Michigan voters to decide on legal medical marijuana Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday April 29, 2008



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Print This Email This When Michigan voters head to the polls this November, they'll have the chance to remove the legal hassles for tens of thousands of their neighbors whose pain and suffering caused by a dozen diseases can be eased with medical marijuana. A measure that will appear on the ballot there this fall would remove penalties for suffering patients who find their only relief from smoking a joint, eating a pot brownie or brewing tea with the infamous herb. A poll last month found two-thirds of Michiganders support the proposal, which would make their state the 13th to legalize medical marijuana. The Detroit News spoke to some of the state's upstanding citizens whose efforts to ease their pain have forced them to the other side of the law. Rochelle Lampkin is a 49-year-old grandmother of 10 who used to picket in front of dope houses in her Detroit neighborhood, chanting "this is wrong, shut it down."



Today, she knowingly breaks the law by using marijuana to ease searing eye pain -- a side-effect of the multiple sclerosis that struck her more than 20 years ago. She must use a cane or walker to get around. ...



"Years ago, I was at an MS group meeting and someone suggested I try marijuana because it can help with the pain and the eye problems," Lampkin recalled. "I said: 'I'm not doing that. It's dope.'"



But the flare-ups of optic neuritis convinced her to change her mind about four years ago.



"You have enough pain, you'll try anything," she said. "Somebody gave me a marijuana cigarette and I puffed on it a couple times and got relief from the pain behind my eyes. I was shocked that it worked." Sponsors of the Michigan proposal, backed primarily by the Marijuana Policy Project, says it could help as many as 50,000 patients, who now either have to go without what some doctors see as the best treatment or dodge the law to find it. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws says marijuana can be used to treat at least 17 diseases, including HIV, Hepatitis C, Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer's Disease. The federal government still considers medical marijuana illegal, and DEA agents have raided some medical marijuana dispensaries in states like California, which was the first to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have called prosecution of medical marijuana patients unnecessary, but neither has advocated outright decriminalization of the drug. Republican John McCain seems more willing to continue the drug war in its current form.