The city council of my town in California has banned Marijuana collectives after allowing 16 to put up shop and provide for patients. The ordinance will go through Dec 1st and it will be illegal to setup a collective beyond that date.
I am thinking about becoming an activist for medicinal marijuana and I wrote this speach. I have never spoke before a council before, so I thought posting it here first would break the ice for me.
Let me know what you think, if you agree/disagree and why.
Speech to City Council – by Sabastious [name removed]
I stand here as a stranger to you all even though I grew up along side of you in this community. I come here to speak about the topic of the medicinal use of marijuana and the council’s recent decision to implement the recommendation by the DA to ban collectives in our town.
I know you have heard many legitimate stories involving medicinal Marijuana use already, so I will try to keep my story brief for that reason.
In 2004 I was diagnosed by leading psychologists and psychiatrists in this community with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bi Polar II Disorder with Rapid Cycling. What this means is that my brain chemistry randomly stops producing, or just not enough of, the needed chemicals to stabilize my moods. This leaves me caught between delusions of grandeur and suicidal thoughts daily.
After going through the medical communities healing process and abstaining from marijuana use for many years I chose to leave after gaining 100 pounds, of which I have now lost. This was only one of many extremely life-altering side effects imposed upon me by the industries leading medications.
Marijuana does not solve my mental issues, but it allows me to control my disorder rather than the other way around. This is something the medical community has helped others with using pharmaceuticals, but some people’s brain chemistry is resistant to the drugs. After a long and arduous process of trial and error I found out that I am among this smaller group of people.
At the age of 26 I chose to get a marijuana prescription. By then I had not yet experienced the affects of THC and I had already had a stint into alcoholism. At the time I was registered with the County Mental Health facility. They had many thousands of patients and few doctors and could only see me very infrequently and I still wasn’t even sure if the doctors there would ethically be OK with giving me a prescription.
So, instead I went to a local wellness center of which I provided my extensive medical history paperwork to them and they issued me a year long prop 215 prescription for Marijuana for a sizable fee. Before I started medicating with weed I had no job, but all the while had been teaching myself how to program internet software so that when I did get on my feet, a goal I always had set, I would have a trade.
I own a web development business now that is prospering and I medicate while programming. Rapid cycling, as well as compounded depression from my trauma, affects my work. To conquer this problem I medicate with specific strains of Marijuana that my collective was providing for me. I found certain strains of Marijuana to affect me negatively and I discarded those and continued on to the next.
Now, you have banned all collectives. You have done this because of a recommendation given to you by our local law enforcement. A representative of the DA presented to you an argument that if you did not proceed with a city-wide ban that federal prosecutors would escalate the situation with the real power that they wield. They also told you that collectives could not be considered primary care providers because the law defines primary care as caring for someone who cannot care for themselves.
I ask you this: if I cannot legally get something that provides me with a life in my country, state, county and city then the person that provides that for me, through whatever legal loophole available, does that person not become my primary care provider? How is it that I can care for myself without them? Growing the right strains of Marijuana is a technical process, not one which anyone and everyone should be expected to become proficient at.
Should I be expected to venture out into what was a black market for so long to find trusted people I can make agreements with? You may pity me, but I do not believe you have any empathy for me.
What you have done, councilmen and councilwomen, is stripped me, and many others, of primary care just as if you would have dragged someone out of what you define as a primary care facility and left them to fend for themselves.
I do not blame our local law enforcement for making this recommendation even though I strongly disagree with them. They are the ones that go to work every day where anything could happen. They are the ones that put their life on the line in defense of order against chaos. And because of that, I understand their bias towards all substances including alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana.
They have seen many profound evils. They have seen people choose substance over parenting and I am sorry for all the things that they have had to witness because of such selfish choices by the individuals in our town. I do ask that they look at me for what I am, as someone who wants to work with the system and not against it. I humbly honor their sacrifices and I am ever so grateful for the security that those sacrifices provide my wife and son.
That said, if a police officer doesn’t respond to a scene because he/she feels it is too dangerous then they are not a police officer. Just the same, if a fire fighter chooses to stand idle by and let a fire blaze on because he thinks it’s too hot cannot rightly be considered a fire fighter.
Public servants, including the City Council, who do not fight for the will of their people are not public servants, but something else.
We live in a time where information is often not accurate. We as a people need to see this as a danger to our way of life. All a selfish mother has to do is take one drag off her cigarette, or injest a single shot of alcohol, and she could forever change the future of her unborn child. Yet, she lives in her house in freedom to destroy our future when there are people rotting in federal prison for providing illegal care for people like me who needed it.
We live in a hypocritical society and I believe the council has made a hypocritical decision not in the best interests of the people of our town. I have lost faith in my local government and that means it’s time for me to use our democratic society to change things for the better.
I believe everything must be done decently and by arrangement and I ask of our town community of medical marijuana users to use the system, not anything else, to make that change happen.
God bless the lives of the people continuing to pursue a life of freedom, liberty and happiness, thank you.
-Sab