Since the City of Owensboro is considering its overall and specific stance on dispensaries I wanted to offer my perspective as someone with a disease that is treatable with this and as someone who has a license in other legal states.
I am writing this as someone who suffers from a potentially fatal form of epilepsy. However, I am also writing it from the perspective of someone who has seen kids in the neurology office who have 700 seizures a day, numerous friends and family who got hooked on Benzos and opioids (many of which passed away, RIP Keaton), and the suffering of so many, that medical marijuana is going to help.
My epilepsy is what’s called “intractable refractory epilepsy,” which basically just means that the seizures won’t stop and Western medicine isn’t going to stop them. After about a year of suffering through side effects and the seizures not being controlled, a friend recommended that I get a marijuana prescription since it was now legal to have it in Kentucky from a legal state, with one. So, I gave it a shot. Especially considering one side effect of one medicine they had me on caused one girl’s entire body to shed its skin and she died over two weeks wrapped in bandages (lamotrigine).
I use what’s called a “tincture,” a concentrated oil. Mine is half THC and half CBD. I put four drops under my tongue, wait 30 seconds, and swallow it. This has reduced the amount of seizures I’m having in HALF. This has not allowed me to begin driving again or get all of my life back, but it’s taken a lot of the fear out of my daily life and I’m less afraid to go to sleep and wake up in the night covered in blood, as I did from one seizure.
As a Christian, I cannot ignore how much suffering medical marijuana alleviates. I have seen people with Parkinson’s disease be able to return to a somewhat normal lifestyle using this. To me, there is nothing less Christian than abandoning these people and leaving them to suffer without something that is proven scientifically to help.
Now, aside from the medical component, there is also an economic component. Harrisburg, Illinois, expanded tremendously with new fast food, building sites, and new businesses planning to go there. Not only from the amount of people coming and going from the city to visit the dispensary, but they put a local tax on the dispensary so everyone from tourists to locals are helping build the local economy.
Although not a proponent of taxation, if that’s what we need to do in order to come to an agreement, I’m all for it. The local tax in Illinois has allowed them to fix their budget, a backlog of city maintenance needs, and begin to offer subsidies for new businesses.
On top of all this, Bowling Green’s gonna have a dispensary and it looks like Henderson will as well. So, we will just be losing out on money as people will gladly drive that far to get their medication.
Written byGrant Short