Pubdate: Wed, 30 Jan 2013
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Copyright: 2013 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Larry Gabriel

DON'T BE DAZED

New Pot Doc Shows Patients Trying to Obey the Law

Michigan medical marijuana activists have a new film promoting their 
cause. Blazed and Confused: The War Against the Michigan Medical 
Marihuana Act is a one-hour documentary that examines how things are 
not working so well for some folks in the medical marijuana system. 
It was made by local film maker Jen Whalen.

Whalen has worked on other films, but this is her first time in 
charge of the whole shebang. This is also the first time she's 
stepped into the medical marijuana world.

"It was started off by a conversation with a friend who was involved 
in the movement explaining to me what was going on with the law and 
how people who were trying to comply with it were getting hurt," she says.

Whalen's friend was referring to the fact that state Attorney General 
Bill Schuette seems to have declared his own war on medical marijuana 
in Michigan. Along with some county prosecutors, Schuette has 
interpreted the law very narrowly, and in some cases has convinced 
courts to deny the right of card-carrying medical marijuana patients 
and caregivers to defend themselves under the law. Prosecutors have 
done this by claiming those rights were forfeited because of a 
failure to strictly comply with some aspect of the MMMA. For 
instance, if a grower is accused of not having plants in a "locked, 
enclosed facility," as required by law, and is criminally charged, 
prosecutors have claimed juries shouldn't be informed that the pot 
was being grown for medical use. Attorney Neil Rockind claims that 
law enforcement officials have disregarded the intent of the Michigan 
Medical Marihuana Act. "It was supposed to be broad, it was supposed 
to cover more people than it wasn't," Rockind says in the 
documentary. "It was supposed to be more inclusive than it was exclusive."

There is a definite legal edge to Blazed, with pro-marijuana activist 
attorneys Matt Abel, Thomas Lavigne, John Targowsk and Dave Peters, 
in addition to Rockind. Schuette and others opposed to medical 
marijuana don't appear on camera, but some of their views are 
accounted for through their statements to the media or information 
they have disseminated.

But the clear stars of the documentary are Ann Arbor's Jim and Janet 
Hamblin. Jim is a 58-year-old patient with secondary progressive 
multiple sclerosis. His sister and brother both suffer from the 
disease. He played drums with the Urban Nomads band for several years 
until MS made him unable to function. Blazed documents the Hamblins 
and how they make it through their day. It gets emotional as Jim 
describes how and why he medicates:

"Every day at about 9, 10 o'clock at night, I actually get what's 
called the creepy crawlies. It's just the creepy crawlies and it's 
almost impossible to explain it. It's like you get an electric shock 
through you. It doesn't really hurt, but it drives you nuts. It's got 
to go away. And the only thing that makes it go away, I can just take 
a few hits off a joint and it goes away. It's gone. Just like that. 
It's incredible. So that's what I do. I don't smoke at all during the 
day. It's almost my reward at the end of the day: You made it through the day."

Then Jim stops talking and covers his face with his hands as he weeps.

"That's all I want," he manages to get the words out, "to make it 
through the day."

Whalen is to be commended for finding a way to tell this story with 
little professional support. "I had nothing, and limited knowledge of 
what I was doing," she says. "It was a learning experience for me and 
it shed light on a wonderful community of people who deserve to have 
their story told. I guess I was naive to the movement and naive to 
what was happening. It sort of opened my eye to a lot of the 
corruption that's behind all the opposition. A group of people were 
trying to follow the law and were being punished for that. But 
they're tenacious and are not giving up on what they believe in."

Jim Hamblin is a card-carrying medical marijuana patient, but he says 
that sometimes he has to do legally questionable things to maintain a 
steady supply of his medication. Don't be confused about what's going 
on. This film is a wonderful primer on how the war against the MMMA 
is being fought and how it is affecting folks at ground level.

Blazed and Confused can be viewed for free on YouTube and at 
thecompassionchronicles.com, a news and resources website for 
marijuana activists. If you go to YouTube, search the full title of the film.

Speaking of the fight:Kent County Circuit Judge Paul Sullivan ruled 
that the city of Grand Rapids may implement the charter amendment 
making possession of as much as 2.5 ounces of marijuana a civil 
infraction similar to a traffic ticket. Voters went for the change in 
November, but Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth has challenged 
it in court. Forsyth also sought an injunction seeking to stop Grand 
Rapids from implementing the change until his challenge was resolved. 
That's what the judge ruled on last week. This continues a recent run 
of mostly good court decisions regarding marijuana law changes in 
Michigan. Forsyth argues that the change is contrary to state law. 
However, Ann Arbor has had a similar law for about 35 years with no 
apparent conflict.

Here's a note to pro-marijuana activists, medical and otherwise: For 
all the polls showing massive support for medical marijuana, and for 
all the states with medical marijuana laws (18 plus the District of 
Columbia) and the two states that have legalized recreational use, we 
have not reached the endgame for marijuana prohibition. That was 
emphatically stated by the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals 
last week when it ruled in favor of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency 
(DEA) in a suit seeking to change the classification of marijuana as 
a Schedule 1 drug on par with heroin and LSD, and worse than cocaine 
and opiates. Americans for Safe Access had sued the DEA, forcing it 
to defend the classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug. ASA's 
legal team plans to appeal the ruling to a higher court.

This is just weird. While the court has said "no" to rescheduling 
marijuana, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee says he's moving forward 
with working out that state's regulations on legal recreational 
marijuana after a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. 
Voters in Washington OK'd recreational use of marijuana in November, 
and Inslee referred to his meeting with Holder as a "confidence 
builder" as state officials figure out how that's going to work. 
"Confidence builder" is something of a cryptic term. Can't somebody 
come out and say something definitive? Or is this a case of the left 
hand not knowing what the right hand is doing? On the one hand the 
DEA insists that marijuana is totally illegal and has no accepted 
medical use. On the other hand the U.S. attorney general seems to be 
telling a governor that the feds will not interfere with legal pot in 
Washington. Maybe we'll get some clarity on this soon, but in the 
meantime "dazed and confused" does seem to be the name of the game.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom