How My Cannabis Prescription Made Me Realize That Weed Should Be Decriminalized

By Shaun King, The Intercept

19 May 18

 

ave you ever seen the Batman movie, “Dark Knight Rises”? In it, Bruce Wayne, after a life of putting his body on the line fighting bad guys, needs to see the doctor. He’s in too much pain to just suit up and get back out on the streets. When he gets there, he quickly learns from the doctor that he has more things wrong with his body than he does right.

That’s me right now.

When I was 15 years old, I was brutally beaten by a racist mob. The attack required three spinal surgeries, and I missed 18 months of school while convalescing. Despite undergoing more surgeries since then, my lower back never recovered, and the pain radiates down both of my legs daily. I’ve done physical therapy, pain injections, and everything else you can think of.

The punches and kicks to my face badly damaged my sinuses. The bruising has long since faded, but they still give me trouble every other month or so.

Six years later, I was in a horrible car accident and was thrown through the front window, face first, at full speed. We had slipped on black ice, and the car hit a guard rail before my whole body ejected, thus hurling me back into the seat.

It took 400 stitches to put my face back together again. My teeth were badly damaged. My eyelid was sewn back on, as was a big part of my bottom lip. When the wounds healed, I was left with several ruptured discs in my neck, sinuses that were in even worse shape, and chronic migraine headaches.

The next year, I tore a rotator cuff in my shoulder trying to change a tire in the rain. Then, in 2016, I tore it again while moving furniture. Then, six months later, I was about to fall off a stage in New Orleans when I caught myself and, as a result, fractured my other shoulder. My neck pain got exponentially worse.

My body is a mess. I’m in constant, debilitating pain. It’s a struggle to get out of bed. I have a hard time putting my shoes on. It hurts to get a shirt off and on. But here I am: married with five young kids and a demanding career.

I take over-the-counter pain meds. From time to time, I take prescription pain medications. I get massages. I do ice packs and heating pads. I’ve been in and out of physical therapy for 20 years. Finally, my neck and head pain got so severe last year that I had to go to a pain management clinic.

When the doctors saw the MRI results for my neck, they couldn’t believe how long I had gone without a medical intervention. That day, they did a series of pain injections. The injections themselves were among the most painful things I’ve ever felt – and I’ve felt a lot of pain. The tissue, nerves, and discs were so messed up that I could literally hear the crunching sound as he injected the needle deep into my neck to deposit the medicine.

For the next week or so, I felt like a new man. I had been in pain for so long that I genuinely forgot that I could ever feel that free. Sadly, I was only allowed to get the injections a few times per year — and my insurance didn’t even cover the treatment.

So my doctor prescribed medical cannabis.

Even with all the pain I was in, I was still very hesitant. For the first 37 years of my life, I was proud to say that I had never smoked a single day – not weed, not cigarettes, nothing. I never had a drink of alcohol or even a cup of coffee, for that matter. I had become almost monkish about those things and, after a lifetime of avoiding smoking, I was hesitant. But my doctor insisted it was something I needed to try if avoiding surgery was a priority for me.

By the time the doctor sold me on the idea, I was ready to go get some that day. I needed the relief. But that’s not how it goes.

The laws on whether cannabis is legal for either medical or recreational purposes vary from state to state; currently 29 states and Washington, D.C., have some kind of legal weed, and recreational use is permitted in nine of those places. In New York, there’s medical cannabis, but it’s not legal for recreational use, so you must have both a license and a prescription for it. By the time the doctor sold me on the idea, I was ready to go get some that day. I needed the relief. But that’s not how it goes.

First, I needed a valid New York driver’s license and I didn’t have one. Mine was from Georgia. It took me a few weeks to work that out, including paying a bill for a fine in Georgia I didn’t even know I had. Then I had to apply for the medical cannabis license – which took several more weeks. By the time I got it in the mail, it was two months after the doctor had made his prescription — and the whole process had cost me several hundred dollars.

Finally, I went to a medical cannabis clinic, where I saw a doctor who issued what she thought I needed. I didn’t know it, but the clinics don’t even sell the weed flowers, better known as “buds.” Instead, they sell cannabis oil that you can smoke in a vape pen or digestible pills that have the same effect. I got enough to last me about a month. It cost $500. I was shocked. Again, insurance doesn’t cover it. I really couldn’t even afford it, but was so desperate to relieve the pain that I spent the money anyway.

And it helped me a little. Some days it helped more than others. It actually took me using it for a few weeks before I really felt like it relieved the pain. But it ran out several months ago, and I just haven’t made the time to go back. It was so expensive and so complicated that I’ve just put it off, but I need it.

I’m in pain right now as I type this, but the process just doesn’t work for me. The catch is that this process doesn’t work for most New Yorkers who need cannabis. We’re busy. We’re on a real budget. And this huge city literally only has a few locations where you can go to get medical cannabis. It just shouldn’t be this hard or this expensive. The thing is, I wouldn’t have even known this problem existed on this level if I wasn’t in personal need of the pain relief that cannabis provides.

The alternative to running through this outrageously complicated, inconvenient, and expensive gauntlet is to try to get cannabis on the black market. But that entails some obvious risks. I would have to break the law and risk arrest for me and someone else. Luckily, I don’t have to: I can take that medical route — I have the $500, the license, and prescription. But tens of thousands of New Yorkers who may also need what I need can’t, and that’s wrong.

The fact of the matter is that cannabis is basically already decriminalized for white people who buy it recreationally and anyone else who can afford the medical route. It’s just plain wrong that anyone is being arrested and having their lives ruined because they want or need it and just don’t have the same level of access to it.

For years, I’ve studied and reported on how communities of color are targeted by police, arrested, and convicted for weed possession at a rate that is altogether disproportionate to white people – even though the usage rate is nearly identical. But now, as someone who actually wanted the product for myself, I saw up close and personal how messed up the system is: There are people of color going to prison for having the same stuff I can get because of my access to a doctor and funds to pay the high cost on the medical market.

There are people of color going to prison for having the same stuff I can get because of my access to a doctor and funds to pay the high cost on the medical market.

What makes it all worse is that, after smoking weed as an adult, it’s obvious that this is not a dangerous drug — it’s nothing like those old “Reefer Madness” movies. People should be able to enjoy this mild drug without having to risk arrest.

And the risk of arrest is very real. For decades now, New York City has avoided real reforms on the war on drugs like the plague. The city has a sky-high pot arrest rate, despite having a liberal mayor and a city council completely dominated by Democrats.

A few of our local district attorneys have announced that they are going to stop prosecuting some cannabis crimes, and Mayor Bill de Blasio said he is ordering some changes in police policy. But the fact remains that weed is still not decriminalized here – and it damn sure isn’t legalized. District attorneys in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island said they are going to continue with the thousands and thousands of arrests and convictions they process every single year for weed possession. It’s preposterous.

The solutions to the injustices of the black market and the high barriers for entry into the medical market are obvious: New York City needs to immediately decriminalize cannabis. And the state should vacate all arrests, remove all previous convictions, expunge records, then fully legalize it – with a guarantee that the men and women who’ve paid the highest price for selling it over the past 50 years are ensured a significant piece of the business.

New York’s progressive reputation — a bragging point for the city — far outpaces the reality, particularly on criminal justice reform and issues of equality for communities of color.

I cared about this issue before I ever took cannabis. Now that I do, the inequities and disparities are even clearer. New York has a long way to go before it even gets close to righting so many of the wrongs here.

Can the Republic Recover From Donald Trump?

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

19 May 18

 

There will be a lot of pieces to put back together, all at once, when he is gone.

n Monday, at the Center For American Progress’s annual Ideas hootenanny, Sally Yates made a point that has stayed with me all week as the deep, underground web of corruption in this administration* expanded to almost every point of the political compass. It is almost impossible to keep track these days. It's almost impossible to keep from tangling the various strands of it: Michael Cohen’s alleged dealings with the Qataris, Jared Kushner’s alleged dealings with the Qataris, Michael Cohen’s alleged dealings with Stormy Daniels, Paul Manafort’s alleged dealings with various Volga Bagmen, and who knows what all else is under there.

Anyway, Yates asked the assembled: What is going to happen when this administration is finally, blessedly over? It is a very good question and there is no very good answer to it. Nobody knows how many people, if any, are going to be convicted when all this shakes out, let alone how many of them actually might go to jail. Can we recover from the common high-end venality while simultaneously putting the political norms back in place? Can we reform the global damage done to American credibility while simultaneously getting back to sensible financial and environmental regulations? Is it possible to get the country back to normal on 10 levels at once?

I am not as optimistic as I once was.

First, a lot of the damage has been done through the enactment of policies that conservative Republicans have been slavering for over the past 50 years. They are one aging heartbeat away from finally having a solid majority on the Supreme Court, and the president* has been salting young Federalist Society bots throughout the federal judicial system. Further, before there ever was a President* Trump, Mitch McConnell demonstrated that Democratic presidents were not entitled to fill Supreme Court vacancies that occur on their watch. Under the glare of all the nonsense, conservative Republicans have achieved a lot of what they’ve been trying to do since Ronald Reagan stepped onto the Capitol rostrum in 1981.

Second, and as important, if this president* leaves office at any point prior to the end of his second term, I fear that the reaction among his supporters is liable to be loud and violent. They’re already primed, by the president* and by his pet media, to believe almost anything as long as it demonstrated that They, The Deep State are conducting a slow-motion coup. (The latest fever dream is that the Obama administration planted an FBI mole in the Trump campaign so as to throw the election to Hillary Rodham Clinton. That’s only been flying around for a couple weeks and I guarantee you that it’s already set in concrete out there.) The president* is not likely to sprout a conscience any time soon. There is no way that this can end well.

This is serious business, and the time to start thinking about it is now. It’s possible that this administration* will collapse all at once. It is also possible that we’ll be reading early morning tweets well into 2024. The elevation of Donald Trump caught the institutions of government by surprise. That’s bad enough. It’s important that the end of him does not do the same thing.

Outside of mocking the Intellectual Dark Web for the Stan Lee pretension of its name, I’ve pretty much stayed away from that whole Internet hooley. But, holy mother of god, this profile of Jordan Peterson in The New York Times is, as the kidz say, lit. In fact, Peterson comes off as the patron saint of sampling one’s own product.

Mr. Peterson’s home is a carefully curated house of horror. He has filled it with a sprawl of art that covers the walls from floor to ceiling. Most of it is communist propaganda from the Soviet Union (execution scenes, soldiers looking noble) — a constant reminder, he says, of atrocities and oppression. He wants to feel their imprisonment, though he lives here on a quiet residential street in Toronto and is quite free.

Take Peterson out of his current celebrity cocoon and make him a shopkeeper in Bugtussle, and mothers are telling their children to cross the street rather than pass his house. He’s Boo Radley, except for real.

(Of course, the Intellectual Dark Web takes care of its own; here’s another charter member, leaping to Peterson’s defense and falling into the orchestra pit. Jungian archetypes!)

The left, he believes, refuses to admit that men might be in charge because they are better at it. “The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence,” he said. Mr. Peterson illustrates his arguments with copious references to ancient myths — bringing up stories of witches, biblical allegories and ancient traditions. I ask why these old stories should guide us today.

“It makes sense that a witch lives in a swamp. Yeah,” he says. “Why?” It’s a hard one.

“Right. That’s right. You don’t know. It’s because those things hang together at a very deep level. Right. Yeah. And it makes sense that an old king lives in a desiccated tower.” But witches don’t exist, and they don’t live in swamps, I say. “Yeah, they do. They do exist. They just don’t exist the way you think they exist. They certainly exist. You may say well dragons don’t exist. It’s, like, yes they do — the category predator and the category dragon are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists. What exists is not obvious. You say, ‘Well, there’s no such thing as witches.’ Yeah, I know what you mean, but that isn’t what you think when you go see a movie about them. You can’t help but fall into these categories. There’s no escape from them.”

It is for this kind of dialogue for which the bong was invented, and the phrase, “Like, wow, man,” was coined. Actually, it reminds me most of the intricate thoughts about the universe entertained by…The Most Awesome Man On Television.

This, from The Washington Post, does not make me feel secure.

Mountrail County Sheriff Ken Halverson announced last week that a container of ammunition for an automatic grenade launcher fell off a Humvee on May 1 near Parshall in the northwest part of the state. The search ended over the weekend after Minot Air Force Base personnel exhausted efforts to find the missing ammunition, spokeswoman Danielle Lucero told the Bismarck Tribune . The ammunition is safe as long as the container is intact, according to the Air Force. Halverson said the ammunition won’t operate in another device without “catastrophic failure.” But people should evacuate and call first responders if the ammunition is located and found damaged.

The ammunition for the grenade launcher, by the way, belonged to the people tasked with keeping out nuclear missiles secure. “Falling off the truck” is an acceptable excuse for bootleg CDs and knock-off handbags. I don’t want to see grenades for sale on a card table in midtown Manhattan, next to the umbrellas and caricatures of Al Pacino.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Misty Mountain Hop” (The Tin Men): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: In anticipation of the tsunami of Anglophone tripe soon to wash over us, here’s the 1922 wedding of Princess Mary to Viscount Henry Lascelles. Princess Mary declined to attend Elizabeth’s wedding because Edward and Wallis were not invited. Her son’s memoir was titled The Tongs and the Bones. No, I don’t know what that’s about. Nice film though. Very brief. And no sound! That would be a blessing on Saturday. History is so cool.

If you don't think there is a general wildness unleashed in this land, consider that both the guy who shot up the Mar-a-Lago lobby and the guy who murdered 10 people at a Texas high school were both Nazi-semi-curious guys with guns. Also consider that both of these events happened on the same day. This is not normal.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, LiveScience? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Have you ever wondered how momma dinosaurs sat on their eggs without crushing the poor little spalpeens? Of course, you have.

These small-to-humongous dinosaurs, known as oviraptorosaurs, laid their oval eggs in a doughnut-like circle, and these nests had different shapes depending on the size of the dinosaur. Smaller oviraptorosaurs either had no doughnut hole or a small one where they could sit with their eggs around them, while larger oviraptorosaurs created nests with big holes in the center where the dinosaurs could plop down without squashing the eggs located in a circle around them, a new study finds.

Oviraptorosaurs were bizarre-looking dinosaurs. They had parrot-like heads and toothless beaks, and some sported head crests, much like modern cassowary birds do. These dinosaurs ranged in size from a few dozen pounds (Nomingia, for instance, weighed about 80 lbs., or 37 kilograms) to a few thousand pounds (Gigantoraptor weighed up to 4,400 lbs., or 2,000 kg).

And their mommas took good care of them, because, like all dinosaurs, oviraptorosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

Because The Committee knows its audience, it knew that this week’s Top Commenter would come from the post about the Colorado wingnut lady who was allegedly turning big bucks on a very weird conspiracy theory about how we all have secret money in accounts opened for us at birth. Top Commenter Stephen Beard came through with bells on.

I'm starting a letter-writing campaign (I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy, okay?) to get me some of that Treasury money and live up to my increasing reputation as a grifter of the first order. Besides, I could use the cash.

You are hereby awarded 82.19 Beckhams for your demonstration of good old American entrepreneurship, good sir.

I’ll be back on Monday with whatever scams become obvious over the weekend. Be nice and play well, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline, or I’m telling Megan Markle’s father on you.