By Kelly Marvin
Thank you so much for the special 4:20 piece (“It’s 4:20, the time is ripe,” April 20). It amazes me that people are still ignorant about the health benefits of cannabis. Between October 2001 and June 2003, I was involved in four separate car accidents that left me with chronic pain in my neck, shoulders, upper and lower back, and I had developed intense migraines. At 20 years old, my body had gone through what a 60-year-old could expect to feel like. Thank God that medicinal cannabis is available to us in California!
Although I was going through physical therapy and quickly becoming reliant on addictive painkillers, marijuana was the thing that saved me. With painkillers taking about 45 minutes before feeling relief, using medicinal cannabis only took a few minutes before my migraine would disappear! Medicinal cannabis helps many people living with HIV/AIDS, eating disorders, cancer, chronic pain and other terminal illnesses every day.
It is ridiculous to say that “I think they’re getting carried away here,” as quoted by Tim Dillman. What about the people who legally drink, then drive and kill people? Or the people who smoke their legal tobacco, develop cancers and affect non-smokers’ health? That is infringing on other Americans’ lives and getting carried away. Also, some of the authors of our great nation’s Constitution even grew marijuana/hemp.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Thanks, Santa Monica Daily Press.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 21, 2007. Read the original PDF.