A WTHR-Howey Politics Indiana poll last October said 46 percent of Hoosiers polled strongly favored legalizing medical marijuana. Now one Indiana Marine has armed himself with those figures and others to lobby for it.

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - A WTHR-Howey Politics Indiana poll last October said 46 percent of Hoosiers polled strongly favored legalizing medical marijuana. Now one Indiana Marine has armed himself with those figures and others to lobby for it.

He is as unlikely a figure head for this kind of fight as you can imagine. A Marine veteran of Desert Storm and Desert Shield is now fighting for his country once again here at home.

"Veterans are finding relief from medical cannabis. Twenty-eight states have medical cannabis laws," said Jeff Staker, the organizer of Hoosier Veterans for Medical Cannabis.

Today that fight took him before the Indiana Veterans Commission.

"We are not wearing marijuana T-shirts. Not looking like Cheech and Chong. We are looking like professionals. We want to see this as a medicine," he continued.

Staker says the nation is losing 17,000 veterans a year to prescription drug abuse. He says Indiana is losing 3,500 Hoosiers a year who are electing to move to one of the 28 states that will make medical marijuana available.

"Now we have cannabis refugees with their kids. They want to take care of them. They want to be Hoosiers. They want to live here," Staker explained.

Next week Staker will take his argument before the state's American Legion and then before lawmakers at the Indiana Statehouse after that.

"They say Indiana is so conservative but conservatism has to be synonymous with compassion for your fellow man," he said.