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Cannabis conference kicks off in Santa Barbara
Matt Cota | ksby.com | April 7, 2006

Doctors, patients and one famous talk show host gather in Santa Barbara on Friday to talk about medical marijuana.

The Clinical Conference on Cannabis is being held at Santa Barbara City College. The three-day event hopes to bolster the therapeutic use of marijuana.

Irv Rosenfeld from Florida is a successful stockbroker, and he smokes pot.

"Here is my prescription right here," he says.

Rosenfeld, who has 200 tumors throughout his body, is one of seven people in a now-disbanded federal medical marijuana program.

He has been smoking 12 joints a day, everyday since 1982. Now he is in Santa Barbara to talk about how marijuana saved his life.

"I am living proof. Without it I wouldn't be alive today," Rosenfeld says.

Joining Rosenfeld at the Cannabis conference is day-time talk show host Montel Williams.

Williams, who is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, brought a camera crew along for a future show advocating medical marijuana use.

"He's definitely my hero," says one spectator who came all the way from Ohio to hear the latest scientific research about medical marijuana.

"People are seeing that it is scientist and doctors not just the hippies in the tie-dye shirts trying to get high," says medical marijuana patient George McMahan.

The conference not only focused on the therapeutic benefits of marijuana, but the legal and political battles faced by those who support its use.

"There is a big misconception that this stuff is bad for you, but a lot of us are living because it is good for us," says McMahan.

Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum, and former Mayor Harriet Miller support medical marijuana, and were at the Cannabis conference Friday morning.

Other Central Coast cities are not as welcoming. Grover Beach, Santa Maria, Lompoc, Solvang, Pismo Beach and Buellton recently enacted bans on new medical marijuana dispensaries.

The Cannabis conference continues through the weekend at Santa Barbara City College.

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