GUEST COLUMN: Can medical marijuana aid the prescription addiction epidemic?
By Drew Milburn For months, media reports have chronicled fiery debates over marijuana’s medicinal utility and its impact on our broader communities. But what about those constituencies who don’t have a lobbyist down at the Capitol or City Hall? What about our veterans? National polls consistently show support for medical marijuana rights at over 60 percent. A May Rasmussen report concluded that one in two Colorado voters support outright marijuana legalization, even for non-medicinal purposes. And while state officials now estimate Colorado’s official registered patient count somewhere about 130,000, skeptics remain firmly rooted to the stereotype that patients are just a bunch of lazy hippies looking to evade marijuana prohibition. As a medical marijuana caregiver, I have the honor of serving a couple hundred of our state’s patients on a regular basis. They are anything but lazy or law-evading. Like me, many of them are vets. They are my motivation for writing today. As a proud Marin
