As the fight for an end to the ridiculous drug war continues, legislation has been advanced by a New Jersey assembly committee that would allow those suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to participate in the state’s medical marijuana program.
Essentially, the bill would add PTSD to the list of illnesses that can be legally treated in New Jersey using medical marijuana. The Oversight Committee voted 3-0 to forward the bill to the full assembly.
Assemblyman Ronald Dancer abstained from the vote. In March 2015, the assembly actually approved a similar bill but it died in the Senate Committee. Chairman of the Oversight Committee and co-sponsor of the bill, assemblyman Gusciora, is more optimistic about the bill’s chances of passing in both houses in 2016, however.
One major turning point was the testimony of a U.S. Army soldier returning from three tours of duty from Iraq and Afghanistan. Phillip Dume who pointed out the extraordinary high rates of suicide with people suffering from PTSD. Dume said “It helps me out. It’s one reason I’m able to speak to you guys. It helps me focus. It helps me calm down. It helps me sleep.”
Dr. Alexander Neumeister, a Brooklyn psychologist who has conducted research into PTSD and the brain also testified before the committee and stated that, “People who use it report it as safe and highly effective.”
Not surprisingly, the Garden State Goering, Governor Chris Christie, is resisting the expansion of the medical marijuana program labeling it, “A front for legalization,” in 2014. Christie’s statement on the matter while not at all unexpected, simply reiterates the vast disconnect between the positions of the American people and those who hold elected office.
Despite Christie’s constant harping about his love for the U.S. military, it appears his loyalty ends when the troops come home. If there’s a war to be fought, Christie is always the most patriotic man in the room. Once those soldiers return and need assistance, however, Christie takes a different attitude. It’s either “shape up or shut up,” a motto that has served Christie and other thuggish officials well in the past.
But there are many more people in the state of New Jersey that suffer from PTSD and this leaves them out in the cold as well. While Christie worries that the expansion of the medical marijuana program is a front for legalization (it’s not), New Jersey residents should all ask the question, exactly what would be the problem in that? Would New Jersey’s jails suddenly have more space? Would New Jersey police be able to focus on violent crime? Would we be taking a step toward a world where we did not throw peaceful people into cages for possessing a plant?
After all, despite the constant propaganda coming from law enforcement, government, and corporations, the plant has yet to cripple the New Jersey subway system, intentionally create traffic jams for reasons of spite and extortion or privatized the state’s public pension system. Indeed, there are many problems facing the state of New Jersey, but marijuana clearly isn’t one.
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Photo by Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
This article (NJ Bill Would Add PTSD to Med Marijuana Program, Christie Fears Legalization) can be republished under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Brandon Turbeville and Natural Blaze.com.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense Solutions andDispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 600 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.
more of the same – stall, deny tactics. For some reason it pains the elite to treat vets as human, even though they treat them as their own mercenary force.
END the pointless WAR on DRUGS.