Ron Strider
Well-Known Member
After fracturing her neck in a car crash 15 years ago, Pamela Cabagnolo began what she called a downward spiral of opioid use.
She took the drugs to get up in the morning, to go to work. She popped pills for her pain until she went to bed at night. Cabagnolo said she took her pills to exist – a circumstance she decided to remedy last year with a trip to Colorado to try medical marijuana and treat her pain.
"I have a right to feel good. I don't want to be a drug addict," said the 68-year-old South Salt Lake resident. "I want to live. And it is my right to do so."
Cabagnolo and about a dozen others gathered at the Salt Lake County Government Center on Wednesday night to share their stories of how medical marijuana improved their health. It was one of the first public meetings for the Utah Patient Coalition's ballot initiative, which seeks to legalize medical marijuana in the state. Two other public hearings on the initiative were held Wednesday, one in Lehi and another in St. George, and more are scheduled across the state through Saturday.
The coalition submitted its ballot measure in late June after years of debate on legalizing medical marijuana in the Legislature. After the public meetings, supporters can begin collecting the 113,143 signatures required to put the initiative on the November 2018 ballot. Those signatures must be submitted to the state by April 15 for the measure to reach the ballot.
The number of required signatures is 10 percent of Utah votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, but initiative backers must also get those signatures from registered voters in at least 26 of Utah's 29 Senate districts. Ballot organizers said they'd need to raise about $3 million for its campaign, with about a third of that amount in hand as of late June.
The small crowd supported the measure. Taylor Paige, a 24-year-old from Sandy, described his lifelong struggle with kidney stones and how his treatment with opioids led him down the path of addiction and nearly death after an overdose.
Medical marijuana was the answer for Paige, and he doesn't "want to see anyone else go through [addiction] just so they can relieve the symptoms that they have."
The initiative uses much of the same language as a failed 2016 legislative measure proposed by former state Sen. Mark Madsen, who represented Saratoga Springs as a Republican.
If it wins voter approval, smoking marijuana, driving while intoxicated by medical cannabis and all public use would be prohibited. Limited numbers of cannabis outlets and physicians permitted to prescribe marijuana would be allowed.
Topical products, oils, edibles and vaping supplies would be permissible under the measure. Some of the qualifying conditions included in the proposed law include Alzheimer's disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain and autism.
A state-commissioned analysis showed that the proposed law would run Utah $400,000 per year, after startup costs of $1.1 million.
Several attendees were frustrated because treating their conditions with medical marijuana makes them criminals.
Ken Shifrar, a retired pharmacist, ruptured several discs in his spine as a result of complications from scoliosis four years ago, which led to him nearly losing the ability to walk. Although he has researched medical marijuana and visited Colorado to get a better understand of treatment option, Shifrar said he couldn't risk his chronic pain treatment in Utah, no matter the benefits.
The state's current law "throttles back your access to care if you chose to go out independently and use medical marijuana to treat whatever condition you have," Shifrar said. "It puts you outside the system and sets you up for legal problems and criminal prosecution, and that is just wrong."
Earlier this year, state lawmakers opted against legalization, given the uncertainty surrounding federal enforcement of marijuana laws under President Donald Trump's administration. They instead passed measures to fund marijuana research in Utah.
Madsen's 2016 measure would have legalized medical marijuana with two bills, but a compromise proposal failed in the session's final hours after legislators found that there was no money to implement the program.
A law allowing Utahns with severe epilepsy to import whole-plant cannabidiol extracts from states with legal medical marijuana passed in 2014. The Utah Department of Health issued 166 registration cards for hemp extracts to qualified patients between July 2014 and October 2016.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Medical marijuana meeting drums up support for Utah to legalize it | The Salt Lake Tribune
Author: Kelly Gifford
Contact: Staff - The Salt Lake Tribune
Photo Credit: Steve Griffin
Website: Utah Local News - Salt Lake City News, Sports, Entertainment, Business - The Salt Lake Tribune
She took the drugs to get up in the morning, to go to work. She popped pills for her pain until she went to bed at night. Cabagnolo said she took her pills to exist – a circumstance she decided to remedy last year with a trip to Colorado to try medical marijuana and treat her pain.
"I have a right to feel good. I don't want to be a drug addict," said the 68-year-old South Salt Lake resident. "I want to live. And it is my right to do so."
Cabagnolo and about a dozen others gathered at the Salt Lake County Government Center on Wednesday night to share their stories of how medical marijuana improved their health. It was one of the first public meetings for the Utah Patient Coalition's ballot initiative, which seeks to legalize medical marijuana in the state. Two other public hearings on the initiative were held Wednesday, one in Lehi and another in St. George, and more are scheduled across the state through Saturday.
The coalition submitted its ballot measure in late June after years of debate on legalizing medical marijuana in the Legislature. After the public meetings, supporters can begin collecting the 113,143 signatures required to put the initiative on the November 2018 ballot. Those signatures must be submitted to the state by April 15 for the measure to reach the ballot.
The number of required signatures is 10 percent of Utah votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, but initiative backers must also get those signatures from registered voters in at least 26 of Utah's 29 Senate districts. Ballot organizers said they'd need to raise about $3 million for its campaign, with about a third of that amount in hand as of late June.
The small crowd supported the measure. Taylor Paige, a 24-year-old from Sandy, described his lifelong struggle with kidney stones and how his treatment with opioids led him down the path of addiction and nearly death after an overdose.
Medical marijuana was the answer for Paige, and he doesn't "want to see anyone else go through [addiction] just so they can relieve the symptoms that they have."
The initiative uses much of the same language as a failed 2016 legislative measure proposed by former state Sen. Mark Madsen, who represented Saratoga Springs as a Republican.
If it wins voter approval, smoking marijuana, driving while intoxicated by medical cannabis and all public use would be prohibited. Limited numbers of cannabis outlets and physicians permitted to prescribe marijuana would be allowed.
Topical products, oils, edibles and vaping supplies would be permissible under the measure. Some of the qualifying conditions included in the proposed law include Alzheimer's disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain and autism.
A state-commissioned analysis showed that the proposed law would run Utah $400,000 per year, after startup costs of $1.1 million.
Several attendees were frustrated because treating their conditions with medical marijuana makes them criminals.
Ken Shifrar, a retired pharmacist, ruptured several discs in his spine as a result of complications from scoliosis four years ago, which led to him nearly losing the ability to walk. Although he has researched medical marijuana and visited Colorado to get a better understand of treatment option, Shifrar said he couldn't risk his chronic pain treatment in Utah, no matter the benefits.
The state's current law "throttles back your access to care if you chose to go out independently and use medical marijuana to treat whatever condition you have," Shifrar said. "It puts you outside the system and sets you up for legal problems and criminal prosecution, and that is just wrong."
Earlier this year, state lawmakers opted against legalization, given the uncertainty surrounding federal enforcement of marijuana laws under President Donald Trump's administration. They instead passed measures to fund marijuana research in Utah.
Madsen's 2016 measure would have legalized medical marijuana with two bills, but a compromise proposal failed in the session's final hours after legislators found that there was no money to implement the program.
A law allowing Utahns with severe epilepsy to import whole-plant cannabidiol extracts from states with legal medical marijuana passed in 2014. The Utah Department of Health issued 166 registration cards for hemp extracts to qualified patients between July 2014 and October 2016.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Medical marijuana meeting drums up support for Utah to legalize it | The Salt Lake Tribune
Author: Kelly Gifford
Contact: Staff - The Salt Lake Tribune
Photo Credit: Steve Griffin
Website: Utah Local News - Salt Lake City News, Sports, Entertainment, Business - The Salt Lake Tribune