Compassionate Idaho volunteers Lindsey Rinehart and Isaias Valdez were featured in coverage of their campaign to pass a medical marijuana initiative by Boise’s KTVB, the top-rated news channel in the largest metropolitan area in the state.  KTVB should be ashamed of the biased, scaremongering piece they have produced.

First they frame our volunteer activists as people looking to exploit Idahoans’ natural compassion for the sick and dying.

The Treasure Valley – a family community – is where people help their neighbors and compassion is common.

Isaias Valdez hopes to capitalize on Idaho’s compassion. He’s a volunteer for Compassionate Idaho, a grassroots group working to legalize medical marijuana.

Note the use of capitalize: a verb meaning “to take advantage of” according to the dictionary.  This opening could have been “Isaias Valdez believes Idaho’s compassion for others will lead them to support legalizing medical marijuana.”  But capitalize is such a competitive word, conjuring frames of opportunities and business and capitalism.

Lindsey Rinehart works with Valdez, gathering support across the state at places like the farmer’s market in Boise. They need 47,500 signatures to get a medical marijuana initiative on the November 2012 ballot.

“This is about giving people the compassion they deserve. This is about caring about your neighbors, your church, your co-workers,” said Rinehart.

And here we end the reporting on the people trying to pass medical marijuana, about one fourth of the way through this six minute report.  Interestingly, they asked Isaias what his reason was for supporting medical marijuana, but not Lindsay.  See, Isaias is a healthy young man, but Lindsay suffers from multiple sclerosis.  I personally watched her testify to the public in Ontario this summer where the pain was writ large on her face from the three hours she had to abstain from cannabis use.  It’s not as if Idaho television stations aren’t aware of this; KTRV reported in May:

Rinehart says she takes more than a dozen pills for pain, nausea, and nerve damage caused by her multiple sclerosis.  She questions the long-term side-effects of that medication, including opiates and narcotics that have been proven to cause damage to the liver and kidneys in patients.

What’s more, Rinehart says independent research shows evidence that the medical use of cannabis — or high grade marijuana — helps curb the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, helping to eliminate nausea and other pain-related conditions.

Would it cut down on her use of painkillers?

“If I could use medical marijuana, I could probably eliminate or significantly reduce my intake of narcotics,” Rinehart said.

So KTVB ignores an incredibly salient point – one of the people they’re interviewing about passing medical marijuana is a poster child for the kind of legitimate patient Idahoans are currently willing to throw in prison for using the most effective and safest medication to ease their pain.  Instead they spend almost all of the remaining 70% of the piece reporting from Fort Collins, Colorado, interviewing cops and addiction specialists and school teachers about the perils that await should Idaho “open the door to medical marijuana.”

Fort Collins is a college town in Larimer County, Colorado. There, marijuana cards have increased 1,400 percent in the county in just three years, going from 500 users to 7,500 people who now hold medicinal marijuana cards.

“There was no change in the health of our community, but the number of users, when the supply showed up commercially, we saw the users go up,” said Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith.

“We’ve had an epidemic of chronic pain amongst our 20-40 year old males. A public health concern unprecedented,” said Scoot Crandall, Executive Director for Team Fort Collins.

Hmm, that’s interesting sarcasm, Scoot.  Kinda like erectile dysfunction affects just 2.6% of middle-aged men but once Viagra hit the market, up to 9% of men aged 18-31 had used it.  Yet I rarely hear any county sheriffs or drug counselors concerned about that recreational use of a medicine by healthy young men, despite the fact that Viagra abuse can kill, unlike marijuana.

Indeed, there probably was no change in the health of the community.  Like other communities, it likely has many people suffering from some form of chronic pain.  The Institute of Medicine reported this year that “Chronic pain affects at least 116 million American adults—more than the total affected by heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined.”

So the thousands in Fort Collins who suffer from pain didn’t change, but their ability to access a safer, non-toxic alternative did.  It is no more surprising that medical marijuana would be popular when dispensaries open than we’d be surprised that a water fountain in the Sahara has a huge line.

Area schools have noticed an increase. In a letter to the Fort Collins City Council, Jerry Wilson, Superintendent of the Poudre School District said, “The district has seen the number of drug related expulsions increase from 13 to 40 since 2008, a 300 percent increase.” Wilson went on to say that “Students were expelled for either purchasing, selling or possessing marijuana.”

Well, that’s a junk statistic.  How much more have you been shaking kids down for pot?  Have you increased drug dog patrols?  Have you instituted drug testing?  Because you seem to be inferring that medical marijuana dispensaries have led to a tripling of marijuana use among teens.

Now the latest NSDUH numbers show an increase in monthly teen (12-17) cannabis use from 9.10% to 10.19%, the greatest rate found in any state and an increase of almost 12%.  However, it is difficult to pin this on medical marijuana in general or dispensaries in particular.  Nationally the rate of such use increased 4.6%.  In California, a state with dispensaries, saw a 12% increase similar to Colorado, but Montana, until recently a state with dispensaries, saw only a 2.3% increase, below the national rate.  Arizona, which didn’t have medical marijuana at the time, saw an 11% increase and Maine, which does have medical marijuana, saw a 6.7% decrease.

Statistics from the Colorado Department of Public Health show over 121,000 Coloradans hold marijuana cards. Sixty-eight percent are men with the average age of 40. Ninety-four percent say they need the marijuana for severe pain.

Junk statistic number two.  This is the same trick they pull in Oregon to convince people that almost all the medical marijuana patients are faking pain to get cards.  As the department’s website notes, “Severe pain accounts for 94 percent of all reported conditions; muscle spasms account for the second-most reported condition at 19 percent.  Note that percentages do not add up to 100 percent because some patients have more than one condition.”  Cancer causes pain.  Cachexia causes pain.  Multiple sclerosis causes pain.  People using medical marijuana in Colorado for conditions other than pain total 45,527.  That’s up to 37.5% of the patients saying they need medical marijuana for reasons other than severe pain.

As for the 62.5% or more who use medical marijuana solely to treat pain… so what?  They had to visit a doctor and get documentation of their condition.  They had to show chart notes to a clinic to verify three years worth of treatments for that pain.  They paid $90 to the state (that’s almost $11 million this year).  As we mentioned above, millions of Americans suffer from pain and they’re consuming 30 billion doses a year of over-the-counter NSAIDs like Advil and Aleve, including 70 million prescriptions for stronger NSAIDs like Celebrex.   It is estimated that more than 100,000 Americans are hospitalized each year and between 15,000 and 20,000 Americans die each year from ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding linked to NSAID use.

University freshmen were open about the issue.

“How hard is it to get marijuana around here, even if you don’t have a card?” asked KTVB’s Scott Evans. “It’s pretty easy,” said Julia Waterhouse, a CU Boulder Freshman.

“Are people that sick?” asked Evans. “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” said Marella Alioto, a CU Boulder Freshman. “What do you think it is?,” asked Evans. “Recreational,” replied Alioto.

Yes, let’s ask a bunch of 18-year-old college kids what they think.  As if any college kid on any campus in America has any difficulty scoring a dime bag.  As if CU Boulder wasn’t already the site of the nation’s largest 4/20 smokeout long before any dispensaries existed.

“If you open the door on the medicinal, what’s sold as medicinal, be aware, it was opening the door to recreational use,” said Smith.

Be afraid!  If you allow a suffering person like Lindsay to ease the excruciating pain she feels from multiple sclerosis by using medical marijuana without threat of arrest, why, a freshman at Boise State might smoke pot!  Never mind that one in three of those freshman are smoking marijuana this year anyway - it doesn’t matter how many more people suffer if we can stop one young adult from lighting a doobie.

Idaho’s initiative, the Idaho Medical Choice Act, would provide people with a debilitating medical condition to possess marijuana. They would be allowed to possess two ounces or less of usable marijuana. The law would also allow them to own nine plants.

Oh, we’re talking about Idaho again?  Gee, with 70% of the story dedicated to Fort Collins, it was hard to tell.  Thanks for pointing out the differences between Idaho and Colorado regarding medical marijuana.  Let us help you with a few of the more important details you left out: