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| Reporter interviews office personnel at the Human Collective in Portland, Oregon |
Carol Forsloff-----20 states have passed laws legalizing marijuana for medical use, with Illinois the most recent; yet marijuana users often voluntarily hide in plain sight as they remain part of the collateral damage from the war on drugs.
Nancy Reagan’s good-intentioned “let’s say no” reinforced the notion that anyone who uses marijuana is doing harm to their bodies and violating the law. Crime stories abounded with tales of people using marijuana as they counted their money in the smoke-filled back rooms with pipes and paraphernalia that spoke of errant ways and defiance against authority. With this backdrop, the marijuana user often hides in plain sight in order to avoid the stigmas associated with marijuana in any form for any reason.
Whereas the news media reports the states as they adopt new laws on marijuana use, many do not highlight the conflicts that take place between the states and the federal regulations on marijuana use. Growers, distributors and users find themselves dodging the proverbial bullet, when clinics are raided by heavy booted, armed folks who can arrive at any time, reinforcing marijuana use as a crime, when 20 states have declared the drug to be a medication worthy of regulation, distribution and use by people who need it for medical reasons.
Most of the people who obtain their marijuana medication at Human Collective II, a distribution center in the greater Portland, Oregon area, are over the age of 50. Many of these people have chronic pain conditions, and whereas they are familiar with marijuana use, sometimes in those young days of pot smoking, folk singing and protesting, they still recall it as something done by subterfuge and viewed as snubbing one’s nose at authority. Now those stereotypes haunt the new user who looks for relief with a known substance but still retains the prejudices that came with marijuana years ago and that continue to linger in the minds of many, according to Donald Morse, assistant manager of the Human Collective clinic.
“The drug still carries the stigma,” Morse maintains. “It’s all about the money. And as it took decades to get rid of the prejudices towards gays, it will take time for people to truly accept marijuana as a viable option for treating health complaints.” Morse is one of those distributors who face Federal authorities in a case going to trial later this year, having been indicted for distributing marijuana to users who have the legal right to use it and to select the grower of it as well. And Human Collective has been seen as a model clinic for others in the State of Oregon because of its professional manner and methods of providing medical marijuana. These are the concerns facing those who use medical marijuana and those who provide it for them, as the war on drugs continues to create wounds and casualties, even as it appears to be on its way to resolution, at least within the several states.
