My post about Americans for Safe Access drew the expected outraged response from its target, but it also drew an unexpected note from someone I hadn’t met before, Muraco Kyashna-tocha, who runs the Green Buddha Patient Co-Op in Seattle. With her permission, I’m posting it here.
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I am the anthropologist who runs the state of Washington’s oldest medical cannabis collective. I loved your wonderful blog post on ASA. Actually, I have really enjoyed all your writings for the last year plus. You hit the nail on the head!
I made sure to pass your recent blog to Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles who I expect to write a bill for submission early next year which will regulate medical cannabis and align the two systems into the I502 system. I have been a strong supporter of this, as well as an open strong supporter of I502.
Odd position, you might think, for a dispensary, but we’ve been trying to hold the line and deal with only authentic patients, the ones the media sees - the ones with cancer, MS etc. They aren’t easy to find among all the riff-raff. Half my clients are cancer patients who have found the “medical marijuana” explosion frightening, and they don’t tend to find themselves nor the products they really need in the current medical cannabis scene.Sincere patients are few and far between.
ASA has been a nightmare for my state. They rally “patients” - collecting their funds from those selling the medicine to those patients. Early this year they worked against all reasonable attempts to get mmj regulated. They spoke constantly to the media about “safe access” which is a euphemism and rallying cry for “Save the dispensaries.”
Dispensaries do not need saving in Washington State (as I have said frequently at hearings in Olympia) - even as patients’ rights do need securing - affirmative defense, arrest protection, small home grow allowance, etc.
I see ASA willing to throw out patients’ rights in order to secure legal dispensaries for the real folks they speak for. I feel like I bang my head against the wall all the time, so I loved this line:
accuses ASA of “relentlessly talk(ing) about the interests of patients while single-mindedly serving the interests of the sellers.
You are correct - this is what ASA does. Green Buddha looks forward to closing very shortly. (Gawd, please will the stores open and can we get serious about licensing producers? We’re at 50 as of last Tuesday)
Green Buddha is the last of the original collectives. We have no paid employees. We’re all volunteer. Average age of our patients is my age, 56.
I view ASA as one of the major impediments to my state rewriting its mmj laws and regulating the system - align it with I502. Stay the course and keep pounding on them.
Average age of 56 is interesting; in Colorado the average age is 42. In Colorado, cancer is the indication for 1% of medical cannabis sales. Compare and contrast Green Buddha of 50%.
Here is an op article on marijuana reform policy from Seattle's City Attorney Pete Holmes:
4 keys to moving forward with marijuana reform
http://crosscut.com/2014/05/08/health-medicine/11…
What would Green Buddha like to see ASA focus on? And you, Mark?
The problem with aligning medical marijuana with legalized recreational marijuana is the fact that there are limitations within the I502 law thanks to regulations which would affect medical marijuana. Also, the recent attempt to regulate medical marijuana was flawed in that there were some regulations that sought to control how much a patient could get or grow for themselves when that is only up to the doctor and the patient, not lawmakers.
And ASA isn't completely out of line…most growers are patients too. Therefore patients and were at risk as well