"Can't we admit that med was just a gateway to rec marijuana?" What a fucking insulting thing to say! How many lives have been either saved or prolonged by the use of medical cannabis? How many people can now live a normal life by using state-licensed medical cannabis products?
I swear, you all sound like kids with no practical knowledge of cannabis whatsoever, other than perhaps the joys of dabbing. Now, I hate to admit that I am one of the people who introduced “dabbing” to Colorado, as I was one of the very first legal, strain-specific hash oil makers to supply the dispensaries on South Broadway back in 2010. I helped to design one of the first dabbing rigs before “dabbing” became a term we all know now.
The reason I started to make hash oil was because not long after watching Run From the Cure, I became friends with the only people legally allowed to work under the “Phoenix Tears” name within the U.S.
I was one of the many witnesses speaking out against the nanogram driving bills the first two times they came to the Colorado State Capitol. This is me speaking out:
These are the comments I made on the Westword website on the recent medical marijuana comment post:
Comment #1: As one of the first 2,000 cannabis patients of Colorado, I can tell you that if I could do it all over again, I would NOT have voted for HB1264, recreational cannabis! The legal patients got SCREWED big-time in this deal. There are too many to list and explain here in a simple comment, however.
Medical cannabis is helping/curing many people = patients here in Colorado. Why are we patients paying any tax whatsoever now since rec is legal and taxed? I CAN NOT take opiates = Oxycodine! Did you know there is no sales tax on any dangerous opiate prescriptions like Oxy? Why is there on my valid meds?!?!
High concentrates of THC eaten daily (one half gram of high THC hash oil per day for 120 days) will usually cure any cancer! Why are we allowing any “dabbers” to buy concentrates before curing all the patients who truly need it?
No, today’s rec laws and what happened to Colorado is a bummer and a sorry joke to all the true medical cannabis Patients of Colorado. I wish I could reverse it!
And MEDICAL Cannabis here in Colorado needs to be kept separate and far more legitimate than rec cannabis!
Comment #2: Brian Vicente co-authored Amendment 64 and $old out all medical cannabis patients of Colorado! He is an advocate of big $$$, not patients! In fact, Vicente is a traitor to all the legitimate Colorado cannabis patients!
Comment #3: Thirdly, the title to this article — “READER: CAN'T WE ADMIT THAT MED WAS JUST A GATEWAY TO REC MARIJUANA?” — is truly an insult to all legitimate cannabis patients! A truly ignorant thing to even suggest!Most of the patients I have spoken to about this subject basically feel the same: that we, the patients, got very fucked over by the passing of HB1264!
Now, not as a patient but as a cannabis felon from 1978 in Florida, I have another HUGE bitch about HB1264! I’ve been involved with cannabis since 1972, ending up in 1978 being in maximum security for two pounds of cannabis! (I was around 3,000 yards away from Ted Bundy then!)
From the year 2000 to 2012, I was legally allowed to work in the Colorado cannabis industries. But HB1264 outlawed me and all other cannabis felons from remaining or getting into the cannabis industries! My strain-specific hash oil was becoming well-known for how well it was made, as it was not done via a closed loop system back then. I made the oil for the very first vape ecigarette for cannabis-only in Colorado back in 2010!
HB1264 took many of the most knowledgable in the Colorado cannabis industries out of the system forever and replaced them with big money people with little to no knowledge of cannabis!
In 2006 I was one of the very first 2,000 cannabis patients ever licensed in Colorado, and have been licensed since. Dr. Alan Shackelford has been my doctor since before he had his own office and would visit different dispensaries different days of the week and used one of the dispensary's offices to see his patients.
Back in 2006, there were only two or three places in Colorado where a patient could go to see a doctor who would issue the paperwork/prescription to obtain the license. One place was on North Wadsworth, and at that time, if I remember correctly, the Kind Room dispensary was located in the same building, too. (Yeah, the one that has been on South Broadway forever was first located somewhere else.)
I was terminal not that long ago and spoke out nationally about that situation. It was cannabis that kept me alive at the time, as I would not take gabapentin. My bovine aortic heart valve was deteriorating to nothing. What I was taking was a special formulation by United Cannabis/River Rock of their Prana product P3. Two drops from an eyedropper two or three times a day was all I needed. I ended up getting an experimental aortic heart valve installed without the use of open heart surgery! (Now the research team of Prana is working with the government of Jamaica and have their research labs located there, rather than in Denver.)
Truly, this article is an insult to all the legitimate cannabis patients in Colorado, but then again, how many legit patients would even read Westword’s “marijuana” articles. Case in point: “Marijuana” is a derogatory term made popular by William Randloph Hearst’s yellow journalism. If you want to sound legit or even fair to all of this, drop “marijuana” and start using the proper term: cannabis. It is the word that has been used since ancient Latin!
The patients and people who had been in the industry and/or fighting for the cause fought long and hard to make the medical benefits available for legitimate patients with ailments that might not otherwise have been mended or relieved. It was a long battle to fight through it all to make it even happen. For the rec users to totally discount this and for them to deny the very fact that medical cannabis is not even comparable to recreational use is nothing less than a “fuck you” from them.
Read more about Robert Mitton on his Dying With Dignity blog here. E-mail him at [email protected].
Westword occasionally publishes op-eds about issues of interest to Colorado residents. If you have one you'd like to submit, send it to [email protected].
