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Friday, 16 July 2010 09:05 |
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Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access
www.veteransformedicalmarijuana.org
Veterans Health Administration Tolerates Veterans Use of Medicinal Cannabis as Adjunct Therapy to VA Hospital Supplied Opioids.
In a July 6, 2010 letter addressed to the Executive Director of Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access (VMMA), Robert A. Petzel, MD, Under Secretary for Health of the Department of Veterans Affairs wrote, “If a Veteran obtains and uses medical marijuana in a manner consistent with state law, testing positive for marijuana would not preclude the Veteran from receiving opioids for pain management in a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facility.”
According to Michael Krawitz, recipient of the letter and himself a disabled US Air Force Veteran, “The work we did on this issue was for all Vets of all time periods. My personal injuries led me to find medical cannabis to help control my chronic pain. My fellow Vets, thousands of them have found the same medicine to relieve their suffering and will appreciate this strong support and Dr. Petzel's attention.”
The VHA letter went on to clarify that, ”The provider will take the use of medical marijuana into account in all prescribing decisions, just as the provider would for any other medication.”
Pain contracts now in place in the VHA will need to be rewritten. “Standard pain management agreements should draw a clear distinction between the use of illegal drugs, and legal medical marijuana.”
Modern research shows Cannabis to be an important adjunct medicine that both compliments and reduces opioid therapy and is discussed in video lectures at www.medicalcannabis.com, the web site of Patients Out of Time.
Veteran Organizations and Media Contact: Michael “Mike” Krawitz
(540) 365-2141 -
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Sunday, 04 July 2010 08:08 |
Open Letter to the Military Veterans of the United States
“You and I are responsible for our brothers' care.”
 That's what I said to the disabled vet who asked me why he should help get cannabis approved by our government for the treatment of PTSd.
And that means you as well.
As you sit and read this essay active duty members of our armed forces are being denied treatment that would likely help them survive the unrelenting horrors that post traumatic stress bestows daily on those who we as a nation should revere.
I hear it everywhere, “support the troops.” Ribbons, yellow, some faded, circle trees in Bode, Iowa. In Keene, Virginia a pick-up sits covered, for the third time, with a tarp and a yellow ribbon. On I-40 as I pass by Tucumcari, NM a Southern Pacific truck turns off the interstate, four ribbons pasted on the rear door.
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Read more... [Letter to Vets - July 4th]
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Friday, 14 May 2010 07:58 |
When Issues Converge - The POT Conference
Originally published in Counterpunch, April 23, 2010
By Fred Gardner
Patients Out of Time is a pro-cannabis reform group led by Al Byrne, a retired Naval officer, and MaryLynn Mathre, a Vietnam era nurse. Al survived two catastrophic events in which others died and over the years he's had to deal with post-traumatic stress. He calls it PTS not PTSD. He says, "It's not a disorder, it's a rational response to what you've seen."
Al's a big tall man who played outfield for Notre Dame before he went off to war. He has spent years counseling vets in Appalachia for the Department of Veterans' Affairs Agent Orange Class Assistance Program. MaryLynn, who goes by ML, is an addictions consultant. Her publications include "Cannabis and Harm Reduction: A Nursing Perspective," in the Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics. They are married and based in Virginia.
Al and ML had been active in NORML but split off in 1994.(Everyone's faction fights seem oh so avoidable but one's own.) In 1995 they formed their own group, with participation from Irvin Rosenfeld, Elvy Musikka, George McMahon, and several other surviving patients from the federal Investigation New Drug program. They could have called it Patients Out of Patience but the abbreviation wouldn't have worked.
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Read more... [When Issues Converge by Fred Gardner]
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Saturday, 27 March 2010 07:57 |
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Dr. Andrew Weil and the Folks Who Do Not Exist
 Dr.Weil is the leading integrative medicine physician in the US. In that role he has used his experience and study to create, for physicians, a course of instruction at the University of Arizona.
One of the herbal medicines studied is cannabis. Cannabis is the plant that representatives of the US government (drug czar, DEA, FDA and others charged with knowing such stuff), say has too little research to be used safely by humans.
If anyone wants to study cannabis one of the major sources of cannabis research and clinical use on humans is the extensive library created by Patients Out of Time and publically displayed at www.MedicalCannabis.com
The researchers and health care professionals who have produced and published this world wide science, including the science itself, do not exist. The federal government repeats that continually and the media apes their propaganda. The DEA and HHS have been studying 50,000 pages of research since October 2002. What they study is at www.drugscience.org.
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Read more... [Press Release 3.22.10]
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Monday, 15 March 2010 03:59 |
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"The drug czar couldn’t have been more plain. On medical marijuana, which has strong public backing in opinion polls, the former Seattle police chief said that “science should determine what a medicine is, not popular vote.” As Kerlikowske pointed out, marijuana is harmful – and he has the studies to back it up." - Christian Science Monitor editorial, March 12, 2010
The Christian Science Monitor is:
None of the Above
by Al Byrne, co-founder, Patients Out of Time
In the past I have written the editors of this "paper" to protest their inappropriate to duplicious journalism concerning medical cannabis. That was and will be useless, I have come to understand. Ideologues and the ignorant contain too much hubris to entertain any other truth. I can tell you why they are not Christian in their behavior, why their plea to science is rubbish and that their desire to "monitor" cannabis use as a medicine is a ruse.
I do know about Christians and what it means to be one. Six years of nuns at Walnut Park School, six years of priests at St. Sebastian's School in Massachusetts and I graduated from the University of Notre Dame. Christians are about compassion, forgiveness and redemption. Jesus cured the lepers and he just may have used a cannabis balm to do so.
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Read more... [Rebuttal to CSM]
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