Throughout history, women have been instrumental in initiating social change. So it’s no surprise women are now organizing in the fight for medical marijuana.

One of the most vocal advocates for medical marijuana is PatiCakes, aka The Queen of Cannabis Baking and the host of the weekly Internet cannabis radio show hempradio.com. She, along with several other local business women, decided it was time to start an Orange County sub-chapter of NORML’s Women’s Alliance.

Since 1970 NORML – the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws – has been the recognized organization promoting advocacy and change for marijuana laws.

The gals tell me they hope to bring about “a contemporary approach to the public policy debate.”

PatiCakes says the group is working with L.A. chapter representative Cheri Sicard to build a strong team of professional women, mothers and grandmothers – all from diverse areas of the county.

“You don’t need to use cannabis to be involved in the group, in fact many of the women who’ve called to join don’t,” she said.

The group will also be working with a division that is starting up in Laguna Woods.

Group members say marijuana prohibition and medical marijuana discrimination undermine the American family because the state and federal governments aren’t controlling marijuana or medical marijuana use, cultivation or distribution

PatiCakes says she’s seen firsthand the benefits of medical marijuana for cancer patients, those suffering from chronic pain and other debilitating illnesses.

She said she interviewed a man who had lymphoma. The area under his arms was so burned from chemo that the skin was literally falling off, she told me.

Then someone gave him marijuana in an edible form.

“He told me it changed the way he felt about marijuana and it changed his life,” PatiCakes says.

But the story that touched her the most was from a woman whose mother had stage four lung cancer. The daughter was out of options, she said. Her mom was in so much pain that she had stopped eating.

After the daughter got her mother some marijuana in edible form, the mother started eating again and even felt well enough to go out with girlfriends, she said.

But the women aren’t the only voice advocating for change on this issue.

On Feb. 8, medical marijuana advocate Steele Smith met with Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson to talk to him about establishing the Greater Orange County Collective, or GOCCA, as the go-to medical marijuana trade organization in the county.

Nelson said they mostly talked about pending lawsuits, which until settled, prohibit the county from really getting involved.

In December 2010 the Board of Supervisors voted not to allow dispensaries within unincorporated areas of the county, Nelson was the only dissenting vote.

“It’s really very frustrating,” Nelson said. “Public policy is not served with everyone making the rules on a one-off basis. The legislatures should weigh in on the medical marijuana issue for the benefit of all.”

Nelson says he supports Judge Jim Gray’s proposed Regulate Marijuana like Wine Act of 2012. But until the laws change, he said, he could offer little to Smith.

Judge Gray has raised more than $135,000 in the last quarter for his act but does not yet have enough signatures to get it on the state ballot this year, organizers told me.

PatiCakes says she thinks NORML would be the best voice to advocate for the medical marijuana movement.

“There’s no need to re-create the wheel, NORML has been around for over 40 years and the changes we’ve seen in attitude towards marijuana and legislation is a direct result of their efforts,” she says.

The Orange County Women’s Alliance plans on holding monthly meetings around the county and to invite a wide range of speakers, from politicians to medical experts.

“Our goal is to educate and advocate,” PatiCakes says. “We want our women out there in the community changing attitudes.”

Their first meeting will be in Costa Mesa from 2 to 4 p.m. March 3 at 462 E. 17th St., Suite #C. For more info, call 714 287 0329

The ladies invited Steele’s wife to join the group; he declined for her.

Contact the writer: Barbara Venezia’s columns appear weekly on ocregister.com. Contact her at bvontv@earthlink.net