Paula Lauerman, wife of Farmer Tom Lauerman, a Vancouver medical marijuana grower, has some comments to share as the state looks at combining the medical marijuana system with the recreational system.

The farm was recently featured on CNBC in a story about how the I502 recreational system is going through an overabundance of product.

Paula is a passionate medical marijuana patient, as is her husband, and the two want to stress the importance of taking care of patients that truly need medical products from cannabis plants.

She sent us this guest post to share her thoughts. Check it out!

Cheers,
-SueVo (sue.vorenberg@columbian.com)

The true value of medical marijuana
by Paula Lauerman

First we want to say thanks to Jane Wells and everyone at CNBC for taking the time to visit our Farm and for doing such an great job on the show – AND for the huge wave of support we have received from those in the community who understand how important it is that network news is interested enough to come to Washington State and do a story on marijuana and the plight of the small farmer.

How important it is for those in other parts of the country – indeed the world – to become knowledgeable on a topic that’s long been shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding.

Marijuana has been considered so taboo that it still has many hiding and speaking in whispers for fear of being judged by their neighbors or jailed by authorities. Yet it simultaneously has appeared on voting ballots and in local, state, and federal legislation around the country for immediate implementation by those hoping to bolster budgets and line investment coffers with big revenue dollars.

Then there are those who wish to make a political name for themselves by imposing bans and shouting about child safety while denying safe access to the very real – and very sick – patients for whom the original legislation was passed. Those are patients who cannot afford to move to localities that have chosen a platform of compassion and acceptance for their constituents.

How is it that a state law – passed by the people, for the people – can be hacked-up and handed-over in pieces so minute as to pit small-town bureaucrats in incorporated areas of a county against those in the unincorporated areas? I have heard the issue of medical marijuana dispensaries being likened to that of strip clubs. That’s unbelievable, considering that cancer is the number one leading cause of death in the United States.

Anyone who has participated in chemotherapy themselves, or witnessed the suffering of a loved one who has, is grateful for the relief from the unimaginable pain, retching, and nausea provided by full-spectrum, strain-specific cannabis. To compare any of that to local street corner and lap dancing regulation is absurd.

Sick people need rest and relaxation to heal, and there is more than enough current, long-standing, long-term evidence for ANY State to allow those who live with these diagnoses the dignity of living the remainder of their lives having access to safe, authentic plant based medicine at reasonable prices. They don’t need the added stress of being labeled losers and criminals or having to continue to purchase questionable and low-quality pot from black market sources.

You want to turn legal marijuana into a three-ring-circus of money-mongering, grandstanding, and pretentious-posturing? Great! There’s plenty to go around without subjecting the ill and infirm to more indignity. These issues exist at opposite ends of a continuum and don’t belong in the same conversation.

It’s like comparing the vitamin-rich vegetables grown on our farm to the toxic and GMO-laden faux food showing up at dollar stores and bargain bins from China and other questionable locations.

How long until industrial corporate cannabis starts arriving here from China along with all the other consumables currently lining store shelves due to its favored nation status and continued ability to undermine and out-produce us?

It’s time to stop trying to fit medical cannabis into the preconfigured vice-controlled business model once held by its partner in prohibition: Ethanol (alcohol) – a dead, lifeless, low-level chemical; the fecal waste product of the microbial digestion of simple carbohydrates that when ingested causes dehydration, pain, and suffering in the human body.

Alcohol cannot be categorized or compared in the slightest to just one of the wide array of compounds crafted during the full-spectrum growth of the cannabis plant. The wonders of cannabis hold so many keys to the current plights of humanity. Those wonders aren’t there for lining the pockets of the chosen few in the public and private sectors flocking to fold, spindle and mutilate cannabis.

Allowing complete control of this plant to remain in the hands of narcotic, liquor control and vice organizations is a huge mistake, as the focus of these groups by legislative design is to profile, categorize and over-simplify. You can see it happening all over the country, especially in California where medical legislation of this same sort has been in effect for almost 20 years.

It’s time to pull cannabis up and out of the dumpster of the black market underground – to give it AND its patients – whose quality of life, societal participation and community contribution depends entirely on the quality of the cannabis they have access to – the dignity they both deserve. The War on Drugs has taken its toll and has many casualties who still lie broken and bleeding on the battlefield with no help currently in sight.

Correcting the lies and misinformation, removing stigma, opening doors, giving a hand-up, showing compassion and clearing the chaotic cob webs of control and deceit surrounding Marijuana is the greatest form of child safety we can demonstrate. Only by demystifying and removing boundaries can we begin to eliminate the criminal puppeteers still controlling this issue from invisible and protected underworld realms.

There is much to be learned from those of us who have been ridiculed and humiliated because our bodies don’t respond favorably to conventional pharmaceutical and status quo based medical treatment. So get to know us, as disease crosses the illusory boundaries of separation and hate every day. We have much more in common than long-standing federal regulation would have you believe. We represent the weary and downtrodden whose time has come, and we don’t need more judgment and condemnation.

The concept of Pandora’s Box doesn’t only apply to the multinational corporate destruction of rain forests and cultures of South America. These same companies are undermining our home tree as well, and we are being ravaged unmercifully.

The reason you don’t – and won’t – find strip club legislation on the state ballot is because it doesn’t belong there. It is a local-level fringe issue involving the effects of cheap booze and seedy parking lot sex on the moral and social health and development of a community.

What does all this mean to the casual and uniformed reader and voter who might still believe that everyone who uses cannabis is a criminal deserving of jail and punishment? Stand up for your rights and don’t be fooled by the hype.

Should the shape-shifting specter of death known as cancer touch your family you will be grateful to those who have kept this issue at the forefront by demanding patient rights because NO synthetic pharmaceuticals – even those claiming to be bio-identical – can compare to the vital and bio-compatible components found in full-spectrum, strain-specific cannabis to ease the violent and vicious symptoms associated with this killer. You aren’t going to find the relief, or the information you so desperately deserve and desire by purchasing the unnecessarily expensive industrial grown sativa-dominant, or indica-dominant weed du jour from the local 502 store – or any place else.

I believe it’s time to circle our wagons and create some sort of a meritocracy based system around this issue, rather than letting the current system suck out the souls of the living through the use of misinformation and greed.

That said, 2015 is already turning out to be very different from last year, and we are grateful to everyone and everything that got us here. We look forward to rising from the ashes with another chance to keep our farm; and to experience a little freedom from oppression.

Thanks again to Jane Wells and CNBC; David Rheins editor of MJ Headline News; SueVo and Ariane Kunze of The Columbian; and to The Columbian itself for providing Blog space for an exchange of such valuable and important information.