By Mike Cann

 

At the most recent GOP Presidential Debate, Senator Rand Paul bravely attempted to educate his party on the use of medical cannabis oil for children suffering from daily seizures. As one would expect, his words did not exactly receive a warm welcome. Jeb Bush warned that as opiate abuse is a campaign issue, ending the war on marijuana users was a non-starter. Paul shot back that Bush was supporting taking children away from parents that would provide life saving cannabis oil to their kids suffering from seizures.

 

And then this happened.“We are misleading young people”, said candidate, Carly Fiorini, “when we tell them that marijuana is just like having a beer.”  Fiorini’s statement is actually factual but not for the reason she thinks. Excessive alcohol use is responsible for 88,000+ deaths a year while cannabis of course kills nobody. Fiorini was attempting to lamely make the case that marijuana was more dangerous than a beer when it’s clearly not the case, as alcohol is quite dangerous for young people especially when compared to marijuana.

 

The following morning, local radio host, Jon Meterparel on WRKO’s BDC Morning show opined how silly it was for Rand Paul to be talking about curing a child’s seizures by bathing them in cannabis oil. Paul never mentioned bathing kids in cannabis oil. Talk about airing complete ignorance for all to hear. Meterparel and his co-host, Kim Kerrigan seemed to completely miss that seizures are being cured by ingesting cannabis oil not from bathing in it. It’s not like Massachusetts doesn’t have more than a few moms, Lisa Cole, Cindy Gedick, and Jill Hitchman-Osborn, who have been clamoring to get access to this medicine for their children. Or the Dr. Sunjay Gupta hadn’t covered Charlotte’s Web on a nationally televised special on CNN. How can you be paid to talk about local and national news and be so behind the times? That Meterparel and Kerrigan are completely ignorant of these parent’s plight while being paid to opine on the subject matter is beyond sad. It’s tragic. Do your job and have these parents on your show, Kerrigan and Meterparal.

 

Also on the local medical marijuana front, Beacon Compassion Center recently was dealt a setback when the Board of Selectmen of Bellingham, Mass denied their proposal to open a medical marijuana cultivation center in the town. Bob Lobel, the hall of fame sports broadcaster is serving on the board of directors for Beacon and noted that the Board of Selectmen had no reservations about transferring liquor licenses at the same meeting while claiming to not have enough information on the impact of a medical marijuana cultivation center in their town. It’s expected that Beacon will be re-booting their cultivation center in a location outside of Bellingham. Beacon has an upcoming hearing in Foxborough to open a storefront location in that town, while the town of Framingham has already approved Beacon’s proposal to open there.

 

This weekend, reform activists gather on Boston Common, Saturday and Sunday for the annual MassCann/NORML Boston Freedom Rally. The delayed rollout of medical marijuana is sure to be a talking point for many of the event’s speakers. As is the dueling campaigns for marijuana legalization in the Commonwealth. Bay State Repeal hoping to place an Initiative on the 2016 ballot is expected to canvas the Rally gathering signatures all weekend. Steve Epstein of Bay State Repeal reports that their organization has a good dozen or more volunteers collecting signatures around the state on any given day in Massachusetts.