Promotional poster for a movie night by cannabis activists, titled "Plant Prisoner," premiering on October 31st, 2019. Includes an event link and cautionary text urging awareness.

Wendy Love Edge on the trap of cannabis legalization

By Rena McCain

Happy Weedsday, everyone!

Here is to hoping y’all are as well as can be. The time is now to get involved if you care about your health and well-being. Not just for yourself, but your friends and family. Cannabis has never been anything to fear, unless you’re a politician lining your pocketbooks, getting rich off our sick and dying people by depriving them of much needed health services in the way of healing herbs. Legalization is coming to the world fast and furious, isn’t it? But what is really happening? Is it true legalization of this plant? Or, is it just another form of prohibition? Prohibition 2.0 is what some people call it. I tend to agree with them, but what do you think?

This Star Buds column features the opinion of a fellow cannabis advocate, Wendy Love Edge. You can find my friend and fellow cannabis advocate on Facebook or at Bulldozerhealth.org.

Wendy Love Edge’s message

I was recently asked by Lee Estes, producer and director of The Cannabis Activist films, to create a piece for his film about plant prisoners, and I gladly accepted. This topic is a complicated, saddening, and maddening one.

I love and hate what’s happening to cannabis in the United States. I am not pro-legalization because it is a trap and continues to limit our freedom where cannabis is concerned. And it leaves patients behind. Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful that some people have some limited access to the healing plant due to legalization.

Here’s why legalization state-by-state isn’t freedom:

• It’s based in geography. If I live in South Dakota, there’s no legal cannabis at all, but if I live in Massachusetts, there is complete legalization. Additionally, if I am legal in one state, I cannot carry the medicine a physician certified me to use as medicine to the next state, even if that state has legal cannabis.

• It costs money from the state to get a card to use physician recommended medicine, and you are required to register with the state to use said medicine. Imagine if you had to get a license for every prescribed pharmaceutical you are using for your health. This would be quite costly. Why are cannabis patients singled out and registered with the state like criminals?

• The state boards for cannabis decide what diagnoses can use the medicine. It doesn’t mean that physicians or any health professionals are included in this decision. The list is arbitrary and state-based. So if you obtain a card in one state and your diagnosis is on their list, and then you move to another state, your diagnosis may or may not be on the list in your new state.

• You are limited in growing your own medicine also based in geography. Though grow rights of plants are human rights, you are often denied this right depending on where you live. If there are grow rights, the state you are in will tell you how many plants and in what stages of growth that you can own.

• Dispensary prices are preclusive to average people. This limits which patients can access their medicine.

• Physicians’ fees are often preclusive to patients obtaining their medical cards. Many physicians see cannabis legalization as an opportunity to line their pocketbooks.  So much for do no harm. If anything is to be regulated to protect patients, this should be.  But it isn’t.

• The state makes money from taxing the medicine and then potentially they can fix roads, and schools all from the pocket books of people using the medicine either as patients or via adult use initiatives. It’s all medical use. States are making money off of patients to fix things that the government is responsible to fix from our taxes anyway.

As I said in the beginning, I love and hate what is happening to cannabis in the U.S. If we are to truly free the plant that the U.S. Government has the patent 6630507 B1as a neuroprotectant and antioxidant because they know it heals, we must end prohibition of cannabis and de-schedule the medicine. With legalization, we only have a shadow of a free plant for all of the reasons stated above.

How does all this affect the topic of plant prisoners? Legalization continues to feed the for-profit prison system in this country. All of these rules and regulations by state are hard to remember and follow, especially for patients who are ill or older patients. And some patients simply can’t follow them if the state they live in doesn’t have legalization, or doesn’t have grow rights and they are poor and need access to the medicine.

Sometimes these are patients with life-threatening conditions who will end up in jail.  This isn’t freedom. Let’s stop feeding the prison machine, and free the plant so all can heal from it.

Finally, take a moment to join a social media platform free from cannabis censorship SDZ.today. The Cannabis Activist Films produced and directed by Lee Estes premiere on this platform each month. In October before Halloween, The Plant Prisoner film will be released. Join SDZ today for free so you can watch it when it premieres. Take back your health, America!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the MONTROSE STAR.Rena McCain is a co-founder of the Cannabis Open Carry Walks. Find her on Facebook at GanjaGrrl420, or via Twitter @sassikatt24 and Instagram at ganja_grrl420. Listen to Conversations with Ganja Grrl & 420 News HQ, McCain’s broadcast on MixLR.com every Sunday morning, 11 a.m. ’til 2 p.m. CST on the MountainHighX station. To listen, download the MIXLR app for Android or Apple. Make an account. Search for and follow MountainHigh10.

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