Reply #53: At the tender age of 5.... [View All]

[NW_BEAST]

My grandfather, at 48 (old school irish family, start the fam young)was diagnosed with cancer.
He had done many things in his life, race car driver (local circut, bay area, when altamont motor speedway was still there), trucker (for a LONG TIME), and finally, rancher. He raised sheep and cows in northern california.
He struggled with the cancer for a long time, multiple surgeries, chemo, eventually, this began to impact his lifestyle in the most negative ways. He could hardly move without pain, and the chemo had reduced a robust man to a jaundiced zombie.
His nurse (GODS BLESS YOU NAN!), recomended Marijuana, one of his associates in the mountains arranged it, however, he really didn't know how to "smoke that hippy weed".
So, at the age of 12, at my fathers knee, I learned to roll a joint, as my father showed my grandfather. Soon after, he was back in action, and on the hill dailey taking care of the cows, clearing brush for controlled burn (eat shit george, you've never cleared brush like this), and runnin barbed wire fence for neighbors.
I didn't see anything wrong with my grandfather smoking pot, it returned him to the life that the chemo had damn near sucked away. It forever changed my perspective, and was the first thing to call my attention to the hypocrisy of the "just say no" campiegn that had filled my childhood.
Years later, I personally experienced the benefits, and draw backs of smoking pot.

Today, I'm now 30. I have hypertension, IBS, and a manic condition. Smoking pot on a daily basis has helped me keep the mail moving without pain, eased the pains and stresses of the day, and kept my mood bouncy, as opposed to one big bounce, and then a flat fall.

If the DEA had its way, it would have deemed my grandfather (and now myself) criminal.
This thing, the "hippy weed" that my grandfather first mocked, then praised, has been nothing but a positive influence on my life ('cept for one HORRIFYING, if funny, experience mixing it with to much MGD, and laying in my own puke while giggling is something I'd prefer to forget.).

The time to end the idiocy of irrisponsible drug policy is now, I am not a criminal, my grandfather was not a criminal, and none of us that use responsibly are criminal.
End this insane drug war NOW.