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Photo by Joe McGarity |
Medical marijuana has been the topic of discussion for our local politicians and public servants these past two weeks, first at the Shasta County Planning Committee and then at the Redding City Council. Signs and slogans on both sides of the issue illustrate a deeply divided community. What is a concerned and interested citizen to make of all the shouting? The Fantom Penguin spoke first to Robin Gosney, a local drug and alcohol counselor. He asked her how the collectives have affected the work that she does.
“Probably what we’ve seen as much as anything is an increased relaxed attitude toward the use of marijuana. I mean, everybody’s seen that and we’ve certainly seen more temptation for those who are actually dealing with very real drug and alcohol addiction problems to dabble with marijuana use, even more temptation to dabble with that which then oftentimes leads to problems for the true addict, the true alcoholic.”
“To dabble with marijuana can trigger the onset of your use of your primary drug of choice just because your thinking’s cloudy. That’s one of the bigger problems that we’ve seen in the drug and alcohol field. I’m not here to represent drug and alcohol counselors as a whole or any particular drug and alcohol facility in town, but I’m here more to speak just in general as to what I’ve seen and what my concerns and my worries are when it comes to what seems to be an increased cavalier attitude toward marijuana use.”
Gosney expressed to the Fantom Penguin her view of the situation.
“As much as anything I’m not hearing balance on either side. You’ve either got those who are just, you know, ‘It’s the devil. It’s evil. The only people who use marijuana are lazy people who don’t want to get a job,’ and you know, the extreme attitudes. Or the other extreme attitude which is: ‘There’s nothing wrong with marijuana smoking at all. It’s never harmful. There’s no problems with driving under the influence of marijuana. It should be a non-issue. It should be on every shelf in every store that we walk into.’ I hear a lot of the extreme attitudes. I don’t know if it’s just what I’m subjected to in the field that I work in or not, but even as the news that I watch lately, local news channels, I’m hearing both, both extremes quite a bit. I think that as much as anything what I would want people to think about is what their personal truth is about marijuana use. I think that there’s probably an appropriate medical use for it. That’s my personal opinion. I don’t think that all drug and alcohol counselors look at it the way that I do, but I think that’s there’s probably an appropriate medical use of marijuana. I’ve personally seen people who’ve had extreme reactions to, for instance chemotherapy, be really, really aided by the use of marijuana. I think that there are extreme medical situations where perhaps marijuana is a drug that can be useful or it might even be more useful than some other kind of drug therapy. But the problem is, as I see it, is that it’s now just become a free-for-all. Just about anybody can go get a 215 card. Are you getting the 215 card truthfully because you have a medical issue that requires that or are you getting the 215 card so that you legally can get stoned and that’s what it’s about for you? And that’s what I hope that people look at is what their personal truth is.”
The Fantom Penguin also talked to Gina Munday, Senior Director of the Green Heart Collective in Anderson. The Fantom Penguin asked her what was going on.
“Just a lot of conflict between the laws right now versus State versus Federal, so the conflict is between State and Federal. Us patents that live in the state, of course we want to follow state rules and state guidelines.”
“A lot of the stereotypes just think that we’re just pot houses and we makes lots of money, to the contrary, us collectives of people that do grow for our patients . . . We don’t grow for every patient, but we do grow for some of our patients that don’t have access or ability to grow for their medicine therefore we come into play. We grow their medicine. We keep a portion of it and then we give them a portion. What they do is they have to contribute either time or money, which we have them come and donate time. We don’t ever take any money from our patients, as far as being our collective patients. We ask that they come and donate time at the store, which is labeling, doing things around here, but the most of our help is needed is at harvest time and so that’s when the patients that we do grow for, we do have them come out and donate some of their time in order to receive their medicine and then in turn they get their medicine for free.”
Asked if the impending changes have caused a sort of a run on the banks, with clients scrambling to get pot while they still can, she surprised the Penguin by saying no.
“Especially right now, at this time, it is harvest time. For the patients that did choose to grow their own medicine, they’re harvesting. They already have an abundancy of their medicine. It’s for the patients that don’t belong to a collective, that don’t have access to grow their medicine or there’s a lot of patients out there that don’t want to smoke it. They want to do edibles. They want to try capsules. They want to try the topicals. Unfortunately the people that are trying to regulate us and put us out of business, they don’t want to spend any time educating themselves. As far as talking to any patients, we focus on really rich CBD strains. We’ve also created a topical ointment to help you with your arthritis, your deep chronic pains for the people that don’t want to smoke it because there’s a lot of patients out there that don’t want to smoke it, but yet they want to get the benefits and the relief from the cannabis.”
CBD stands for Cannabidiol, which like THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) is a substance made by the plant that has an effect on the human body when consumed.
“A lot of people who don’t want to educate themselves think that you just put the plant in the ground, you grow it, you sell it and you make all this money but there’s a lot more work and detail into growing your own medicine.”
Munday was hesitant to speculate about the future of the industry.
“I try not to think about it too much. I just keep thinking is that I don’t understand why anybody would want to close down businesses, put people out of work especially in today’s economy. And I’m not saying that just because today’s economy is so bad that we should allow marijuana so everybody can make money. But it’s not really like that. I mean, the people that are doing it for the right reasons, we’re just like any other business people. We are a non-profit. I don’t take any bonus checks. I don’t get any dividends or anything. I get a bi-weekly paycheck. That’s all that I ever wanted. As long as the Green Heart can grow and help patients and help patients want to better themselves and go natural . . . I hear a lot of complaints about people and their Norcoes, their pain-killers, their side effects. It’s destroying their organs on their inside. They want to go a more natural way. It is a natural way. It’s 100% natural. Why not? We have the choice. I have the choice either to try cannabis or to go get a sleeping pill or to go get a pain-killer. I have that choice and we should all have those choices, which we do, but now that the cities and counties are getting involved, that they’re saying that we can’t do this and we can’t do this because we’re making all this money and all this. But yet, nobody wants to sit down and talk to us. Come in and see the daily operations of a collective. See the patients that come in. See the people that come in for their edibles or their tinctures or their capsules. See the patients that don’t want to take the pharmaceutical drugs that are wreaking havoc on their body versus trying a natural herbal clean way to go.”
