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.”
She had something. She used her own treatment. Marijuana doesn't seem to have been the cure.
Thank You Big Brother For Protecting Me From A “Dope Fiend”.
Take it easy. The woman just died...
~~~
Sorry if I trashed your thread,,,I apologize,,,But,,,
WTH would it hurt us all if she was given whatever it takes
to ease her pain/whatever ??
Prayers Up...
GOD Bless...
Again, (for the ADD-sufferers among us) if it alleviates SYMPTOMS then it ought to be allowed. No one has mentioned “cure”.
Notice that I did have to put a sarcasm tag on the above statement?
I beg to differ.
It is one of the great pillars of this grand Republic that we protect rights even if it's not the "easy route." We protect the RKBA, even if the threat of their need to stave off the government is "an exceptional case." We set our standard of conviction high, erring on the side of releasing the guilty rather than punishing the innocent. We don't physically limit motor vehicles to the legal speed limit just because the true need to go faster is "exceptional."
The heart of the Republic is protecting the minorities against the majority case. Going with the majority case is called Demobracy...I mean, Democracy...something the Founding Fathers were rightly against.
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.Any FReeper who doesn't consider this anathema should question his supposed conservatism or support for the Constitution. You don't get much clearer in opposition to our Federalist system than this statement.
Unfortunately, it seems like more and more FReepers are in favor of a big Nanny-State government and have adopted the Liberal idea of "we know better than you what's good for you."
She tried pot. That didn't do the trick. Did it really alleviate anything doctor?
You are a doctor - right? You certainly prescribe medication to patients - don't you?
Good post. As Rush once did, I'm considering a trial separation from the Republican party. It's becoming a party of people who want to fight the liberals telling me how to live my life...so "CONSERVATIVES" can tell me how to live my life.
She made the choice. One less vote for Ron Paul.
Sadly, I have personal knowledge. :-( ...but my reaction to the loss of Ms. Prosser is the same as it was with my friend: I'm happy for her that she succeeded and escaped her pain. As much as it hurts to lose someone, I find it far more sick to make a person stick around and endure a living hell just for own pleasure or to assuage our guilt of arbitrarily sentencing them to passively endure a treatable condition.
Huh?
Because it didn't cure her? Because it didn't remove 100% of the symptoms, side-effect-free? Is that the standard you use?
actually it’s the Libertarian response. Never vote for a Libertarian.
Why does the government have to regulate drugs that can be restricted to home use? As long as alcohol is legal they have little business picking and choosing.
Having to pay doctors for my migraine meds irritates me...it gives me a worse headache.
If you want drugs register as a user and allow employers to ask and choose about the matter. There’s a better system than what we have....actually, it couldn’t be much worse.
She took what she thought would ease the pain. Apparently, 25 years of smoking didn't end her suffering.
May she rest in peace.
Oh, I didn't need to be reminded of that. No-way, no-how.
From the article: “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.
This statement is too vague to ascertain what was actually happening. Maybe the street dealer was too flakey to return her calls, or had to study for his calculus exams. For you to declare that the consupmtion of pot wasn't working for her is nowhere indicated in the article.
How much you willing to put up?
(Though I want to clarify "these pot heads"...if you are referring to those who have already committed suicide rather than endure their misery, then no bet. If you're talking about any of the people I know who often say, "I wish there were just a pill that would do this and I could get it covered on insurance and not worry about the DEA," then you're on!)
You are now going to tell me that her dope helps her but all the medical science in existence can’t ease her pain.
I take it you don't have many dealings with people who are disabled or terminally ill. Or psychiatrists. If you did, I think you'd not have posted what you did.
Note that even with the laundry list of pharmaceutical anti-depressants we have (and effective therapy techniques like CBT), about 15% of patients with clinical depression don't find relief. But guess what...there might be a link with Omega-3 that gives some relief to these treatment-resistant sufferers. If Omega-3 supplements were banned, these fokks couldn't just go to a doc and say, "fix me!"
They have a place in such things as antibiotics, where there's a public health problem (MRSA, anyone?) if used indiscriminately. A debatable claim can be made for marijuana having a public-health risk that justifies regulation.
But the key is "regulate," at an appropriate level. Banning use by patients who could benefit from it, with minimal public-health risk, is a different story.
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