Grass is Always Greener...

When it comes to medicinal cannabis legislation, it’s either black or white. Most people are staunchly for it, for whatever reasons; or some people are against it, for, yet again, whatever reasons. However, personal beliefs aside for said people, the world is not black and white. There will always be some sort of gray area that exists in between. The area where good meets evil. The area where the calm meets the storm. Essentially, the area where everything becomes a little more confusing, but imbues the best of both worlds. In my eyes, this is how I view medical marijuana legalization.

From the dark/black side, people argue that medical cannabis is a gateway drug to other substances. Where the white argues that alcohol is actually more harmful, seeing as how no one has ever died from ingesting medical cannabis. But both of these facts aside, medicinal cannabis has its proven benefits. Mainly being for terminally ill patients.

Imagine a world where we wouldn’t need man-made pharmaceuticals, and a world where essentially addiction to these substances wouldn’t exist. It’d be a world of natural remedies. Something that has virtually no side effects. This is the world of medical cannabis.

Medicinal marijuana has been proven to help alleviate pain from all types of extremely harmful diseases. From Alzheimer’s, to Sickle Cell Anemia, medical marijuana essentially is almost, forgive the paraphrasing, a panacea of sorts. It allows cancer patients to actually be able to keep food down. It alleviates pain for HIV cases. The pain relieving effects have been tested by Harvard doctors and are highly endorsed. Yet still, we have this stigma of medicinal cannabis being this taboo substance. But wouldn’t it be nice for a chemo patient to be able to use medicinal cannabis and then be able to actually hold down food? Or someone with chronic back pain to partake and not have to turn to addictive chemicals? Or one that hits personally close to home for most of us, it has potential to help children. Epileptic children especially. They’re able to ingest medicinal cannabis via some sort of “edible” and see a drop in seizure rates. Doing all of this without having to put manmade chemicals in their bodies, or for those without insurance, they’re able to purchase needed cannabis at a much lower cost than buying expensive medication that isn’t affordable without healthcare.

That is the biggest reason I feel like it should be legalized, but not the only. Another benefit is the tax money. In the last four months Colorado has made almost forty million dollars of tax revenue from medical cannabis stores around the state, granted, that is full-tilt legalization. We do have almost twice the population of Colorado, however. So regardless of future full legalization for recreation, or for right now just legalizing medical cannabis, the tax revenue would be insurmountable. And all of this money has gone to the education system in Colorado. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to raise taxes for our children to get a better education? Smaller class sizes, more teachers, better equipment. All of this can be realized.

All we need to do as a society is remove this certain stigma that has been placed on medicinal cannabis as this “drug”. It’s been used for over 5000 years as a natural remedy. So why are we pumping not only ourselves, but our brothers, sisters, and children with these harmful chemicals, when there’s a natural alternative available? All we have to do is make the change, and take out big pharmaceutical companies who control the market and open it up to medical cannabis distributors to be able to grow and sell. All it takes is for people to speak up, do the research, and make a change.

I personally believe Georgia is ready for this change. This really isn’t a partisan issue. Many red states have gone ahead and legalized medical cannabis, why can’t we? I remain hopeful that this will pass soon, not for the monetary gain, but for the betterment of our healthcare system as well.

Reposted from State Senator Curt Thompson’s blog (D-5th). He resides in Tucker, GA and is Chairman of the Special Judiciary Committee. Make sure to follow him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. His website is www.makingyourvoicecount.com