Pompo

Medical Marijuana: Oregon Medical Marijuana Foe Drops Initiative Effort
5/9/08|StoptheDrugWar.org|

Kevin Mannix, a conservative Oregon political operative who has made a career out of pushing "tough on crime" ballot measures, announced this week that he and his colleagues are giving up on an initiative designed to gut the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA) and kill the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program. More than 16,000 Oregon residents are currently registered with that program.

On Monday, the Willamette Week reported that Mannix said the effort was dead. "That petition is going to stop this week," Mannix said, adding that there was not enough time or money to gather the 82,000 signatures needed.

The attack on OMMA was part of Mannix's proposed Oregon Crime Fighting Act, which would have given repeat "major felony" sex offenders a 25-year minimum sentence, made third-offense DUI a felony, and replaced OMMA with a program that would instead supply Marinol pills, the synthetic THC substitute generally scorned by medical marijuana patients.

"That's the best news I've had all day," Paul Stanford, head of The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, a Portland-based national chain of medical marijuana clinics, told the Week. "We don't have to waste our resources encouraging people not to sign that petition," Stanford says. "We don't have to mount a campaign against them in the fall. It just saves us a lot of time and effort."

But Mannix may be back. He told the Week that the initiative had the financial backing of Save Our Society From Drugs, the rabid, Florida-based prohibitionist group headed by Calvina Fay, and that the group could sponsor another effort to kill OMMA in 2010.

Buzzby

This underhanded effort to deny medical marijuana patients their medicine was especially underhanded because they tried to tie gutting the medical marijuana law to other new laws that many people would want.

I just wonder why people can't mind their own fucking business. It's not like anyone is being forced to use marijuana against their will. Real Conservatives (as opposed to NeoCon religious nutbags) want as little government interference in people's lives as possible. Their philosophy is, "If your behavior doesn't harm anyone else, it's nobody's business but your own."

If medical marijuana patients wanted Marinol, they'd get Marinol prescribed by their doctors. They want herbal marijuana because that's what works best for their medical problems. And it should be "Nobody's business but their own".

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quickie

ooooo....Buzzby's mad, he said the "F" word

kcbennie

SING IT SISTER!

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"My friend 'This is a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you where younger. Show me a picture of you when you were older."

- Mitch Hedburg

eltone

Thanks Buzzby. I am on Marinol 5mg (because in Iowa Medical Marijuana is an oxymoron, you know like Jumbo Shrimp, Military Intelligence and Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA)) to control life long chronic nausea from Diabetic Neuropathic Gastro Paresis. I surf waves of nausea from mild to severe every hour of everyday. There is no safe drug that controls chronic nausea. The most commonly prescribed drug is Regalen/Metroclopramide, and long term use of it causes ireversibile Parkinson like shakes and tremors and it's legal?1?1? Marinol is more expensive and less effective. I need something that is fast and lasts. Medical Grade Marijuana like Orange Kush is so incredibly effective with no chance of any toxic effects ever. At age 54 there are no ill effects I even need to be concerned about except for legal reasons. That shouldn't happen to a patient seeking relief from chronic nausea .

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Peace Out