Reschedule Cannabis

Well, after long discussion, some tears, and some laughs - my wife and I have decided to move to California for medical marijuana and will use this site to tell the story both in text and pictures.

This decision will take some sacrifice, and we will leave behind family and friends - but in the end it will be worth it as my daily life, peace of mind, and happiness will be that much greater in a state where I can use medical marijuana safely, without having to turn to the black market. If that means moving to another state, then so be it.

My plan is to sell our home, move to California, get medical marijuana cards, grow pot legally within state law, and possibly even become a caregiver for patients. Although the latter may demand more than I can perform, I still would like to help patients in some way or another.

So anyway, I barely slept on this decision, and it is a big choice to make, but I feel it is right and will be the best thing for my family. I am going to move to California, get my medical marijuana patient card, and I will tell the story on this site. Not only for myself, but to show others it is in fact possible to move from a place where pot is minimum mandatory sentencing to a place where marijuana was decriminalized in 1976, and it is true that in California, you can grow, smoke, and process your own cannabis legally for medical purposes.

Check back for more as we prepare and get the plans together for what we need to do to make this a reality.

To help highlight the reason I started this web site as my personal medical cannabis support site - I show you everyday web sites we use are active in squashing public discourse regarding certain things - my only concern of course, “medical marijuana.”

Why would a social network site like Digg, bother wasting time trying to quell discussion on a topic such as medical marijuana, I have no idea, but one thing for sure - it does.

Here is a screenshot of the error message I just got trying to submit an article on our favorite topic, medical marijuana…

I can understand blocking certain topics that may encourage illegal activity or the breaking of laws, but considering medical marijuana is in fact legal in many of the United States of America, I find it embarrassing that sites like Digg are actively discouraging the sharing of info related to the medicinal use of marijuana.

This is exactly the reason I launched this site - if it was up to those controlling the air waves this topic would have went away a long time ago. Either way, I just got this error and felt like sharing this find with you.

What article was I trying to share?

I was expanding my previous thoughts on how many plants a patient is allowed, as well as daily cannabis amount allowance on this page called: 71 Ounces Of Medical Marijuana Barely Enough.

Never relent.

This image can be used as a “Desktop Background” - just right click and choose “Set As Desktop Background” if you are using Firefox - or “Set As Background” for Internet Explorer users. Either way, what this does is place the image as your background on your computer’s Desktop.

This is the first of more to come “marijuana or cannabis related backgrounds” and desktop images created by the RescheduleCannabis.com Design Team.

The backgrounds on this page are free to use, but please do not alter the image in a way to remove our web site name from the graphic. Otherwise, have fun and Happy 4:20.

All I can say right now is I am so glad mankind has pushed for the technology we have today, because this news story shows exactly how someone can be completely innocent but proven guilty by the media and police - even though you did NOTHING.

I will leave out the guys name and picture because he is innocent, but this is very popular in the news at this moment.

An 18 year old male was delivering cookies for MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) - the cops claimed the cookies were “laced with LSD” and “smelled of marijuana.” So they arrested the kid, and threw him in jail.

One small problem, the lab tests indicate no drugs at all in the cookies. So now we throw people in jail because a cop “thinks” he smells marijuana on a cookie?

The major flag in all this is where did they pull out the “laced with LSD” accusation? Their “field test” consists of taking a piece of the cookies, putting it in a bag and dripping some liquid on it, if the liquid turns blue - bingo its drugs. But nowhere does it indicate “LSD or marijuana.” And if a cop “smelled” marijuana why would they tack on “laced with LSD” to the charge?

“Our officers took a good whiff and thought they smelled like marijuana,” McGuire said, adding that preliminary tests instead detected traces of LSD.

A cop’s nose is no reason to lock someone up in jail under false accusations… keyword in the above quote “thought” as in “they thought wrong.”

No cops became ill and no officer was sick from eating the cookies. They rushed to judgment on something without any real evidence and ended up locking up an innocent kid trying to do community service… which by the way, how is delivering cookies to cops considered community service? People really need to look into exactly how MADD gets its funding and how it works in regards to things like this - getting tax dollars to deliver cookies to cops? I mean come on - this money can be spent elsewhere. The last thing cops need is cookies. Especially this group of cops… (more…)

(Oregon) - With a doctor’s prescription and a little backyard space you can turn your backyard into a medicinal garden providing patients with medicine. Here is something I found this morning regarding a patient having to protect and defend himself against people trying to stop him from growing his own natural and 100% legal medicinal cannabis.

Stephen Vinzant says he has been growing marijuana at his residence legally for three years and has a state-issued medical marijuana card to prove it.

His next-door neighbors — who run a counseling center for recovering drug addicts — are not impressed.

Their differences will get a public airing Monday when Phoenix Counseling Center owner Keziah Hinchen will attempt to convince City Council members that they should put an end to Vinzant’s outdoor pot crop.

Hinchen plans a presentation to the council outlining the difficulty of assisting people with substance abuse issues while a “fresh crop is growing right next door.”

Vinzant said he moved to the property three years ago, at which time he began growing the state-allowed crop of 12 mature plants and 36 immature plants.

Half of the plants are for Vinzant’s mother, who suffers from chronic restless leg syndrome and the other half are for Vinzant, a Vietnam-era vet who said he suffers from post-traumatic stress, a bad back and arthritis.

During the past two growing seasons, Vinzant said, “no one squawked about anything.”

Then the treatment center changed ownership, a client discovered the plants during last year’s harvest and, Vinzant said, “totally freaked out.”

Hinchen said the counseling center serves as an extended campus for local schools by providing services to adolescents with substance abuse issues “and something like 85 to 95 percent of them have issues with marijuana.”

“So here’s this guy and he’s got this great big marijuana garden in his backyard,” Hinchen said. “The plants are 20 feet away from the fence — 20 feet away from people who have addiction issues. When it starts getting ripe, you can smell it. So here we’re saying, ‘Stay away from marijuana’ and here it is. They smell it, they see it . . . it’s right there!”

The problem with the above way of thinking is that just because medicinal marijuana is there, does not mean they should show no control and forget about it. Alcoholics enter grocery stores all day long and alcohol is available everywhere that ex-drinkers frequent. Marijuana is medicine, these people cannot stop a patient who is within his legal rights and within state law from gowing his own medicinal cannabis. He even built a cage around the plants and there are fences and locks in place!

And the local police agree with me, he is within his rights and state law…

Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Rick Valentine said state laws regarding medical marijuana use are tricky to navigate.

“I don’t know of anything in the statutes that prohibits having a medical marijuana grower next to a rehabilitation center,” he said.

“We’ve had calls where people complained about their neighbor growing medical marijuana but they’re within state law.”

And this is exactly the reason we need safe access to medicinal marijuana and regulation - to not only protect patients and users, but those citizens who live next door to patients, as well as, the officers who are caught in this drug war that is plagueing and destroying our society. Marijuana is medicine and not the evil “street drug” it has been made out to be, by forcing it underground and into the hands of the drug czars.

Patients should never be required to turn to the black market for medicine, the same way anxiety, depression, pain medicine is prescribed to Americans every day… marijuana should be available to anyone who needs it. Especially Migraine sufferers who suffer daily pain and anxiety regarding when and if an attack will occur and cause nausea at the workplace and interfering with work hours the way it has me for decades.

As usual I was looking up some info on medical marijuana and migraine’s and I came across this article called: Marijuana Vs. Migraines: Modern Medical Miracle

What I always find interesting is the lack of info out there regarding this topic. Medical marijuana is the best for migraine’s and I am glad more and more doctor’s and patients are coming out about it. As someone who has suffered with migraine for decades, I can tell you cannabis works!

Migraine headaches are possibly one of the most misunderstood maladies of man. The Merck Manual states “The cause is unknown and the pathophysiology (mechanism) is not fully understood.” Except that it has something to do with brain blood vessel dilation/constriction; nobody seems to know what is going on here. If I’m wrong about this I’m sure I will hear plenty.

To save myself professional embarrassment, I checked the Merck Manual. One would think some mad scientist produced the highly diverse pot pourri of drugs which have been used to alleviate these severe and paralyzing headaches, with nausea and vomiting, which affect some 10 million people in the U.S.

To start with, migraines are headaches but not all headaches are migraines. Many headaches can be successfully treated with aspirin or Tylenol but, if my patients are correct, they don’t touch migraines. Because of the extremely wide variety of non-effective medicines, which have been used, I take a dim view of any new medicine being heavily advertised on TV.

In my own regular medical practice I discovered that an injection of Demerol with Benadryl was effective but the patient was out of action for at least 24 hours.

When I stared seeing patients for Medical Marijuana permits, I was surprised when the first migraine patient showed up. I knew that marijuana worked for severe pain, nausea and vomiting and I knew that it also causes vasodilatation but I couldn’t quite put the two together, pharmacologically, for migraines.

The light bulb over my head lit up and I said to myself “if the patient says marijuana works for this, and they were willing to pay the $300 clinic and State fee, it must work”.

I ended up with about 30 migraine patients out of 4,000. I have since heard that the California Marijuana doctors, with some 300,000 patients, have the same experience.

I hope readers of this series will write in their own experiences about this.

A few of my personal opinions of cannabis in regards to medicating debilitating migraine headaches:

1. Unlike traditional medicine medical cannabis (when consumed through a vaporizer) produced a very fast release from the pain associated with the inflammation in the head.

2. It’s natural, unlike anything the Big-Pharma companies are selling these days. You can grow your own!

3. And unlike other medicine, it gets rid of nausea not causes it!

The reason I started this site is because of the lack of web sites on the internet about using medical marijuana for Migraine headaches. Hopefully by helping spread the word others who suffer the same may find relief through medicinal cannabis.

To show how debilitating Migraines can be… the New York Governor checked himself into the hospital today due to the pain associated with them and this is a clear example of how debilitating these neurological disorders can be.

New York State Gov. David Paterson checked himself into hospital on Tuesday with symptoms of a migraine headache and preliminary test results were normal, the governor’s office said.

“He is now resting comfortably and will undergo further tests during the course of the day,” it said in a statement.

People misleadingly call Migraine attacks “headaches” when it is much more than that, and the governor knows just that. Migraine “headaches” are actually caused by the inflammation in the head and is the result of neurological disease-like disorder which causes intense pain, light sensitivity, nausea and more - it can ruin your day or in the case of mine, sometimes last a week long… slowly building and then climaxing in intense periods of nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. I have to lay down in a dark room and nurse myself until it passes…

Migraine refers to a type of headache that is vascular in nature. Spasm and narrowing of the blood vessels leading to the brain produces a migraine “syndrome”. Reduced blood to the brain causes lower oxygen levels, which in turn triggers the release of the brain chemical serotonin and the vasodilatation of blood vessels outside of the brain that can become congested with platelets. Migraine can be focused on one part of the head (hence the term “cluster”) or may involve the entire head and neck region.

In my case I get bad nausea accompanied by the light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, and headache itself…

Often, when acute episodes of vomiting are present, oral medication cannot be used. In these instances patients usually receive treatment from a physician or ER where IM or even IV injections are used. If vomiting is particularly severe dehydration is a consideration and IV fluids may be administered.

So why would I make my stomach worse by taking pills that make me more nauseated when you can use cannabis as medicine?

While hemp drugs (cannabis) were introduced to western medicine by O’Shaughnessy in 1839 and attained wide usage until the turn of the century with the development of synthetic and semisynthetic analgesics.Their use declined though maintaining mention in medical texts until removal from the formulary in 1940. Reclassified as a schedule I drug in 1970 alleged to having no medicinal redeeming importance, the synthetic THC created by government sponsored research contractors was downscheduled to II in 1986, the same as non-combination opiates requiring triplicate prescription.

Grinspoon has recently described use of cannabinoids therapeutically for migraine.

It would appear that further clinical trial of both Marinol and cannabis for the treatment of migraine headache would be desirable.

Cannabis is known to relieve Migraines…

Marijuana has been recommended for migraine since the 6th century, including numerous references in the medical literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

and having experienced this level of intense migraine pain and nausea, one will try just about anything to relieve it…

Over 400 million people suffer from migraines worldwide. 60% have at least one debilitating headache per month, many being struck over four times monthly.

There are many Medical Marijuana users who have moved from an area that has access to medical cannabis to an area that it is still illegal, and this creates a problem for those types of patients who have no choice but to live in certain areas. Medical Marijuana should be available to all American citizens who need to use it… below is a quote from a patient defending medical marijuana in the news.

Medical marijuana bill should be law

The medical marijuana bill – passed by the Minnesota Senate last year and likely to see action on the floor of the House in the coming months – should be passed into law as soon as possible.

As a patient suffering from severe neuropathy and other pain-related conditions, this is a major issue in my life. I previously lived in

Hawaii and was a legal medical marijuana patient under that state’s program. It helped me more than the regimen of addictive, dangerous medications I’ve been prescribed over the years.

And just last month, the American College of Physicians — the second largest physician group in the United States, with a membership of over 124,000 medical professionals — recognized marijuana’s many medical benefits with 10 pages of references and citations. Their official policy position “strongly urges protection from criminal or civil penalties for patients who use medical marijuana as permitted under state laws.”

Unfortunately, Governor Pawlenty has threatened to veto any medical marijuana bill, based on the knee-jerk opposition of a small but influential group of non-experts. The governor seems to believe that law enforcement officers know better than medical professionals which method of treatment would best suit an individual patient.

The governor should reconsider. This is a mainstream and popular issue, with 2 to 1 support from Minnesotans. It’s time our lawmakers and governor listen to the physicians and their own constituents, and end the cruel, despicable policy of arresting suffering patients for trying to alleviate their pain.

Medical Marijuana should be legalized in your state…

We will begin our picture archive of medical marijuana. Starting with the “Bubba Kush” image above. Taken in a legal medical marijuana dispensary.

The “Bubba Kush” name can cover a few different strains of kush. This is some really good medicinal marijuana. The leaves should be extremely sticky covered with crystal coating. The flavor is smooth and intense. The Bubba Kush should have a nice long lasting high, it is really potent when grown correctly and one of the finest medical marijuana plants you can buy.

To really experience the flavor of the plant - use a Vapor Brother Vaporizer. When using medical grade cannabis you should not operate heavy machinery.

If you haven’t seen this DVD yourself - you need to order Grass DVD now.

Grass is one of my favorite DVD documentaries on our favorite subject - “cannabis.” I encourage all my friends to see it (even if they do not smoke pot) and encourage you to do the same. View it, and get others to watch it so that their mind can be opened to some of the things that have gotten us where we are today. “Why is marijuana illegal?” And other topics are covered, and it is presented in a humorous manner that is appealing and educational.

“Grass, narrated by actor/activist Woody Harrelson, takes a highly spirited and innovative look into one of America’s most deeply rooted cultural myths: the evils of “pot”, “cannabis”, “weed.” From the story of America’s first drug czar, to the absurd scare tactics behind propaganda films like Reefer Madness, and Marijuana: Threat or Menace, director Ron Mann (Comic Book Confidential, Twist) poignantly and humorously exposes the social, political and economic facts behind this enduring weed, and the extent to which it has profoundly shaped our culture.”

Many people are surprised by the info on this DVD and maybe you will be too. It is time for “stoners” to get more involved in the fight for medical marijuana, and/or cannabis legalization. Start by educating those around you, and trying to change the public perception of “marijuana.”