As marijuana and hemp is legalized in more and more states, the end of marijuana prohibition seems inevitable. With an increasing acceptance of marijuana use, an interesting phenomenon is occurring: the face of marijuana users is changing.

Gone is the image of the shaggy-haired teen boy, who would toke up on a couch in his parents’ basement with his buddies. Instead, the face of legalization is a mix of people from all races, ages, income levels and professions.

To shine a light on the new face of legalization, Mint Press News spoke with individuals in the marijuana and hemp legalization movements. These are their stories.

Medical marijuana

Patrick McClellan suffers from mitochondrial myopathy — a rare and genetic muscular disorder that causes severe and painful spasms. Though he’s had the condition since birth, he says it has become extremely debilitating in the last four to five years.

“I take 26 pills a day,” he said, adding that he wears two emergency medications in a pill case around his neck. But even with all of his medications, McClellan still has severe muscle spasm attacks.

About three years ago McClellan suffered a debilitating attack that left him trapped between his bed and the wall for two-and-a-half hours until his wife came home.

“I had violent muscle spasms in both legs and abdominal muscles,” he said. “I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t even dial 911.”

In search of a way to keep such a severe attack from occurring again, McClellan says one of his friends suggested he try using marijuana. A recreational marijuana user when he was in his 20s, McClellan said he eventually quit using the substance because he no longer enjoyed the high. But he says he remembered his uncle who suffered from multiple sclerosis (MS) would use marijuana to help with muscle spasms, so he bought a vaporizer.

For the next six months, McClellan conducted an experiment. When he felt his muscles start to twitch — which he says is what happens about 30 minutes to an hour before an attack — he would alternate taking the emergency medications he wears around his neck with vaporizing a small amount of marijuana.

Seven out of 10 times his medications would prevent the attack from occurring, but marijuana worked 100 percent of the time. “Cannabis completely eliminated the attack,” he said. “It just shut it off like a light switch.”

McClellan says when he told his neurologist about his experiment, his doctor wasn’t surprised at all and shared with McClellan that others who had conducted similar experiments had found similar results.

Since McClellan lives in Minnesota — a state that has yet to legalize medical marijuana — he only feels comfortable using a vaporizer prior to an attack if he is at home. When McClellan is away from the privacy of his own home, he says he uses the medications he carries around his neck. Unfortunately, one of those pills has a side effect known to make some symptoms of mitochondrial myopathy worse, and the other could be fatal for McClellan since it is not supposed to be used for muscle spasms.

If marijuana were to be legalized for medical use in Minnesota, McClellan says he would use marijuana daily instead of just three to four times a week, since the substance helps him sleep, which helps his muscles.

Forced to purchase his marijuana on the black market, McClellan says he uses about a gram of marijuana every two weeks and spends about $80 every two months on marijuana. All of his other medications are covered by health insurance.

“The main thing I don’t understand is why I can’t take a seed and put it in the ground like I do with a tomato,” he said. “My wife and I grow organic tomatoes. So why can’t I take a seed for an all natural plant that’s also an effective medicine and plant it?” If he were able to grow his own marijuana, McClellan estimates it would cost him about $20 for a year’s worth of marijuana.

But it’s not just the financial aspect of medical marijuana legalization that is concerning for McClellan. If Minnesota had a dispensary, McClellan would have more options when it comes to the types of marijuana he wanted to buy, including finding a strain of marijuana low in THC, the main psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana.

McClellan says he has been involved for about a year with the Minnesota chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and said he didn’t expect to become an activist. “I just went to a meeting to see what was happening,” he said. But when local medical marijuana advocates were looking for patients to share their stories, he says he decided to volunteer.

When asked why he has become so involved in the legalization movement, McClellan said he needs a place to access the specific strains of marijuana he needs without going to the black market and without danger of prosecution.

“I don’t want to be driving home because I had to go on an illicit deal and be caught with it,” he said. “There’s no reason that I should be made a criminal in treating my disease,” especially if I have the complete support of my doctors and medical team at the clinic where I get treated.

Recreational use

Matt Brown is the owner of the only marijuana tourism company in North America, My 420 Tours, and is a recreational marijuana user and advocate. Though most people would be afraid to publicly acknowledge they use an illegal drug, Brown says he’s not afraid to share he smokes marijuana because smoking pot doesn’t make you a bad person.

Modeled after wine tours in California, Brown’s My 420 Tours business allows marijuana enthusiasts to stay in pot-friendly hotels, tous marijuana dispensaries and growing operations, and attend several cannabis-themed events and concerts.

Brown said a company event in April cost $499 for a three-day tour, while 5-day VIP tickets cost $850 per person.

“It’s an opportunity for people who prefer marijuana to alcohol to come to Colorado and know that they’re not going to have to walk around downtown asking strangers for pot,” Brown said.

Brown started smoking marijuana recreationally when he was 18 and says he liked it more than alcohol. Living in New York at the time, Brown says when he wanted to buy marijuana he would call a number and 45 minutes later a guy would show up with 10 different types of “overpriced weed” in jars.

A year later when Brown was 19, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, and began to see the medicinal benefits of marijuana. Brown says instead of making 10 trips to the bathroom during the day, marijuana would calm his stomach. However it wasn’t until Brown moved to Colorado — a state that had legalized medical marijuana — that he was able to legally obtain his medicine.

In November 2012, Colorado residents voted to pass a piece of legislation known as Amendment 64 that legalized marijuana for recreational use. Now because of that legislation, Brown says he doesn’t have to explain anymore why he uses marijuana and doesn’t have to annually prove why he needs marijuana.

“I don’t have to explain that using marijuana helps me not take 10 trips to the bathroom a day and that I also find it a fun way to relax at the end of the day,” he said.

Brown called Amendment 64 “incredibly powerful” and said the passage of the law has allowed people to publicly admit they smoke pot without worry they will be shamed. “You don’t have to explain yourself,” he said. “You don’t have to prove it works better than a dozen other medications. You don’t have to prove it’s safer than alcohol. As long as you behave like an adult,” Brown says anyone should be able to use it.

Using marijuana for both medical and recreational purposes, Brown says he uses about a gram of marijuana per day, and spends about $150 a month on the substance.

“I wake up in the morning, go to the bathroom, smoke a little weed and regroup,” Brown said, explaining that his stomach is “grumbly” when he wakes up as a result of his Crohn’s disease.

Brown says he smokes every day because if he doesn’t smoke, he’ll likely be awake all night with painful stomach cramps. He says smoking marijuana stops those cramps within seconds and daily use allows him to avoid spending so much time in the bathroom.

He said a nice thing when you use marijuana regularly is that you don’t get high because you build up a tolerance. Brown says when he uses marijuana he isn’t laughing his ass off or suffering from a case of the munchies. In fact, he says the opposite happens to him, and if he uses a little bit of marijuana, it keeps him focused.

Hemp advocates

For more than 30 years, Tim Davis has been actively working to legalize hemp.

Commonly mistaken for marijuana, hemp is the stock of the plant, while marijuana is the leaves of the plant.

Though a person can’t get high even if they smoked an entire garbage bag of hemp, the organic material was once the most important cash crop in the U.S. economy — more valuable than corn and wheat combined — the production of industrial hemp was banned by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which also led to the classification of hemp as a Schedule I drug.

Davis says his first introduction to hemp came after he started smoking marijuana. “You start looking at the history,” he said, “and you see [hemp] is not even marijuana … It’s in the encyclopedia — all you have to do is look it up.”

Unlike any other material on Earth, hemp can be used to create anything from oil to plastics to materials to build homes, to fabrics such as silks and canvas, and food products.

When it comes to hemp-based foods, Davis said they are “very nutritious” and “full of amino acids.” Hemp can also be used to create shampoos, turpentines, paints and lotions. “It’s producing just about everything we need: food, fuel, fiber – what other plant can do that?”

Davis said hemp is a drought-resistant plant that provides medicine for sick people and jobs. “You have a whole economy here,” he said. “It makes no sense to poo poo this right now.”

When asked if Davis has ever found himself in trouble with law enforcement for advocating for the legalization of hemp, he said he hasn’t because he’s not a danger to society.

“I’m not advocating overthrowing government or breaking the law,” he said, adding he is merely looking to change the law. “I am no different from a MADD [Mothers Against Drunk Driving] mother … there is no reason why police or law enforcement should come after me or anyone else in the hemp or marijuana legalization movements.

“DJ” is another hemp and marijuana legalization advocate. Last week she hosted the first-ever Hemp Fest in Austin, Minn. in order to educate people about a plant that she says people have been eating, using and wearing for thousands of years.

“People are already using it,” she said, “so why can’t we grow it?”

In addition to the shampoos, lotions, oils, laundry detergents, cleaning supplies and foods one can make from hemp, DJ said hemp also helps protect our Earth.

She said she chose to host the first-ever Austin Hemp Fest because “We’re in a critical time where education [about hemp] is important.” Between islands of garbage floating in the oceans, fracking and hazardous oil spills, she says legalizing hemp is one venue to help get our planet back on track.

In order to put on the event though, DJ had to promise the city that the event would solely be about hemp and not marijuana. Though she obliged, DJ said it’s “hard to separate the two since they are male and female” parts of the same plant. But she added that legalization advocates are “doing what we have to do to get to where we need to go.”

“The more people see hemp,” she said, “the less they will be afraid and see it’s not hurting anyone … I’m alive today because of cannabis, that’s why I’m involved.”