such as Vicente and Mason Tvert. For instance, he starred in a commercial for Amendment 64; it's on view below.

As you know, A64 made it legal for adults 21 and over to buy small amounts of marijuana for recreational purposes. Appropriately, he was the first person in the state to make such a buy on January 1.

In the meantime, Azzariti began working with Representative Jonathan Singer, who sponsored House Bill 14-1364. Although a similar measure was rejected in 2010, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment twice rejected petitions to add PTSD to the treatable-conditions list, he says "there was a lot of optimism" that the bill would become law "up until the vote happened."

In his view, the reason the legislation failed to get out of committee was due to the lack of federal research showing that medical marijuana assists those with PTSD. Because the feds have traditionally refused to authorize such studies, Azzariti sees the situation as "a total catch-22."

Finally, though, this situation could change. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services Department gave an organization called Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies permission to study the effects of medical marijuana on a group of seventy veterans with PTSD.

"All they're waiting for now is approval from the DEA and funding, and there's hope that could happen in the next few months," Azzariti says. "Once that starts, we can finally get this moving forward. It's a huge step in the right direction -- getting documentation we need so the argument about there not being enough research is invalid next time."

Of course, studies can take years to complete, and there's no guarantee the results will be so unambiguous that they will overwhelm every objection to medical marijuana use for PTSD sufferers. So Azzariti and his fellows will continue advocating for change on the local level , too.

"After the vote, the first thing we talked about was, 'We're coming back,"" he says. "We'll know their arguments for next year, and we have a really solid team. Hopefully we can make it happen next time."

Here's the Amendment 64 ad starring Azzariti.

Send your story tips to the author, Michael Roberts.

More from our Marijuana archive circa April 29: "Medical marijuana PTSD bill's failure is 'shameful,' advocate says."