23+October

SSDP tackled the issue of **medical cannabis in Illinois**, focusing on SB 2865, **the Illinois Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program**.

To learn about the issue, we started the day with a jigsaw activity, in which students divided up a pile of resource materials about medical cannabis, spent a few moments reading and pulling out key facts, and then reporting out on what was of interest to them. We were joined by **Dan Linn of Illinois NORML**, who facilitated the dicussion. We wrote it all on the board, and James took the following notes:

1978: IL law allows for research to be one on marijuana, but Feds prevent it from happening (partially because it is too difficult to get legal marijuana) 1990: survey of oncologists: 54% favor controlled availability, 44% of doctors have broken law and suggested it DEA policy judge says pot __can’t__ kill you. 70s/80s: 26 states allowed for research Med-can laws don’t encourage general use: Drug monitoring programs collected data in CA cities: no increase was found Dan: the “increased general use” argument is a common one against med-can, but studies don’t support it Endorsements for med-can ·  Oncologists  ·   US surgeon general  ·   Nixon’s study MD  ·   Institute on medicine  ·   Nurses’ org. ·  HIV org. Marijuana found to be a positive good, with high benefit for low risk Opponents claim that no one of any standing supports med-can IL Nurses’ Assoc supports it -- 67% of IL voters support med-can in 2002 -- 2006  è 62% in IL support people with serious illness growing and using their own Feb 2008: 68% of voters in IL support decriminalization -- 49% would re-elect a rep who voted for it Teen use in med-can states (75h, 9th, and 11th graders) -- Before / after proposition passage  è  use decreased, but fear of “sending the wrong message to kids” persists Alternative methods to smoking: ·   Cooking in food  ·   Vaporization  ·   “marinol” THC extract pill __ Good for: __ AIDS, Hep C, Glaucoma, Cancer, MS, Epilepsy, Chronic pain, Reducing nausea and loss of appetite Doctors can prescribe cocaine and morphine, but not cannibis 2001 study by US Gov’t: little relationship between severity of punishment and incidence of use Zero tolerance policy in IL: DUI tests can result in false positives, as THC remains in your system for weeks ·  there is a saliva test being developed that actually tests whether or not someone has used recently enough to still be high 100 million Americans have used marijuana, 15 million use it monthly ·  should be regulated, as the black market offers no incentive not to sell to children legalization vs. regulation: vodka and coke are both legal, but regulated very differently.

We followed this exchange of info with a viewing of the film "**Waiting to Inhale"** about the medical cannabis issue nationally -- really interesting. The film was comprehensive, including a lot of interviews with people who do not support legalizing medical cannabis, so we were able to grapple with multiple perspectives on the issue. I would definitely use this film again or recommend it to anyone who wanted to understand the issue better.

Next, we **teleconferenced with Julie Falco**, a woman who uses cannabis to control the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. The technology for this was a nightmare, involving several hours of Pete Evans grappling with software glitches -- he literally had to shut down the bandwidth for the entire school in order to get ample capacity for this conference. I don't understand technology of this nature (major understatement), but I don't get why that is so difficult in a seemingly cutting-edge environment like Parker. He blames it on the Windows Live Messenger software that Julie had on her end, so maybe this would be easier with a different program. The actual conference was okay -- I think the students found it pretty interesting to be able to put questions to a real live person after having watched the profiles in the video. But the glitches and slowdowns in the broadcast made it very difficult to have a sustained conversation. Oh well.

Next, Dan Linn of Illinoi NORML gave us a primer on **how a bill becomes a law in Illinois** -- nice because it's a straight-up civics lesson that applies well beyond the medical cannabis issue. Dan is particularly good at this -- he did it last year with SSDP too -- and he didn't disappoint in terms of explaining a very complicated process and relating anecdotes from his own experience about how power is wielded at the state level.

We closed with a closer look at the provisions of SB 2865 -- the Illinois Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program. In doing this, we also looked at the federal Schedule of Narcotics, notable for its placement of cannabis in the category of drugs that have "no accepted medical use." We agreed that we would spend our next meeting on 10/29 discussing our **NEXT STEPS**. Dan recommended that we consider the following:
 * 1) Contacting our representatives -- writing a letter to John Cullerton thanking him for sponsoring the bill, as well as to other reps, perhaps targetting the ones who voted no on similar legislation last fall.
 * 2) Write letters to the editors of newspapers, or draft a short article on the issue for our local papers.
 * 3) Talking to people about how we feel about the issue.