Tag: medical marijuana

JAN 8, 2014 - Jon Leavitt, musician and longtime medical marijuana activist in Maine, has put his activism and his music together in a musical called "Somewhere Maine: The Marijuana Musical" that delves into the live of people living in a community of growers and patients in Maine. The play will have 8 acts, and will debut in Portland this spring. The play comes from real stories Leavitt had dealing with people in medical marijuana commerce. Leavitt says, "I think the story needs to be told and I think to put it into a format with song and dance and theater makes it accessible to people." The story centers around Johnny Crashed, a medical marijuana farmer who has his children taken away from him by the government as a result. Leavitt was executive director of the Maine Marijuana Policy Initiative, a group that helped shape and pass the 2009 law that stopped the government from infringing on the peoples' right to have access to medical marijuana. He is currently runs a small medical marijuana farm, and has formed  Medical Marijuana Caregivers of Maine, a trade organization for small scale cultivators. Watch Jon Leavitt and friends perform "Home School Christian Girl" below, and read more on SunJournal.com here.

NOV 13, 2013 - We have been honoring veterans all this week since Monday was Veterans Day, and one way we can "support the troops" is to support legal medical marijuana in your state for one possible treatment for veterans with PTSD. There have been many studies showing medical marijuana can be used as a treatment in a wide variety of health issues, and PTSD is one of them. Dr. Sue Sisley in a YouTube video by MAPS below explains the evidence showing medical marijuana can be beneficial in treating PTSD. One organization, Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access, is working hard at getting veterans access to medical marijuana.

Earlier this year, Maine's state government approved PTSD to be on the list of conditions patients can get medical marijuana prescriptions for and Governor Paul LePage quietly signed it into law. In an article on CannabisNews.org, retired Marine Corps Sgt. Ryan Begin, who lost part of his arm in an IED explosion and suffers from PTSD, talks about using medical marijuana to treat his pain and PTSD saying, "It balances me. Instead of being on a roller coaster, you're more even keeled. You don't get too far up, and you don't get too far down." Maine joins California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Mexico that allow vets to use medical marijuana to treat their PTSD, which can consist of flashbacks and anxiety attacks.  JTMP urges our supporters to contact your state and local officials, and tell them you support the troops, and you support medical marijuana for use in treatment of PTSD by veterans.  (photo credit: ODea/CC)

OCT 5, 2013 - Medical marijuana has come to the District of Columbia, and the program is fully up and operational. As of October of 2013, about a dozen or so people with health aliments that are treatable by medical marijuana have signed up and received their DC medical marijuana card from the DC Department of Health. The list of health ailments for DC medical marijuana is short: HIV/AIDS, cancer, patients undergoing chemotherapy, protease inhibitors or radiotherapy treatments, glaucoma, and muscle spasticity diseases such as multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, Parkinson's disease and others. The last part is tricky, and sometimes reviewed by the DC Department of Health on a case-by-case basis, and they will be adding diseases as time goes by. Watch a brief video below detailing the whole process of a DC medical marijuana patient going through the process of obtaining a card, and filling their first prescription below. We also sat down and interviewed Rabbi Jeff Kahn, director of the Takoma Wellness Center, one of the medical marijuana dispensaries set up here in DC. JTMP strongly urges our supporters to contact your state and federal representatives, and tell them you want medical marijuana enacted or expanded in your state, and you want marijuana removed from the Category I drug classification, for marijuana DOES have many accepted medical uses and treatments.