Ron Strider
Well-Known Member
You can make all sorts of jokes about people who want to turn medical marijuana production into a budding Utah industry, but for St. George resident Dave Cromar the issue is a serious one.
While living in Farmington, Cromar's 2-year-old son began having seizures he says coincided with getting a flu shot. Initially, the family struggled to identify what was going on but by the time the boy, Holden, was 3 his physicians suggested there could be a significant neurological issue taking place.
Over time, Holden was prescribed a variety of medications and consulted with neurosurgeons at Primary Children's Hospital who told the boy's parents about some additional treatments that they thought were as likely to fail as the previous ones.
Their recommendations gravitated toward removing parts of Holden's brain, Cromar said.
"That's when we made the decision to move to Colorado," he said, indicating the family hoped the state's legalized cannabis therapies would provide a solution.
On Saturday, Cromar and his family were at St. George's Hilton hotel collecting signatures that he hopes will drive a citizens' initiative onto next year's election ballot. If voters then approve the initiative, it would decriminalize a variety of forms of medical marijuana extracts and bring Utah into closer parity with its neighbor to the east.
"Hundreds of families all located to Colorado Springs in (2013, when we moved there)," Cromar said. "We all leaned on each other, we learned from each other and watched our kids just have miraculous breakthroughs."
Providing his now-10-year-old boy with a treatment that drastically reduced multiple daily seizure clusters to a level where he no longer has seizures every day and rarely has them in clusters required a significant amount of trial and error during the three years the Cromars were in Colorado. There are 113 classified cannabinoids in the cannabis plant and different ways of administering them, and what works for one patient may make things worse for another.
"(Treatment) has to be individualized," Cromar said, adding that states such as Utah that have legalized some cannabis extracts are disenfranchising the majority of patients by not legalizing the full range of options.
Even so, the Cromar family reached a point earlier this year where they felt safe returning to Utah where they could be nearer to their relatives and culture, he said. They recently moved south to St. George to see if a generally stable barometric pressure in the region would also prove beneficial.
Holden continues to use cannabidiols, or CBDs, but the intoxicating cannabinols, or CBNs, remain off the table in Utah.
"The majority of what we need to have a good quality of life and still be by our family we can legally get (here), but some of what would be really good to have we can't get," Cromar said.
As the issue has been debated within the state, a variety of concerns have been raised. A majority of residents regard smoking marijuana as a deleterious drug habit that negatively affects brain function. Limited scientific research as well as decades of worldwide social perceptions support the idea, and the drug's recreational use remains illegal under federal law despite an increasing number of legalization efforts on a state-by-state basis.
"I just don't want it to be on every street corner. That concerns me," Suzanne Majury of Washington City said after visiting with Cromar. "I come from Washington state; retired down here. They voted (recreational marijuana use) in. That was one of the decisions we made to leave the state. It was out of control. And there were many more traffic deaths. ... It created havoc."
Majury said she isn't against patients taking something that benefits them, but was "adamantly opposed" to legalizing marijuana and believes any use of it should be "judicious." Watching a Colorado relative battle with addiction has convinced her she doesn't want "to see lives wasted" through the drug's abuse.
"I think medical marijuana is a better way to go than ... opioids. It's ridiculous, the opioid deaths that are being generated," her friend, Teri Frazier of St. George, said. "With medical marijuana if it's maintained, controlled, whatever, by your doctor, with good regulations, it's a much better way to go."
Frazier noted that marijuana abuse doesn't cause people's lungs to shut down the way some prescribed medications will, and many of the sicknesses that are attributed to marijuana use can apparently be traced to pesticides present during the plants' cultivation.
"I do not care for the smoking part of it," Frazier said. "The oils that you ingest, the edibles, the cream for your skin — those are the things I think that they really need to be pushing. ... The smoking, no matter if it's cigarettes, marijuana, cloves, whatever, it all affects your lungs."
"It affects other people as well," Majury added.
Cromar said he recognizes smoking marijuana will not be acceptable for the initiative, even though it is "one of the best administration methods" for some patients who want a rapid response to a medical incident.
In addition to oils and salves, Cromar said Holden participated in the trial development of a vaporizer jury-rigged with an oxygen mask to inhale medication, but without smoking it. The inhaler has since become successful in neighboring states, he said.
"It stops the seizure in 20 seconds. ... They're not high. They're not drugged out of their mind on (benzodiazapines), and it's amazing," he said. "But we can't get that here."
The Utah medical cannabis initiative, as summarized by the Utah Patients Coalition, which organized the petition drive, states it would maintain prohibitions against public marijuana use and driving under the influence of cannabis.
It would create a cannabis dispensary medical business license similar to pharmacies, but dedicated to medical marijuana delivery. It would also establish licenses for cultivation, processing and testing facilities.
Dispensaries would be limited to one for each 150,000 residents per county, and medical cannabis businesses would be face location restrictions similar to those placed on bars in Utah. After Jan. 1, 2021 patients would be allowed to grow their own cannabis if a dispensary is not located within 100 miles of the patient's home.
Contact information for local volunteers throughout the state who can provide a copy of the petition for signing is available at Utah Patients Coalition under the Volunteer tab. Cromar said the campaign needs to gather 113,000 signatures by April from 26 of the state's 29 counties to get the measure on the ballot.
His family gathered "a couple hundred" signatures on Saturday, the majority of them from people 50 or older.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Signature drive pushes for medical marijuana vote
Author: Kevin Jenkins
Contact: Contact | St. George Spectrum
Photo Credit: Kevin Jenkins
Website: St. George News - Home
While living in Farmington, Cromar's 2-year-old son began having seizures he says coincided with getting a flu shot. Initially, the family struggled to identify what was going on but by the time the boy, Holden, was 3 his physicians suggested there could be a significant neurological issue taking place.
Over time, Holden was prescribed a variety of medications and consulted with neurosurgeons at Primary Children's Hospital who told the boy's parents about some additional treatments that they thought were as likely to fail as the previous ones.
Their recommendations gravitated toward removing parts of Holden's brain, Cromar said.
"That's when we made the decision to move to Colorado," he said, indicating the family hoped the state's legalized cannabis therapies would provide a solution.
On Saturday, Cromar and his family were at St. George's Hilton hotel collecting signatures that he hopes will drive a citizens' initiative onto next year's election ballot. If voters then approve the initiative, it would decriminalize a variety of forms of medical marijuana extracts and bring Utah into closer parity with its neighbor to the east.
"Hundreds of families all located to Colorado Springs in (2013, when we moved there)," Cromar said. "We all leaned on each other, we learned from each other and watched our kids just have miraculous breakthroughs."
Providing his now-10-year-old boy with a treatment that drastically reduced multiple daily seizure clusters to a level where he no longer has seizures every day and rarely has them in clusters required a significant amount of trial and error during the three years the Cromars were in Colorado. There are 113 classified cannabinoids in the cannabis plant and different ways of administering them, and what works for one patient may make things worse for another.
"(Treatment) has to be individualized," Cromar said, adding that states such as Utah that have legalized some cannabis extracts are disenfranchising the majority of patients by not legalizing the full range of options.
Even so, the Cromar family reached a point earlier this year where they felt safe returning to Utah where they could be nearer to their relatives and culture, he said. They recently moved south to St. George to see if a generally stable barometric pressure in the region would also prove beneficial.
Holden continues to use cannabidiols, or CBDs, but the intoxicating cannabinols, or CBNs, remain off the table in Utah.
"The majority of what we need to have a good quality of life and still be by our family we can legally get (here), but some of what would be really good to have we can't get," Cromar said.
As the issue has been debated within the state, a variety of concerns have been raised. A majority of residents regard smoking marijuana as a deleterious drug habit that negatively affects brain function. Limited scientific research as well as decades of worldwide social perceptions support the idea, and the drug's recreational use remains illegal under federal law despite an increasing number of legalization efforts on a state-by-state basis.
"I just don't want it to be on every street corner. That concerns me," Suzanne Majury of Washington City said after visiting with Cromar. "I come from Washington state; retired down here. They voted (recreational marijuana use) in. That was one of the decisions we made to leave the state. It was out of control. And there were many more traffic deaths. ... It created havoc."
Majury said she isn't against patients taking something that benefits them, but was "adamantly opposed" to legalizing marijuana and believes any use of it should be "judicious." Watching a Colorado relative battle with addiction has convinced her she doesn't want "to see lives wasted" through the drug's abuse.
"I think medical marijuana is a better way to go than ... opioids. It's ridiculous, the opioid deaths that are being generated," her friend, Teri Frazier of St. George, said. "With medical marijuana if it's maintained, controlled, whatever, by your doctor, with good regulations, it's a much better way to go."
Frazier noted that marijuana abuse doesn't cause people's lungs to shut down the way some prescribed medications will, and many of the sicknesses that are attributed to marijuana use can apparently be traced to pesticides present during the plants' cultivation.
"I do not care for the smoking part of it," Frazier said. "The oils that you ingest, the edibles, the cream for your skin — those are the things I think that they really need to be pushing. ... The smoking, no matter if it's cigarettes, marijuana, cloves, whatever, it all affects your lungs."
"It affects other people as well," Majury added.
Cromar said he recognizes smoking marijuana will not be acceptable for the initiative, even though it is "one of the best administration methods" for some patients who want a rapid response to a medical incident.
In addition to oils and salves, Cromar said Holden participated in the trial development of a vaporizer jury-rigged with an oxygen mask to inhale medication, but without smoking it. The inhaler has since become successful in neighboring states, he said.
"It stops the seizure in 20 seconds. ... They're not high. They're not drugged out of their mind on (benzodiazapines), and it's amazing," he said. "But we can't get that here."
The Utah medical cannabis initiative, as summarized by the Utah Patients Coalition, which organized the petition drive, states it would maintain prohibitions against public marijuana use and driving under the influence of cannabis.
It would create a cannabis dispensary medical business license similar to pharmacies, but dedicated to medical marijuana delivery. It would also establish licenses for cultivation, processing and testing facilities.
Dispensaries would be limited to one for each 150,000 residents per county, and medical cannabis businesses would be face location restrictions similar to those placed on bars in Utah. After Jan. 1, 2021 patients would be allowed to grow their own cannabis if a dispensary is not located within 100 miles of the patient's home.
Contact information for local volunteers throughout the state who can provide a copy of the petition for signing is available at Utah Patients Coalition under the Volunteer tab. Cromar said the campaign needs to gather 113,000 signatures by April from 26 of the state's 29 counties to get the measure on the ballot.
His family gathered "a couple hundred" signatures on Saturday, the majority of them from people 50 or older.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Signature drive pushes for medical marijuana vote
Author: Kevin Jenkins
Contact: Contact | St. George Spectrum
Photo Credit: Kevin Jenkins
Website: St. George News - Home