NORML of Waco making news in first month of existence

As Outreach Coordinator for NORML, I am fostering chapters all across the country.  It’s hard to know what’s happening on the ground when you don’t live there, so I encourage chapters to fill me in through emails, phone calls, and by following their websites, calendars, and blogs.  As an old musician friend of mine once coined “Lawson’s Law: If you ain’t appearing, you’re disappearing”, which meant at the time that if you had no gigs, you had no band.  More broadly for NORML chapters means that if you’re not holding events and making news, you don’t exist.

So my greatest thanks to Clif Deuvall and the good people at NORML of Waco, Inc., who in just one month of existence have gotten spectacular coverage in the Waco Tribune:

Alan Caruthers, of Waco, says he was 18 years old the first and last time he tried marijuana. It didn’t do much for him. Until this year, he saw no reason to try it again, and he dismissed arguments for decriminalizing it as pothead talk.

It took a four-year struggle with myelofibrosis to change his mind. His leukemia-like bone marrow disease gives him constant bone pain. The chemotherapy gives him nausea that makes him vomit daily. The Vicodin, Ativan and other drugs he’s taking to relieve those symptoms are losing their effectiveness, and he’s afraid of getting addicted to them.

So now, at age 44, this Christian family man and lifelong Republican is considering medicating himself with marijuana. And he has become an unlikely advocate for the right to do so legally.

Caruthers has written lawmakers arguing for decriminalizing medical marijuana. He even has signed up with the new Waco chapter of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, which advocates medical marijuana as the first step in a larger decriminalization effort. He acknowledges that his stand puts him in unusual company.

[T]he Waco NORML group is focusing on medical marijuana as its primary issue. The group, which meets monthly at Poppa Rollo’s pizzeria, has signed up 37 members.Cliff Deuvall, the group’s founder, says he uses marijuana for chronic pain stemming from combat injuries in Vietnam. He said he was an Air Force sergeant during the 1975 Saigon airlift and suffered a blast that resulted in injuries to his legs, eye and head. Now a 100-percent disabled veteran, Deuvall said he started using marijuana to fight nausea caused by his injured eye, which eventually was removed. He said he would like to be able to grow marijuana legally for his own use.

“I hope we can get an understanding with local government here that we’re not trying to turn this city into a bunch of potheads,” he said. “We’re just trying to make sure that people who need this medication can get this medication.”

Caruthers said he has been frustrated by the negative responses he has gotten from politicians he has written about the medical marijuana issue, including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

“What would she do if she were in my shoes?” he asked. “What would politicians do if they had to suffer and puke every day? Not that I wish that on them. But if there’s a sin I’ve committed, it’s that I’ve been close-minded. I used to feel that way, too, that there was no reason for medical marijuana — until this happened to me.”