Medical Marijuana Letters Published This Week

Last week Alabamians for Compassionate Care started a letter writing campaign to newspapers across Alabama informing voters about HB434, The Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act. So far two letters have been published. One has been published twice.

Author: Don Seibold
State Should Allow Medical Marijuana (Birmingham News)

Medical Marijuana Bill Should Pass (Montgomery Advertiser)

Please Support Medical Marijuana Bill (Tuscaloosa News)

Author: Gil Joiner
Medical Marijuana (Anniston Star)

Many other letters have been written by the patients and family members who make up the membership of ACC. Mrs. Margaret Ann Newman, who was Miss Wheel Chair Alabama in 1996, carried the Olympic torch through Birmingham that year, is a wife, mother, grandmother, multiple sclerosis patient and medical marijuana user wrote a very moving letter, as did Christie Reeder, who is a chronic pain patient who survived a horrific auto accident 22 years ago. Another letter writer is the son of a woman who was recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He had a gun put to his head recently while trying to acquire medical marijuana for his mother. We are hoping that many of the letters that have been written but not yet published will appear in papers across Alabama in tomorrows Sunday editions.

If others have written letters that have been published please send them to me so that I can post them here.

Nall Adds Humor to Sex Toy Debate

Tuscaloosa News
Editorials
Published Friday, November 16, 2007

Nall adds humor to sex toy debate
Loretta Nall, the clown princess of Alabama politics, is at it again.

Nall campaigned for governor in 2006 on the Libertarian ticket. When a political columnist drew attention to her cleavage, she didn't like it at first. But she turned the publicity to her advantage, raising campaign funds by selling T-shirts with her photo and the slogan, "More of these boobs!! And less of these boobs." Beneath the slogan were pictures of Bob Riley, Lucy Baxley and other candidates.

Now the free-spirited Nall is taking on Alabama's straitlaced attorney general, Troy King.

King is considering asking the Legislature to amend the state's anti-obscenity law. A Jefferson County judge ruled this month that part of the law was too vague to force closure of a sex toys store in Hoover.

In 1998, the Legislature passed a law banning the sale of sex toys in Alabama. Lower courts found it unconstitutional in 1999 and 2002, saying Alabama did not prove a legitimate interest in regulating sale of sex toys to adults. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in 2004, claiming there is no constitutional right to sexual privacy.

The appeals justices did note that Alabama could repeal the ban if residents decide "a prohibition on sex toys is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly."

It is all of those things.

"It's absolutely outrageous an attorney general would squander our tax dollars and barge into our bedrooms and tell us what we can and cannot do in Alabama," Nall says. "We have real crime in Alabama."

So she has organized a "Sex Toys for Troy King" drive, in which she encourages people to mail the devices to the AG's office in Montgomery.

Earlier this week, she sent King an inflatable pig.

We aren't delusional enough to believe that her drive will have any impact on changing the law. But it does point out its absurdities in a humorous way. It's good to have someone like Nall to enliven Alabama's buttoned-down political scene.
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Thanks to Ben Windham and the T-Town News for this editorial.

Leave Pot Smokers Alone

The Tuscaloosa News printed the following LTE from me today regarding the expansion of drug courts in Alabama.

Thanks T-Town News!


LEAVE MARIJUANA SMOKERS ALONE

Dear Editor: I want to thank Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb for her
efforts to ease prison overcrowding and address drug addiction with a
more compassionate approach. It is so important for society to
realize that addiction is an illness that can be treated and not a
crime that needs punishing.

Many of you know me as a voice for drug policy and prison reform in
Alabama and as a candidate for governor in 2006. I am also a family
member who has witnessed the devastating impact that drugs and
alcohol can have. I have two brothers, one in prison and one who just
overdosed for the ninth time on methadone provided to him by the
Veterans Administration. I know for a fact locking them in prison
does not work.

While I am happy to see drug courts expand in Alabama, I fear that
they will simply round up pot smokers to fill their treatment beds.
Marijuana should be exempt from all criminal sanctions, police
involvement and court oversight when used responsibly by adults. We
all know it is safer than alcohol and not addictive to the degree
that anyone actually suffers withdrawals if they quit. I say unless
people who smoke pot are doing something to endanger others, there is
no reason for the police or the courts to be involved. Taking
responsible, adult pot smokers out of the drug court equation will
greatly enable the drug courts to better help the people that really need it.

Loretta Nall

Alexander City

Published in the Tuscaloosa News

Yesterday I sent the following LTE to the Tuscaloosa News and today they were gracious enough to publish it. Thanks Tuscaloosa News!

Reefer Madness Returns

Dear Editor: In the last week two “studies" on the effects of marijuana use have been spreading like some sort of aggressive disease. This happens every year or so and it seems to always be the same two studies.

The first one proposes the idea that smoking even one joint could raise your risk of developing schizophrenia later in life by an astronomical 40 percent.

However, if one takes the time to look at actual rates of schizophrenia among the entire world population they will see that the rate has always been around 1 percent with no real fluctuation. If the schizophrenia claim were actually true then we would have seen a huge jump in the number of people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The second one claims a link between marijuana and lung cancer. It states that one joint is as bad as five cigarettes.

However, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Donald Tashkin, who for many years worked in cahoots with the DEA to try and prove this theory, recently released a study that shows smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer and may even have some preventative effects.

This kind of fear mongering about marijuana is true “Reefer Madness."