Pubdate: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 Source: Boston Globe (MA) Copyright: 2014 Globe Newspaper Company Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340 Website: http://bostonglobe.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52 Author: Tom Moroney, Bloomberg News FORMER PRINCIPAL PROMOTES MARIJUANA FOR AILING SENIORS ANTIOCH, Calif. - Sue Taylor stands before her Rotary Club audience in her "principal's suit" - matching black blazer and pants, heels, pearls, and a pocketbook holding a secret. At 67, Taylor has made a giant leap. The retired principal of two Catholic schools today calls herself America's only full-time senior cannabis advocate. She is paid $4,500 a month to tell Grandma and Grandpa and those closest to them that marijuana - in joints, cookies, just about any form imaginable - can ease pain and promote sleep and appetite. She points to her traveling medicine show's cache of balms, sprays, tinctures, ointments, and salves, all infused with cannabis. "Sometimes you need just a little," she tells 15 Rotarians gathered for coffee and eggs at the Lone Tree Golf Course in Antioch. Marijuana, tea, dope, herb, grass, pot - a weed by any other name still conjures evil for many in the plus-65 set. Taylor says her generation was scared stiff by the 1936 classic "Reefer Madness," and is in desperate need of her message. She goes to nursing homes, assisted-living complexes, senior centers, and health fairs. 'If you had told me I'd be promoting cannabis someday I would have said you've been smoking too much.' "Our seniors are our forgotten ones," Taylor says. "Just give them a pill or whatever. They're going to die anyway. That's the attitude I'm fighting." Cracking the Rotary took some doing. For two years, she tried chapters near Oakland. She persisted because if the Rotarians said yes, she would have the ear of mainstream America. Taylor works for Harborside Health Center in Oakland, which bills itself as the world's largest medical marijuana dispensary. It has 150,000 registered patients and gross annual revenues of $25 million. Five years ago, founder Steve DeAngelo decided that for the elderly to accept marijuana as medicine, get California's doctor-authorized card and shop at places like his, they would need coaxing. When he met Taylor, he knew she had the passion and the wardrobe. DeAngelo's look? Decidedly un-Rotarian. He wears two ponytails behind each ear. In a website photo, cofounder David Wedding dress - yes, the "d" is lowercase - sports a ZZ Top beard. "Sue bridges the gap for us," DeAngelo said. And if her wardrobe does not do the trick, her resume just might. Six of her 18 years in education were spent as a principal. In those days, she railed against marijuana and threatened to call the police on her own three sons if it ever showed up in the house. "If you had told me I'd be promoting cannabis someday," Taylor tells Rotarians, "I would have said you've been smoking too much." The grandmother starts each morning with a kale-spinach smoothie and occasionally takes an edible nonpsychoactive form of cannabis for back pain. She says she has never smoked it. It's the kind of detail she peppers her speeches with, stories from her own life. She has two education degrees and a certificate as a metaphysical minister. No longer a practicing Catholic, she hoped for a day she would open a holistic health center. In 2009, her oldest, Jamaal, called with a stunning suggestion for funding her center. Getting licensed as a medical marijuana dispensary would generate profits. She began researching marijuana's medicinal effects when she learned her best friend, Sonia, had a fast-moving pancreatic cancer. In early December of that year, Sonia told Taylor that her aunt had suggested a cannabis cookie for her pain. Sonia said no. "I don't put drugs in my body," she said even as morphine coursed through her bloodstream. Taylor was not sure what she thought about marijuana, but she knew morphine was turning her friend into a zombie. Sonia died the next month, in January 2010, at age 63. After Sonia was gone, Taylor got deeper into the research. She began volunteer work for Harborside before being hired in 2011, meeting elderly cancer patients who testified to marijuana's good effects. She thought of Sonia. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom