If coffee didn’t exist I’d have to invent it. Turkey once made drinking coffee an offense punishable by death. Without coffee, I’d have no morning at all. I’d just have to stay flat on my back in bed, rickets of anxiety writhing in my guts. But I get up, shower, dry my hair, and drink gallons of coffee.

The State of Rhode Island has licensed three privately operated marijuana dispensaries. The use of medical marijuana in the state is legal as long as you are a registered patient. You may also grow plants as a caregiver for patients. With the proposed opening of the dispensaries, those operators are looking to a law that would eliminate patients rights and caregiver rights to grow. The reason is obvious. The dispensaries are businesses looking to maximize profit. Why deal with competition from independent growers?

I wish it were more an act of sanity than inanity. Most patients are not able to leave their homes much less drive a car. Most don’t have access to transportation or the funds to purchase medical marijuana. Thats why Thomas Slater set the law in place that would allow caregivers to grow for patients unable to grow for themselves. Most caregivers I know gift their patients with the marijuana they need. That is, they don’t charge the patient for the time and effort and cost to grow the product. The dispensaries will charge money for their product. How much is anyones guess? $100 bucks a quarter ounce maybe? Patients I know could go through that in two days.

Coffee works well with my brain in the morning. So does wake and bake. Both are low level soft drugs. If coffee eases the pain of waking up then who is anyone to say that marijuana doesn’t have the same effect on those with chronic pain and other medical disabilities? The chasm must be closed. Rhode Island is taking the round about way to decriminalization by using medicinal marijuana madness to get to the court house.

The dispensaries will make millions for those connected enough to have been granted permission to dispense the product. How deep that connection is will unmask itself if these places attempt to overturn the caregiver/patients rights to grow law. If Rhode Island allows that to happen it will be change over choice. Without choice, there is no freedom to chose. And without that, many will suffer needlessly from enforced corruption and bare naked greed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 8:17 am and is filed under Stuff I know. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.