Posted on 10/26/2007 11:34:42 PM PDT by Libloather
Medical marijuana advocate kills herself
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian
Robin Prosser, a Missoula woman who struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded.
After her earlier attempt failed, Prosser wound up in even more trouble after investigating police found marijuana in her home. She used the marijuana to help cope with pain.
That marijuana charge was eventually dropped in an agreement with the city of Missoula, and Prosser had reason to rejoice in 2004 when Montanans passed a law allowing medical use of the drug.
She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.
The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.
At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.
“I feel immensely let down,” Prosser would write a few months later, in a guest opinion for the Billings Gazette published July 28. “I have no safety, no protection, no help just to survive in a little less pain. I can't even get a job due to my medical marijuana use - can't pass a drug test.”
Federal prosecutors declined to charge Prosser, but fear spread through the system of marijuana distribution set up in the wake of the medical marijuana act. Friends said Prosser turned to other sources for marijuana, but found problems nearly everywhere she turned.
“Most recently, she had found some people who said they could get her what she needed, but it didn't go well,” said her friend Jane Byard.
Without the relief that marijuana delivered to her, Robin Prosser killed herself at home last week. She was 50.
Prosser suffered from an autoimmune disease that gave her allergic and dangerous reactions to most pharmaceutical painkillers. So she turned to marijuana. When that was no longer available she had no where else to turn.
“She just said she couldn't take it all anymore,” Byard said.
In her guest opinion, Prosser wrote that: “I'm 50 years old, low-income and sick. I spend most days in my apartment in bed, with no air conditioning, unable to go outside because I can't tolerate the sun.”
Beset by financial problems, troubled by depression, unable to find a reliable source of pain relief, she took her own life three months after the piece was published.
“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July. “Maybe the next campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would they help me to die, humanely?”
Before being disabled by her disease, Prosser was a concert pianist and a systems analyst. After the disease hit her, she became a tireless advocate for legalized use of marijuana in medical situations.
“She had so many difficulties, but she was a wonderful person,” Byard said. “She was kind and funny and just as smart as a whip. She was a very good friend to me, and it's a very sad story what happened to her.”
Maybe, in the future, there will be a cure. Marijuana doesn't seem to be it.
Be sure to pat yourself on the back. This woman was suffering and you would rather see her kill herself than to allow medical marijuana be used to help her. That is such an ethical choice.
Prayers for this poor soul. May she RIP.
Marijuana might be the cure for something...but too many folks will think of it as the cure for everything. Then it goes downhill fast.
But on the positive side...if we could ever find something to use it for...legally...and could tax it....we’d cut out income tax within three years. Course, we’d all be addicted and smoking a dozen joints a day and act like potheads.
May the God of peace be merciful and bestow His grace upon His servant Robin Prosser, and may perpetual Light shine upon her.
I said nothing of the sort. Shut up and sit down.
I think your major premise is wrong here. I don't think marijuana causes people to act like potheads. I think potheads are one group of people who use marijuana just because they are potheads. When marijuana was made illegal and the penalties for use increased, the casual user was scared off. Now marijuana sold on the streets is much more concentrated in THC than what it was decades ago. This is because the primary customer, the potheads, want the extreme effects. The same is true for all illegal drugs. Cocaine sold at the turn of the 20th century is nothing in concentration like cocaine sold to people today.
Amen.
Would you rather have this woman suffer and commit suicide rather than allow marijuana be used as a treatment?
A simple yes or no will suffice.
It was used as a treatment. Did you read anything before you knee-jerk reaction?
A simple yes or no will suffice.
And do you still beat your children?
"A simple yes or no will suffice."
I don't see how anyone who's not for banning alcohol can be for banning pot. As long as no one makes me smoke that crap, they can do what they want in their own homes, as far as I'm concerned--that's the conservative, small-government response.
Instead of taking this obviously biased article as the Gospel truth (written by someone named "Michael Moore", probably not that Michael Moore, but certainly someone who shares Fatso's journalistic objectivity), you may want to read a little deeper into the "reportage". For example, the article says that "Prosser suffered from an autoimmune disease that gave her allergic and dangerous reactions to most pharmaceutical painkillers". It also states that Prosser had located an alternate source for her medical weed, "but it didn't go well". It sounds to me that, the journalist's bias notwithstanding ("So she turned to marijuana. When that was no longer available she had no where else to turn".), MS Prosser may well have had other options for pain relief, but preferred her pot to other medications that would relief her pain, but would not give her that nice buzz that would have relieved the depression that probably was the actual cause of her suicide.
This is a demagogic sob story, aka "Women and minorities hit hardest..."
From the article:
"Without the relief that marijuana delivered to her, Robin Prosser killed herself at home last week. She was 50. "
Thank You Big Brother For Protecting Me From A “Dope Fiend”.
Take it easy. The woman just died...
Exactly. I may be wrong, but I haven’t heard anything against the convincing argument that legalisation would render the drug dealers, and their inherent crime problems, obsolete.
“Most recently, she had found some people who said they could get her what she needed, but it didn't go well,” said her friend Jane Byard."
Women in back-alleys again...
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