At the 2002 NORMAL conference in San Francisco I met a "Harm Reduction Specialist" who changed my life. He worked at a medical cannabis club called CHAMP - Californians Helping Alleviate Medical Problems. The guy I met was Mike Barbitta, a walking-talking encyclopedia of information about cannabis. When he asked me if I would be interested in a tour of CHAMP, I knew this would be a once in a lifetime chance - and I quickly took him up on it.
After a short trip on BART, we suddenly emerged in front of a building with - CHAMP, Service, Hope and Compassion - spray painted on the wall.
As we walked through the wrought iron front door, Mike is into an amazing nonstop discourse about the requirements of membership to CHAMP: valid CA State /ID Card or CA Driver's license, plus a valid Medical Cannabis User ID Card with the physician's statement presented to receive the cannabis card.
Mike's on a roll as we climb the stairs - CHAMP is a member funded, member run, not for profit community wellness center - It is dedicated to the physical and mental health of the medical cannabis user - CHAMP believes medical necessity dictates that patients have safe access to cannabis - And that their cannabis be free of mold, mildew, and pesticides -
We reach the top landing, and like he's recited to a lot of visitors before, Mike points out the bulletin board and starts to answer a common question before you have to ask: "The medicine provided by CHAMP is for medical use only and NOT for re-sale."
A few introductions to the staff and we walk to the end of the counter. I try not to stare and be too obvious, or maybe it was just me, but I felt the most peaceful feelings I've ever experienced. There were comfortable and couches, coffee tables with bowls filled with pretzels and popcorn and fresh fruit. There was a dozen or so people of various colors, ages and backgrounds sitting around enjoying one and another's company. A woman nearby was preparing her meds to use a vaporize - it looks like one of those Jiffy Pop bags - only filled with cannabinoids.
Then I remember that this was a medical club. It made me wonder what they were talking about? Chemotherapy? The death or well being of a friend? Who knows? A moment of sadness sets in and up pops Mike again: "Want a drink?"he asks. I looked at the can of Ensure in his hand and politely turn it down. Mike tosses the can to a guy sitting on a couch and he begins teaching me again. He describes the different types of medicine offered and explains that some people have never used cannabis before, so explaining to them all their options is part of what CHAMP does. It's vital that someone teach people about cannbinoids and their power to heal.
I ask about the rules for purchase?
"One ounce per person per day. Some come and make their purchase and leave, some stay because of the safe surroundings."
How long can they hang out?
"About an hour per day."
I ask Mike - "What if someone is all alone, broke and bedridden with no one to help them."
Mike raises his eyes and looks straight into mine - "Yeah, we help them. I'll get on my bike and deliver it to them if I have to - free of charge." As he was talking I recalled the words spray-painted out front. - Service, Hope and Compassion.
This is a different and appealing kind of healthcare - one that develops our ability as humans to offer comfort, care, connection and compassion. Instead of insurance forms, sterile rooms with staff going through the motions and making you feel less than human, here at CHAMP one can be and connect with other patients - with others who are working on healing. It is not the specialized offices of a cardiologist, neurologist, urologist, psychologist, ophthalmologist or any other kind of doctoring goes on. At those types of places you feel separated from others. But here, at a place like CHAMP, it is individuals coming together to heal together. No matter what the issue is, life or death, the atmosphere addresses our whole body of health.
I take one last look around, thank the staff for their hospitality and down the stairs we go. In moments we are back out on the street and the spell broken - reality - damn, all the questions I wanted to make sure to ask started coming back to me. How long was I there? I look at my watch and figure right about an hour (rules are rules).
I fly home and have a hard time describing my CHAMP visit to myself - let alone my friends. I cannot find enough words to describe the care and compassion. Yeah, people were sitting around smoking cannabis, but that is not what it was really all about.
I guess it doesn't really matter what I felt at the time - as CHAMP was forced to close it's doors by our federal government only a month after I visited. Now, more than five years later perhaps what mattered was I felt it - and it changed my thinking.
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This was taken from a 2008; book publication by, author: Publius - in the book entitled: "The Cannabis Papers"
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEATTLE -- A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.
Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.
The case has highlighted a new ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant, especially in the dozen states that have medical marijuana laws: When dying patients need a transplant, should it be held against them if they've used pot with a doctor's blessing?
Garon died a week after his doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list because of his use of marijuana, although it was authorized under Washington state law.
"He said I'm going to die with such conviction," Garon told an AP reporter at the time. "I'm not angry, I'm not mad, I'm just confused."
Garon believes he contracted hepatitis C by sharing needles with "speed freaks" as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot has been the only drug he's used. In December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.
He had been in the hospice for two months and previously was rejected for a transplant at Swedish Medical Center for the same reason he later got from the university hospital.
Swedish said he would be considered if he avoided pot for six months and the university hospital offered to reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug treatment program, but doctors said his liver disease was too advanced for him to last that long. The university hospital committee agreed to reconsider anyway, then denied him again.
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Last month, after reading about the topic of decimated bee populations over at my brother's blog , and then following it up with my own post, Somegirl over at All Spin Zone put up this post, Life Without Bees??? offering her take on the situation.
Quite interestingly was her comment she made after citing this excerpt :
With little or no regulatory restraints, labeling requirements, or scientific protocol, bio-engineers have begun creating hundreds of new GE “Frankenfoods” and crops. The research is done with little concern for the human and environmental hazards and the negative socioeconomic impacts on the world's several billion farmers and rural villagers.
An increasing number of scientists are warning that current gene-splicing techniques are crude, inexact, and unpredictable-and therefore inherently dangerous. Yet, pro-biotech governments and regulatory agencies, led by the US, maintain that GE foods and crops are “substantially equivalent” to conventional foods, and therefore require neither mandatory labeling nor pre-market safety-testing.
This Brave New World of Frankenfoods is frightening. There are currently more than four dozen GE foods and crops being grown or sold in the US. These foods and crops are widely dispersed into the food chain and the environment. Over 80 million acres of GE crops are presently under cultivation in the US, while up to 750,000 dairy cows are being injected regularly with Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). Most supermarket processed food items now “test positive” for the presence of GE ingredients. In addition, several dozen more GE crops are in the final stages of development and will soon be released into the environment and sold in the marketplace. The “hidden menu” of these unlabeled GE foods and food ingredients in the US now includes soybeans, soy oil, corn, potatoes, squash, canola oil, cottonseed oil, papaya, tomatoes, and dairy products.
GE food and fiber products are inherently unpredictable and dangerous-for humans, for animals, the environment, and for the future of sustainable and organic agriculture. As Dr. Michael Antoniou, a British molecular scientist points out, gene-splicing has already resulted in the “unexpected production of toxic substances… in genetically engineered bacteria, yeast, plants, and animals with the problem remaining undetected until a major health hazard has arisen”. The hazards of GE foods and crops fall into three categories: human health hazards, environmental hazards, and socio-economic hazards. A brief look at the already-proven and likely hazards of GE products provides a convincing argument for why we need a global moratorium on all GE foods and crops.
It's really not that hard to put 2+2 together here. The bees' immune systems are impacted by GE foods, loss of native plants, and pesticides. We continue to destroy our environment in hundreds of ways, and it is rapidly catching up to us. What will happen when our ability to grow food is greatly weakened by a few powerful corporations? I don't want to find out.
Given her comment right there, it's not hard to put 2+2 together. Perhaps after reading this , however, we knock it down a little bit from 2+2 to 1+1.
A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.
Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."
Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein's apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical. For unknown reasons, bee populations throughout Germany are disappearing -- something that is so far only harming beekeepers. But the situation is different in the United States, where bees are dying in such dramatic numbers that the economic consequences could soon be dire. No one knows what is causing the bees to perish, but some experts believe that the large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.
Manfred Hederer, the president of the German Beekeepers Association, almost simultaneously reported a 25 percent drop in bee populations throughout Germany. In isolated cases, says Hederer, declines of up to 80 percent have been reported. He speculates that "a particular toxin, some agent with which we are not familiar," is killing the bees.
Since last November, the US has seen a decline in bee populations so dramatic that it eclipses all previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.
Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed. But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."
I've cited what I feel to be the more major paragraphs from the article that are laying the case that a truly significant event is occurring to bees and that the problem is not isolated to the US. It's certainly worth it to take a minute and read the entire article if you haven't heard about the bee problem that has been seeing scattered news reports covering this very important issue.
I guess the question now is whether enough discussion of this topic will get to the surface and not face too much opposition from supporters of GE foods. Maybe with some experimentation involving controlled bee colonies pollinating GE and non-GE modified foods, we can determine if the GE foods are ultimately responsible for the decline of bee populations.
However, as we've seen with global warming, most likely it will follow a similar path, only this time with Republican-planted FDA officials and their like "disproving" the methodology behind possible testing methods, "questioning" the science, and second guessing the motives behind the bee-apologists and bringing into question whether or not this is all a big conspiracy to bring down huge GE food companies.
Will we soon be fending off questions like "why do bee-keepers hate America and Germany?" addthis_url='http://phillybits.blogspot.com/2007/03/ aids-for-bee-industry.html'; addthis_title='"AIDS
For The Bee Industry"'; addthis_pub='phi
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