Posted on 02/20/2009 6:14:14 PM PST by Gondring
Ely photographer K.K. Forss is using words rather than a camera to offer a picture of what his life is like without medical marijuana. Forss traveled to the State Capitol to testify in support of medical marijuana legislation at a Senate Health, Housing and Family Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Medical marijuana use has been a political issue in Minnesota since the mid-nineties. The bill is currently being sponsored in the House by Rep. Tom Rukavina (DFL-Virginia). A five member bipartisan group is pushing it in the Senate.
Last year, though the legislation passed in the Senate, it did not make it through the House by the end of the session.
Among the arguments against the bill, opponents say it will muddle enforcement of current drug laws. Medical privacy laws will make maintaining law enforcement databases impossible. The definition of caregivers who can legally transport the substance would become vague. Children who live in the homes of patients using the drug would have easier access to it.
But Forss said he tried to show another side of the story at the hearing. He began by telling the committee about his life before using marijuana to ease severe chronic pain.
In May 2004, he went to the Twin Cities to meet with the publisher of a book of his photographs. The next morning, he said he woke to the worst pain in his life. He had surgery that day for a ruptured disk in his neck that also permanently damaged his spinal cord.
He had experienced a rare genetic condition that would not allow the condition to repair. Eight months later he had another surgery in which doctors tried to rebuild the damaged parts. It was the next in string of surgeries.
“This has been almost five years of hell. I’ve got more surgeries coming up, at least two,” he said.
Forss said the more his arm moves the worse the pain becomes. But he still needs to move it somewhat or it will “die off.”
The “blur of medications” he is taking compounds the problem.
As an overview, Forss said he can’t sleep more than an hour at a time with the pain, so he takes two muscle relaxants throughout the day. One is methadone, a drug sometimes prescribed for heroin addicts. He also wears fentanyl patches that last 72 hours for extreme pain management. Every three months he receives spinal cord injections.
Constipation and vomiting are among the side effects. When he becomes hot in summer, he loses 25-30 pounds as a result. In winter, he gains it back. The vomiting also makes his arm spasms worse.
Some of the medications affect his heart, so he takes further prescriptions to slow his heart rate and treat heartburn. An increase in blood pressure and cholesterol are part of the mix, too.
In addition, the heavy medication has caused the teeth on the sides of his lower jaw to completely crumble.
Forss has tried a variety of alternative treatments. These include two surgeries at the Mayo Clinic for further opinions, electric stimulation, ultrasound, chiropractic treatment, aromatherapy, cortisone shots, counseling for depression and pain management, acupuncture, and acupuncture with electric current, which he said was horrible and doesn’t recommend.
When he travels he said he feels every seam in the road. But going to the hearing was important.
“You have to believe you’ll get your life back at some point,” he said. “I don’t really have much quality of life any more.”
However, he said marijuana helps reverse the snowball effect of the medications he’s currently taking and creates a different snowball effect in a good direction.
He can sleep six to seven hours a night without heavy sleeping medications. When he sleeps without moving, the muscle spasms ease.
Along with reducing pain, the marijuana cuts down on his need for other medications. He said that’s easier on his heart, and less costly for him and taxpayers. His medications are paid for through the Medical Assistance Program because he’s listed as completely disabled.
As for protecting children from access to medical marijuana, Forss said the patients who would be placed in the program already secure the medications they have around their homes.
“It would be less harmful for [a child] to ingest the marijuana than any of those meds,” he said. “If they took a handful of any of my meds, they’d be dead.”
Another part of his motivation for supporting medical marijuana derives from societal perspectives.
He said the issue is often seen as a Democrat versus Republican debate. However, he labels himself as a Republican Christian.
“I’m frustrated to death with the way the Christian community sees the word ‘marijuana’ and immediately turns away,” he said.
Forss noted that marijuana has historically been used around the world for medical purposes for centuries. The Minnesota Nurses Association, Minnesota Public Health Association, Minnesota Senior Federation and the American College of Physicians are among its current supporters.
“The whole thing about the medical marijuana bill is to let doctors make the decisions again,” Forss said. “We trust them to open our bodies up, trust them to give us radiation or chemotherapy. I don’t understand why we can’t trust them with [marijuana].”
Forss’ testimony on Wednesday was one of several from medical marijuana patients. They appear to have had an effect. The House committee took the first step toward final legislation, voting 9-6 in support of medical marijuana bill.
The tide is slowly turning on this.
I also. I feel for the people who legitimately need it for medical purposes.
I don’t care what any pot smoker says, it does change a personality.
It may calm but it can cause agitation just as easy.
Besides it makes people act stupidly silly and they can just as easy try something else for “fun”.
So do I.
Marijuana was the only thing that gave my cousin relief from the unrelenting nausea of chemo.
Marijuana was made illegal in 1935 by FDR, just one more of that a-hole’s disastrous policies that we’ve been forced to deal with down to the present day.
Can someone explain to me why tobacco and alcohol are legal, but medical marijuana is illegal? The medical marijunana issue left a black mark on the Bush presidency and the liberal justices that enabled the DEA to violate states’ rights.
Interesting that the article mentions fentanyl. I remember reading an article a few years back about fentanyl “popsicles” and the potential for abuse, including off-label prescriptions and possible issues involving its marketing.
OK, it’s time for all the usual FReeper libertarians to come out of the woodwork for medical marijuana, which if I am not mistaken is SMOKED, with all the attendant hazards to one’s lungs.
All together now, “There is no pain reliever EVER produced by medical and pharmaceutical science that is as effective as smoking marijuana!” Go ahead, proclaim it to the heavens.
I’m in the Reserves. Tomorrow morning, more than likely I will have to stand observed and pee in the bottle to prove my innocence of not having used an illegal drug.
Therefore I really have no pity for marijuana smokers of any stripe. Oh, I forgot to add, I’m in the JAG Corps and I process the paperwork to separate those who “popped hot”.
So flame away.
“The tide is slowly turning on this.”
I certainly hope so. With few exceptions, this is the story of my life.
When they make owning a gun a crime will you turn yours in?
No victim, no crime. Does “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” convey a message of fraud or what.
This story is linked at JackHerer.com and people that somehow think that we are on the right path really need to read the online edition of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.”
Hemp/cannabis prohibition is so wrong, they won’t let anyone get on television and call it a fraud and demand a cost-benefit analysis of a prohibition policy that does not even prohibit- thank goodness.
You may know law, but you surely do not know justice. The harms of cannabis come from the laws with a big part of that being letting the greatest medicinal plant in the history of man do its job.
Cannabis prohibition is a crime against humanity and mass murder and you either understand it or you don’t. Be sure and watch Run From The Cure at JackHerer.com. He also has a YouTube channel, JackHererTV, that has some eyewitness testimony.
As Jack Herer says using the extensive Jamaican studies, if you use hemp everyday morning, noon, and night you will live two years longer and live a healthier and happy life with that.
“If and when impediments to medical marijuana use are removed and the American people begin to avail themselves of it en masse, the pharmaceutical manufacturers will lose a third or more of their sales.”== Fred Gardner at http://counterpunch.org/gardner02042009.html
Free Pot.
Legalize it already.
“Tomorrow morning, more than likely I will have to stand observed and pee in the bottle to prove my innocence of not having used an illegal drug.”
Just think - once upon a time you would have been a free man in a free country.
What a sorry pass we have come to.
I won’t flame you, I’ll just say....but for the Grace of God go you...
Banning medical marijuana is ridiculous.
Too much $$$ being made on the marijuana drug trade.
Some people really want to know who to listen too on medical pot. Dr. Lester Grinspoon was is the grandfather of cannabis researchers and he has two websites of interest. One is http://rxmarijuana.com/ where after you enter you can type in your ailment to get testimony of people that have used cannabis for their ailment. The other is the uses website at http://marijuana-uses.com/
Dr. Grinspoon has a wonderful blog entry at his uses page that is very well stated and it goes hand in hand with an hour long interview of telling his story of researching cannabis as medicine. It really is wonderful. It is too wonderful for television, that is for sure.
Grinspoon podcast from June of 2008 = http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/living-purpose/episode-127-lester-grinspoon-md
Granny Storm Crow Master List is something that might interest the hard core. It collect research by disease- http://medicalmarijuanapatient.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65
Because marijuana is a political drug, just like aids is a political disease.
No doubt the “medical” part of medical marijuana is abused by some, but if it produces relief in those suffering the effects of chemo and cancer, what kind of person would withhold it?
What's to flame? You made absolutely NO ARGUMENT TO SUPPORT THE CONTINUED BAN!
Just who's the dunce here?
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