MARIJUANA BILL HEALTHY FOR STATE

HB386, The Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act, would protect
physicians who recommend and patients who use marijuana as medicine
from arrest and prosecution under state law. Sixteen states and the
District of Columbia have already passed similar laws. It's time
Alabama joined them.

In 1979 the Alabama Legislature passed the Controlled Substances
Therapeutic Research Act and established rules for medical marijuana.
The law states that medical marijuana can be used in the treatment of
cancer and glaucoma. Sadly, due to drug war politics, that law was
never implemented.

Patients in Alabama deserve all options when it comes to treating
debilitating and sometimes deadly illnesses. Patients are our family
members, friends, neighbors and veterans. And one day they could be
you.

Basing access to medical marijuana on geographic location makes no
sense. Diseases don't strike based on geographic location and
treatment should not be forbidden based on geographic location.
Government interference in the doctor/patient relationship is nothing
less than socialized medicine. Imprisoning patients for using a plant
that can potentially cure their illness is morally bankrupt and
sadistically cruel.

Please contact the members of the House Health Committee and your own
representative and senator and ask them to support HB386.

Loretta Nall, executive director, Alabamians for Compassionate Care