A man in Ireland walked into the Irish police (gardai) station with a small amount of cannabis and requested to be booked for possession. While many of us may be puzzled by such an action, further inquiry tells a different story.

The man, 30 year old Mark Fitzsimons, suffered from glaucoma. I say suffered, because he has had both eyes removed after going totally blind. With a burning desire to challenge the established medical marijuana laws and unable to afford legal representation to do so, Fitzsimons purposefully took the cannabis to the gardai station with the intention of being convicted and securing a state lawyer.

The gardai took the cannabis and issued Fitzsimons a warning. According to protocol, the cannabis needs to be tested and verified before Fitzsimons can be formally charged. He says he is now just awaiting the test results and the court summons.

Discovering as a teenager that cannabis was a tremendous help for his glaucoma, he tried unsuccessfully to get permission to use marijuana. He stated, “more and more studies show that cannabis can be used and is used and it’s the best form of treatment for it. I also found out it’s an anti-inflammatory. The older I got the more certain I became of it. I remember saying this to people and all they would say is, ‘that’s illegal’”.

Today Mark uses cannabis to treat phantom pains that still linger. He remarked that the prescription pain killers he was given after the removal of his second eye took him over six months to get over. He also believes that, had medical cannabis been legal he would still have his eyes and some ability to see.

I am no scholar of Irish law, so I cannot speak to ultimately how effective this strategy will be for Fitzsimons, but I do support his struggle and the least we can do is share the story, spread the word and hope that enough lit matches can build a funeral pyre for these utterly ridiculous cannabis laws.