cannabisnews.com: Diabetes Patient Gets Aid from Marijuana
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Diabetes Patient Gets Aid from Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on June 03, 2010 at 15:24:41 PT
By Diane Cochran of The Gazette Staff
Source: Billings Gazette
Montana -- Traveling clinics that serve hundreds of people in a day make medical marijuana available to sick people who cannot access it through their regular doctors.So says Janna Johnson, a Billings medical marijuana user whose longtime physician refused even to talk to her about marijuana as a possible medical treatment. “We go en masse to where we can get help,” Johnson said. “Now they are going to persecute the people helping us.”
Johnson, 49, has multiple ailments related to Type 1 diabetes, including glaucoma, nerve pain and gastroparesis, a condition in which the muscles of the digestive system become partially paralyzed.Smoking marijuana reduces the pressure in her eyes, eases the pain in her legs and helps her cope with the nausea and cramping that plague her every time she eats and often when she doesn’t.“I’m very straight-laced,” Johnson said. “The only thing I do that people consider out of line is smoke medical marijuana.”After Montana voters approved marijuana as a medicine in 2004, Johnson asked her internal-medicine physician about getting a medical marijuana card.He balked, stating emphatically that he would never authorize a patient to use marijuana, Johnson said.“I’d been there 10 years,” she said of the Billings medical office. “They know what kind of person I am. But the minute I mention medical marijuana, I’m not right in the head.”A doctor she read about in the newspaper eventually signed her first marijuana recommendation form, but when it came time to renew a year later, the doctor was no longer available.In the meantime, Johnson had found a new primary-care physician who knew about her marijuana use. But that doctor also would not sign an authorization form, although she continues to treat Johnson and includes Johnson’s marijuana use in her medical records.Johnson said she had no choice but to stand in line with hundreds of other people at a traveling clinic set up inside a local hotel.It took the doctor there only a few minutes to review her medical records and confirm that she was sick enough to warrant another year of medical marijuana use.Johnson believes that the majority of the 15,000 Montanans with medical marijuana cards have real health conditions that are helped by the drug.“There are a lot of people out there in pain,” she said. “All kinds of people self-medicate. A lot of people do it with alcohol.”Many others use prescription narcotics, which Johnson sees as intricately linked to the reluctance to accept marijuana as medicine.Mainstream medicine is beholden to the pharmaceutical industry, she said.“I think there are 15,000 Montanans on pain pills, and what they’re mad about is people getting off pain pills and going to marijuana,” she said. “Yeah, there’s abuse out there, but look at the abuse with pills and alcohol and cigarettes.”If the Montana Board of Medical Examiners continues to discipline doctors who staff traveling marijuana clinics — a Whitefish doctor was recently fined $2,000 after seeing 150 patients in 14 hours — medical marijuana will be even harder to get, Johnson said.“Yeah, maybe they need to be cleaned up a bit,” she said of the traveling clinics. “But they’re doing a job that other doctors will not do.”Source: Billings Gazette, The (MT)Author: Diane Cochran of The Gazette Staff Published: June 2, 2010Copyright: 2010 The Billings GazetteContact: speakup billingsgazette.comWebsite: http://www.billingsgazette.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/Ds8ezGifCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
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Comment #9 posted by dongenero on June 04, 2010 at 09:32:06 PT
Montana
I imagine the same people behind these flyers would consider themselves Constitutional freedom loving, personal responsibility loving, keep out of my life loving, western mavericks of wide open Montana.Ironic.
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Comment #8 posted by Sam Adams on June 04, 2010 at 08:42:36 PT
propaganda and kids
the ironic thing is that trying to brainwash little kids almost ALWAYS backfires. Once they reach age 10 they'll have a strong instinct to do the opposite of what parents say. It's coded into our biology, it's part of the process of breaking away and getting out on your own.I remember when I was a kid my sister got really motivated by some anti-drug charade at school. Apparently they told all the kids it would be a good idea to sign a pledge.So she wrote this statement saying "I will never take caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, or drugs in my whole life because they're unhealthy, etc, etc." (Note that even coffee was in there - it's like they sold her the "John Ashcroft package" with all the bells and whistles! I'm surprised they didn't throw vows against dancing and cursing in there too.)Not even 5 years later in high school my sister was coming home at 3 AM, driving home totally drunk, coked-up, etc. Constantly getting into trouble with our parents.Even at the time it was fascinating to me. I had felt no urge to sign the pledge when I was a kid, and I turned out to be the one who was NOT into partying compared to my sis.
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Comment #7 posted by Hope on June 03, 2010 at 21:03:52 PT
OldVet
Don't believe I've seen you post before. Welcome to C-News.And you're right. But prohibitionists don't give up on their favorite lies, even though they've been proven to be untrue over and over again.
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Comment #6 posted by OldVet on June 03, 2010 at 20:01:08 PT:
Gateway Drug
I sure get tired of hearing that mj is a gateway drug. To me it's like saying communion is a gateway to alcoholism, come on people wake-up.
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on June 03, 2010 at 18:52:42 PT
Hope
They didn't have a right to put propaganda
in children's heads to send home to their parents.
[ Post Comment ]
Comment #4 posted by Hope on June 03, 2010 at 18:30:23 PT
If I ruled the world, which I don't of course,
but if I did... the doctors that refused to allow their patients access to see if the herb cannabis could help them would be kicked out of the medical profession until they regained their good sense.
[ Post Comment ]
Comment #3 posted by Hope on June 03, 2010 at 18:26:15 PT
Fliers Go Home With Some School Kids
Somebody needs, or a lot of somebodies need to be fired over that little stunt.
[ Post Comment ]
Comment #2 posted by Hope on June 03, 2010 at 18:24:38 PT
Montana
Apparently not such a nice place.
[ Post Comment ]
Comment #1 posted by FoM on June 03, 2010 at 16:49:48 PT
Also From The Billings Gazette
Medical Marijuana Fliers Go Home With Some School Kids***June 3, 2010Montana -- Some Billings parents are upset after their children brought fliers home from school this week that address medical marijuana.Headed “Medical Marijuana Crisis,” the bright-yellow sheets of paper call marijuana a gateway drug and urge parents to “take back control” by contacting local officials, attending public meetings or volunteering time.“Our community and our children are at risk,” the fliers read in capital letters.They went home with students at three School District 2 elementary schools despite being rejected by SD2 officials.Superintendent Jack Copps said leaders at Meadowlark, McKinley and Newman schools didn’t open an e-mail memo in time to stop the distribution. Nineteen other elementary schools did prevent the fliers from going home.“We cannot send things home of a political nature,” Copps said. “This, though it might have been well-intentioned, was clearly over the line.”The information on the fliers is not credited to any source, and an e-mail address listed at the bottom does not work. Some parents thought it was from SD2.The fliers were inappropriate for a school setting, said Christine Lindauer, whose third-grader brought one home from Meadowlark in a packet of end-of-year materials.“It’s a political issue, and that’s not for our children,” Lindauer said.Other parents were upset by questions their children asked after reading the fliers, which contain a brief summary of how medical marijuana became legal in Montana and bullet points that seem meant to alarm readers.“Billings is now attracting medical marijuana users and providers from other states at an alarming rate,” one bullet point reads.Another one claims that medical marijuana businesses are popping up all over the city. “You may already have one in your neighborhood,” it says.The wording is identical to the website of a group called Safe Community Safe Kids that is encouraging Montanans to sign a petition to repeal the 2004 Medical Marijuana Act.The website says the group’s mission is to “inform and engage citizens to take action towards preserving the safety and prosperity of our communities and families.”Eighty medical marijuana businesses had city business licenses last month when the Billings City Council approved a six-month moratorium on new medical marijuana businesses.Twenty-five of those businesses were later sent cease-and-desist letters because they did not have state licensure. As of this week, there were 57 legal medical marijuana businesses in Billings.Meanwhile, about 15,000 Montanans have medical marijuana cards.Hundreds of people have attended city meetings about medical marijuana, and many were upset about plans to open a medical marijuana shop near Will James Middle School.Children should not be expected to understand or even be involved in the debate, said Colleen Eatman, whose daughter was frightened by the flier.“It’s gone too far when they take it into our children’s lives,” Eatman said. “A crisis in a kid’s eyes is really large. To explain this to a 9-year-old is difficult to do.”Copyright: 2010 The Billings GazetteURL: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/article_474bb9e8-6f66-11df-b217-001cc4c002e0.html
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