Medical marijuana push in Kentucky
Eric Crawford is a quadriplegic and suffers from glaucoma – and he says his best medicine is marijuana. “It takes my pain away. It makes me feel normal,” said Crawford, a 41-year-old from Maysville (KY). “And I don’t want to be blind.” In Kentucky, though, taking his medicine means breaking the law. After pot was found in his home last year, he and wife, Michelle Young-Crawford, were charged with possession.
They traveled to Frankfort last week to join those voicing support for legalizing medical marijuana in Kentucky – an idea gaining ground among legislative leaders, residents and some doctors who believe the state should join 20 others that have passed such laws.
“Cannabis is medicine. It just happens to be a prohibited medicine,” said state Sen. Perry Clark, D-Louisville, who last week filed Senate Bill 43, which would legalize medical marijuana. It’s similar to a failed bill he filed last year. “There’s a cannabis tsunami coming. We can stand in the way, or Kentucky can become a leader and catapult ourselves forward.”
Young-Crawford, who says she tried the drug as a young woman but hasn’t used it for years, said it’s frustrating to be treated like criminals.
“We are fine people, and I am going to fight this for my husband,” she said. “We need to get these laws changed.”
With public support of medical marijuana growing, influential legislators are warming to the idea. House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, says he’s open to discussing it, and Rep. Tom Burch, the Louisville Democrat who chairs the House Health and Welfare Committee, said he strongly supports it. Just last week, Burch’s committee held a discussion of the issue that drew an overflow crowd.
Proponents contend medical marijuana relieves cancer-related nausea, pain, glaucoma and a host of other ailments.
A Kentucky Health Issues poll, conducted by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati and released last May, showed 78 percent of adults in 2012 favored legalizing pot for medical use. A Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll last February showed 60 percent of Kentuckians favored legalizing medical marijuana.
