On April 27, state Rep Ed Gainey and Pittsburgh NORML hosted a town hall on the importance of getting a vote for Senate Bill 3 passed in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Senate Bill 3 is the medicinal marijuana bill that would open up the option to doctors to prescribe medicinal marijuana in pill form for people who show little progress using more common drugs.
The overarching theme of the event was that while there are drugs available for people with epilepsy, cancer, multiple sclerosis and PTSD, many people have dramatic side effects from those drugs and are requesting a more holistic approach to treatment.
The event broke down into all three of Aristotle’s means of persuasion— logos, pathos and ethos. Gainey opened by giving the logos or logic in an impassioned speech describing ways in which marijuana therapy is superior to conventional methods; he cited statistics and gave personal accounts of people who were treated far more successfully with marijuana than psychoactive prescription medication.
“How can someone feel like a criminal for saving their life?” he asked. “A girl went from having 300 seizures a day to none in a few days just by being treated with marijuana.”
To back up Gainey’s claims, the pathos or emotional portion of the night began as child after child stricken with different debilitating forms of epilepsy, most prominently dravet syndrome, came to the front of the room in wheel chairs with their mothers to tell their stories. Mother after mother described what their life was like having to take care of a child that seizes up to 1,000 times a day.
Jessica Hawkins, mother of Antoniya Hawkins, 10, professed how her daughter is allergic to all medications. She welled up as she described how detectives were sending her harassing phone calls telling her they are going to take her child away and put her in jail.
“You get to meet your child for the first time in 10 years, I don’t think any parent would pass on that,” she said in a breaking voice while wiping away tears. “She doesn’t feel like a criminal, she doesn’t feel like she is doing anything illegal, she just knows she feels better.”
When Antoniya proceeded to get out of her wheel chair and walk, the audience, many wiping their own tears away, applauded uproariously.
People who can’t legally treat themselves with a drug that grows naturally from the ground and who are are forced to leave their state to seek the life saving medication somewhere else are called medical refugees.
Heather Shuker, said her daughter Hanna, 12, suffers from 250 seizures a month and refuses to move her child to make her a medical refugee. “The only thing Hanna enjoys in this world is her friends and family and I am not going to deprive her of that,” she said. “I am not sure if they are not compassionate or choose not to educate themselves on this life saving plant.”
Former members of the military joined the discussion, adding that the Paxil, Seraquil and Zoloft they were prescribed led to seizures and suicidal thoughts. “We are losing 22 vets a day to suicide. I recently got a letter from the government saying they were starting trials on medical marijuana for vets. If these vets deaths are forcing this study than their deaths were not in vain,” said one veteran who didn’t want his name used.
Finally, the audience was given the ethos, or credibility form of the argument. Dr. Thomas Wooden, an advocate for medicinal marijuana, came forward and said he first advocated for marijuana decriminalization in the ’60s when “I wrote an angry letter to Lyndon Johnson when I heard a man was given life in prison for being caught with two joints.”
Wooden said that there is a fundamental flaw in how doctors are taught in medical school.
“In the United States in 2010, a study was done and discovered only five medical schools teach a class on pain management. When I was in school my professor only gave it one day and told us we didn’t even have to come to that class.” Wooden went on. “Most of our drugs come from the garden, antibiotics were found to cure diseases and they turned it into medicine. Marijuana does the same but they label it a class one drug. Class one drugs have no medicinal use; marijuana does and should be viewed the same.”
Wooden stressed that “no one has ever overdosed on weed! It’s a gateway drug…a gateway to the refrigerator.”
Towards the end of Wooden’s speech one attendee blurted out that state representative Mike Turzai, the current speaker of the house in Harrisburg, implicated he was the reason why the bill wasn’t already passed due to him failing to bring it up for a vote.
While advocates are happy to pass any bill that allows doctors to prescribe marijuana, Senate Bill 3 is still thought by Gainey and other advocates as not going far enough. The bill would not allow edibles, smoking or vaporization. “Vaporization is the best form of delivery because it is easily measurable, can be administered when the patient is seizing through a mask and gives no toxic byproduct,” said Wooden.
In his closing argument Gainey advocated that the only way to get the change that they desired was to force the politicians who are against it to vote for it, to do that, new measures would have to be taken.
“Go protest at their door! Bring your families and put a human face on this,” he said. Gainey insinuated that it was possible that some politicians weren’t moving to bring the bill to the house for a vote because of big businesses that fund them not wanting it to pass.
“Find out who funds these politicians and protest those companies until they change their minds. The only thing that moves big business is the power of the people and voting. Their politicians, if they can’t do anything else, they can count votes,” Gainey concluded.
Follow @NewPghCourier on Twitter https://twitter.com/NewPghCourier
Like us at https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Pittsburgh-Courier/143866755628836?ref=hl
Download our mobile app at https://www.appshopper.com/news/new-pittsburgh-courier
About Post Author
