Calvina Fay is the head of the Drug Free America Foundation (formerly known as “Straight, Inc.”, read up on that horror story!) and founded with Betty Sembler a group called “Save Our Society from Drugs”. One of our readers forwarded to me a plea written by Calvina Fay begging the Steamboat Springs city council to oppose new dispensaries, or as she calls them, “pot shops”.
Dear City Council Member:
I am writing to you on behalf of Save Our Society from Drugs (S.O.S), a national nonprofit drug policy organization with concerned members in your community. It is my understanding that you recently passed a 90-day moratorium on any new marijuana dispensaries, allowing the two existing facilities to remain open while you determine how to regulate such establishments. I am writing to encourage you to vote “No” on any item that could potentially escalate the use and possession of drugs in this community.
Wouldn’t that acronym be S.O.S.F.D.? Were you high when you came up with it? Never mind, continue…
As of May 31, 2009, the Marijuana Registry Program has 8918 individuals that legally hold marijuana ID cards. In 2000, when voters in Colorado passed an amendment legalizing marijuana as a so-called medicine, they did so believing that marijuana would only be made available to those who had exhausted all other medical options and/or were suffering from a life threatening illness.
One of my favorite crime-fighting powers of prohibitionists is their ability to read the minds of thousands of voters in the past. Let’s look at Colorado’s Amendment 20; just what did the voters say “yes” to by a 54% vote?
(Colorado Amendment 20) Ballot Title: An amendment to the Colorado Constitution authorizing the medical use of marijuana for persons suffering from debilitating medical conditions… defined as follows…. Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or treatment for such conditions; A chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition, or treatment for such conditions, which produces…: cachexia; severe pain; severe nausea; seizures, including those that are characteristic of epilepsy; or persistent muscle spasms, including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis; or Any other medical condition, or treatment for such condition, approved by the state health agency.
Hmm… I don’t see anything in these definitions about exhausting all other options or one’s illness being not just “debilitating”, but “life-threatening”. In fact, I see “chronic or debilitating medical condition which produces severe pain or severe nausea”, a lower threshold for pain and nausea treatment than most medical marijuana states’ language calling for “chronic pain” or “chronic nausea”.
(Calvina Fay) To date, only 6% of those using marijuana are using it to “treat” cancer, HIV/AIDS, and glaucoma. The remainder of the users are “treating” much less serious conditions such as muscle spasms, headaches and minor arthritis.
Yes, Calvina, use the scare quotes to convince people that those 6% with cancer, HIV/AIDS, and glaucoma are faking it. In the previous graf you’re complaining that Colorado really meant marijuana to be used by those with “life-threatening” illness, then you mock those with cancer and HIV/AIDS. As for the other treatments, the Amendment that 54% of the people voted for includes muscle spasms, migraine pain, and arthritis pain.
Recent articles coming out of the state’s news outlets report that the registration program has seen an increase of 2,000 individuals that have been added to the program just in the past month and that the number is expected to rise to 15,000 by the year’s end. Allowing pot shops where marijuana will be more readily available will only increase the number of applicants to an already widely abused program.
“Widely abused”, and yet all the nearly 9,000 registered patients saw a doctor, had one of the qualifying conditions, got a legal recommendation, and legally acquired medicine. Calvina suffers from a particularly virulent strain of Reefer Madness called “The ‘So-Called’ Medicine of Last Resort™” – this idea that only people who’ve tried every other possible pharmaceutical unsuccessfully and are on their death bed with two weeks to live should be allowed to use medical marijuana.
Why is it when a state government sets up any other program aside from medical marijuana, a rapid increase in participants statewide is considered a success, but for medical marijuana it is considered “widely abused”? If we end up with 15,000 Colorado patients by year’s end, that’s a state government successfully protecting 15,000 people from needless prosecutions that cost the state money. That’s 15,000 marijuana users who’ve paid a fee to the government and registered their name and address with the state to use marijuana. That’s 15,000 patients the state has given a safer alternative to hepatoxic pharmaceuticals. By every measure, a success!
ABC Nightline journalist Lisa Ling, in a recent episode titled High Times, illustrates just how easy it is to get a “medical” marijuana recommendation in California. Statistics and the camera show that state “medical” marijuana programs are being widely abused and perfectly healthy individuals are easily able to acquire pot under the guise of medicine. Is this the type of media recognition that Steamboat Springs wants?
And it is exactly NOT that easy to get a recommendation in Colorado. This is another strain of Reefer Madness, the “You Don’t Want Us To Be Like California, Do You?™” The way it works is that you note that California’s Prop 215 is worded so doctors can make a recommendation for anything and that Los Angeles has more dispensaries than Starbucks. Then you use that scary scenario in a state where doctors can only recommend based on fixed list of conditions, where there must be rigorous medical documentation of that condition, in a city where there are two dispensaries.
Before you vote, please examine the attached documents provided by the California Police Chiefs Association. They are dealing with dispensaries and related crime every day. As you can see from California’s experience, dispensaries are not worth the damage they create in communities. Do not allow the community of Steamboat Springs to suffer the same fate.
The attached documents Calvina presents include a 25 page listing of news stories about dispensary robberies, shootings, and raids, all of which are consequences of the illegality of cannabis for non-sick people which drives the price up to levels worth stealing and forestalls any calling of the police or setting in court any disputes which arise from buying, selling, and growing marijuana. This same listing of robberies, shootings, and raids could have been composed in 1995 before any medical marijuana states existed.
Then there is a 40 page document from the “Friends of the DEA” giving recommendations to the Obama Administration on how to deal with dispensaries. Lots of scare quotes around the word “medical” when referencing medical marijuana and a whole bunch of justification for locking up sick people who use medical marijuana in order to protect them from the dangers of a “crude plant material” not regulated by the FDA.
The coup de gras is a 56 page “white paper” from the California Police Chiefs Association telling all the sordid tales of how California is going to hell in a handbasket because it has medical marijuana dispensaries. That’s 121 pages from Calvina & Friends – 122 if you count her letter – designed to scare Steamboat Springs city council about medical marijuana.
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Your own personal story is irrelevant when there are others out there that are benefiting. I think 100 percent rationally and am on the dean’s list at my university. I live an enriched life full of meaning. You’re actually quite naive. You’re not responding to logic, but instead using poor emotional ‘lashing-out’ because you had a bad experience. Psychoactive substances are not for everyone, but trying to equate everyone to your own personal experience is sad and offensive to me. I am not you. DO not compare me to you. I don’t even smoke marijuana everyday, how is that addictive? I don’t even believe your story. I don’t think you ever did smoke weed. If you did, you likely suffered from some other mental/emotional breakdown, resulting in this unfortunate refusal of a proven-beneficial substance. Marijuana is not going anywhere, and until foolish people like yourself begin to open up to real discussion instead of making claims that have no backing, then there will continue to be head butting. I feel truly awful for your clouded perception.
Also, Hunter S. Thompson was not a daily marijuana user. In fact, alcohol was without doubt his biggest pleasure. I suppose you would be against prohibiting that.
[...] the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
[...] authored the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
I smoked dope daily for 25 some odd years and have gratefully been clean now for almost 15 years. I once believed it to be harmless and beneficial. Nothing could be further from the truth. I had convinced myself that it was great because of the high. I was addicted to it and was making excuses for using it. The real truth is that it never helped ease any of my back pain, it gave me severe mood swings, it caused me to have headaches. Never once did it ease a headache. I would get irritable when I came down. I eventually I found myself constantly losing things and unable to remember well enough to hold a conversation. I couldn’t concentrate and I would forget what somebody said as soon as they said it. Marijuana was destroying my life. It was destroying my brains ability to function rationally. I find it quite funny to read how all the addicts here fight and defend their addiction just the same way I used to. Hunter S. Thompson blew his drug addled brains out. Is that not a sign to any of you? The medical marijuana movement is a sham. Those who promote it are addicts like me. The only difference is that I sobered up and realized the truth.
[...] authored the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
[...] the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
[...] the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
This wack job is off her medication. Another example of someone that overtoke got all paranoidy freaked out and went on an anti mj crusade.
Well, that was uncalled for. If indeed there is karma, you just earned yourself a deduction of a point or two for that.
Well, that was uncalled for. If indeed there is karma, you just earned yourself a deduction of a point or two for that.
[...] the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
i believe in karma so you deserve this
[...] the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
[...] the ‘pro’ argument, which you can read here, and longtime, professional prohibitionist Calvina Fay penned the ‘con’ [...]
Calvina Fay and others like her MUST BE STOPPE!D!! They are closet Nazis.She is against freedom, She is against privacy She is against life! We need a Calvina Fay group that follows her everywhere she goes to prtotest her. She is not harmless. She is one of the biggest obstacles to marijuanna freedom and just plain freedom in the world today. She must be stopped before we all in up in a global prison.
I was firs diagnosed with arthritis when I was 8 (eight) years old. During the decades following, it has spread to every joint in my body (did you know that you have joints in your callar bone?) I am so sick of people saying that arthritis is “minor.” In order to walk, in my non-MMJ state, I must take large doses of NSAIDs daily and PRESCRIBED steroids several times per year. This will eventually destroy my liver (which is 100% fatal) unless my state passes a MMJ law, or I move. What the HELL did I do when I was 8 years old to deserve a death sentence?
This is why it is so hard to make progress.
We disregard her as crazy and laugh at what we know are bogus claims but lets not forget that her targets are not us.
Her targets are low level politicians and they are all, generally speaking, ignorant of the facts here.
Some poor council member, who has never given marijuana a thought beyond the stereotypes they might see on TV, will read her cleverly contructed lies and likely believe them.
CO. will need a similar information presentation to counter her nonsense. Don’t expect the city council to act intelligently without any help.
I was raided in the town “down the road” from Steamboat in Craig, CO and was on the air on a Hot AC channel 93.7 and 102.3 KRAI in Steamboat for a little while. The town is one of the most Marijuana friendly towns in the State. Their Sheriff, Routt County, also pulled funding for the local drug task force in the area. He believes treatment is better for society than jailing. Steamboat is probably one of Colorado’s best kept secrets and is fast becoming a celebrity get away since Apsen has become not as popular and over crowded.
It would surprise me if anything in Routt county or Steamboat were to pass against Marijuana reform. But, as i mentioned I was raided for Marijuana. Guns drawn and all, not too far from this town. So, dont believe that just because one area is good to go, that some other prohibitionist and drug warrior cant come down the road singing his or her awful tune.
Viva Colorado!! We are strong here and we have proven we will fight hard for the rights we have given ourselves to use Marijuana medicinally.