• WILL REAL PEOPLE MATTER? Medical marijuana campaign relies on personal stories. But it trails in poll.

A new Talk Business/Hendrix College poll shows support dropping for the initiative to legalize medical use of marijuana with a doctor's approval from a state-regulated dispensary.

The Oct. 18 sounding showed respondents opposed to the measure 54-38, a marked change from 47-46 support in late July.

Official Arkansas, led by law enforcement, has been steadily beating the drum against pain relief for sick people. I did see some new advertising from Arkansans for Compassionate Care last night that effectively made the point for the need for access to marijuana, using a real person (non-threatening, older). Whether such a campaign can turn around a gap as wide as this poll indicates is a good question.

Interesting demographic: People identified as Democrats favored the measure 51-39. Independents likewise favored it 53-37. Republicans opposed it 71-23.

Dee Blakley at the Disability Rights Center sends a link to their blog post on the intervention of the state's chief of the Behavorial Health Services Division against the ballot initiative on medical marijuana.

They were "gob-smacked," Blakley tells me. The post criticizes Gallaher, as others have, for providing no backing for assertions she makes about the dangers of marijuana.

UPDATE: Kate Luck, a communications specialist with the Department of Human Services, writes asking that we link to the full document Jennifer Gallaher, chief of the Arkansas Behavorial Health Services Division, put out. It's criticized below for not including footnotes. The full document, which we excerpted last week, does include footnotes.

UPDATE II: Chris Kell, who's working for the marijuana initiative, thinks the state law doesn't allow state employee politicking. This isn't a partisan election, so his citation of that prohibition wouldn't seem to apply. Does it apply to any election, however, as he suggests? I'm not at a place I can check but I'll share his letter.

We are disappointed that Flan Flener and Jennifer Gallaher are using their time as state employees to continue the spread of Jerry Cox’s propaganda. But aside from our disappointment they are in clear violation of Arkansas code. Arkansas Code Annotated 20-76-207 clearly states that in subchapter (a)(1):

“No officer or employee of the appropriate division of the Department of Human Service or of a county office shall use his or her official authority to influence op permit the use of the program administered by the division or the county offices for the purpose of interfering with an election affecting the results thereof or for any political purpose.”

Subchapter (a)(2) states:

“No officer or employee shall devote his or her office hours, or efforts during office hours, towards any partisan political activity, no shall any activity be conducted upon the premises of the employee or officer’s agency, commission or board.”

It is one thing for them to take part in the political process on their own terms, but to use their office resources and time to coerce other employees to vote in their own misguided ways illegal.
Best regards,
Chris Kell

Jennifer Gallaher, director of the Arkansas Division of Behavioral Health Services, has distributed a memo to employees with talking points against the medical marijuana initiative. (CORRECTION: A glitch here on the agency's name originally)

The Negative Impact of Legalizing Medical Marijuana

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act would allow the use of “medical” marijuana. The Arkansas Department of Health would sell “medical” marijuana cards. Marijuana would be purchased from dispensaries or patients could grow a maximum of six plants for themselves.

In State Fiscal Year 2012, 2,112 individuals treated by substance abuse providers in Arkansas funded by the Division of Behavioral Health Services cited Marijuana as their primary drug of choice. Of the 2,112 individuals, 419 were under the age of 17, 620 were between the ages of 18 and 24, and 690 were between the ages of 25 and 34.

Among youths age 12 to 17, marijuana usage rates are higher in states with “medical” marijuana laws (8.6 percent) compared with those without such laws (6.9 percent). Additionally, “medical” marijuana states are at the top of the list in terms of drug addiction and abuse among 12-17 year olds.

Residents of states with “medical” marijuana have marijuana abuse/dependence rates almost twice as high than states without such laws.

More than two-thirds of treatment admissions involving those under the age of 18 cite marijuana as their primary substance of abuse, more than three times the rate for alcohol and more than twice for all other drugs combined.

Marijuana is addictive in nature and states with “medical” marijuana have an increased level of marijuana abuse. Drug abuse and addiction are positively related to increased criminal justice system involvement. Therefore, “medical” marijuana would lead to a flux in the criminal justice system.

Studies have consistently shown a very strong association between chronic marijuana use and mental illness -especially schizophrenia and psychosis, but also including increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Marijuana is not approved by the FDA for medicinal purposes and no major medical association has come out in favor of smoked marijuana for widespread medical use.

For more information on the negative impacts of legalizing “medical marijuana”, call the Division of Behavioral Health Services at 501-686-9164.

I got a tip about the memo from a correspondent who questioned the propriety of a state agency head lobbying on a ballot isssue. Amy Webb of the Department of Human Services, responded:

Jennifer Gallaher is the director of the division of behavioral health service, which includes substance abuse prevention and treatment. Both she and her employees have been asked by providers and others about their stance on medical marijuana. Mrs. Gallaher's office gathered factual information on the issue and shared it with her staff, which is absolutely appropriate given what that division does.

A recipient of the email objected further that a cover letter with the memo urged that it be shared with friends.

• FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA: Group backing the act produced this image.

The Family Council is going to take time off from beating up on gay people and restricting women's medical services to work at keeping medical marijuana out of the hands of suffering people in Arkansas.

News release here on the Religious Right political group's opposition to an initiated act to legalize use of marijuana as a medicine.

Lead crusader Jerry Cox's timeless remarks here.

Before long I will have an easy link to their first TV commercial. They'll also be pounding social media and their network of right-wing churches in the fight against pain relief.

Better information here from Arkansans for Compassionate Care, which will be waging the campaign for medical marijuana. The initiated act would allow sale of small amounts of marijuana at up to 30 dispensaries (sale must be approved by local option) for people with specific diagnosed conditions. People living more than 5 miles from a dispensary will be able to grow up to six plants.

Cox condescendingly refers to many "well intended" marijuana backers. He can't do his usual full-throated Army of the Lord fire-and-brimstone act against sinners — as he does when attacking gays' and women's rights — because the benefciary is sick people, many elderly, not bullied gay children or pushy women intent on wresting control of their bodies from people like Cox. It's also an issue on which Arkansans have repeatedly demonstrated warmth in polling. So things could get interesting.

I confess ambivalence. I lean more toward full decriminalization and have some questions about the twilight zone of legalizing trade in a substance the feds deem illegal. But there's nothing like a Family Council pronouncement to firm up my thinking.

UPDATE: Arkansans for Compassionate Care will have Montel Williams at a news conference next week endorsing the measure.

• FAMILY COUNCIL AD: Gee, think they might be playing the race card?

UPDATE II: Plenty of drama in the Family Council's film noir ad, full of guns, menacing black people (a favorite prop in Republican advertising) and a reference to "stoned-out zombies." It's blatantly dishonest. It says no prescriptions will be required, when a written order from a physician is required, a license from the state and a purchase from a legal dispensary. (When are they going after Rush's drug of choice, Oxycontin, I wonder?) Slimy stuff, even by the Family Council's bottom-of-the-barrel standards.

Medical marijuana?

40/29 reports that Dr. Jimmy Acklin, residency director for the Arkansas Health Education Center in Fort Smith and a resident of Crawford County, has been arrested for growing marijuana.

• 'UP TO COLORADO TO DECIDE': Paul Ryan on Rx pot.

A reader mentioned this last night, but I think Paul "Marathon Man" Ryan's endorsement of state autonomy on medical marijuana laws is worth a bigger mention.

Ryan says he opposes such laws personally. If you choose to believe him. But he said in Colorado, where marijuana is currently sold for medicinal purposes, that states should have the right to decide for themselves whether to legalize pot for medical purposes.

What do you think the Family Council, the religionist lobby for extreme right-wing Republicans (but I repeat myself), would say about that? Or Secretary of State Mark Martin, who has hinted at philosophical support with the Family Council's lawsuit objecting to his certification of a medical marijuana amendment for Arkansas's November election ballot. The Council has said, among others, that voters aren't fully informed in the proposal about its impact. To all its challenges, Martin has raised no objections, calling them "legal conclusions."

Timely post this weekend on the drive to gather signatures to qualify a medical marijuana initiative for the November ballot.

A spokesman for the campaign says Arkansans for Compassionate Care has obtained the 62,000-plus signatures necessary to make the ballot. The process continues through the July 6 deadline and after because some signatures will undoubtedly be ruled invalid.

The group hopes to hit double the necessary count in the extended period that is granted petition campaign that meet the signature minimum by the deadline.

A coalition of Arkansas church groups came out against casino proposals the other day and threw in, for good measure, a blast against the effort to legalize medical marijuana. The churchmen were sure legal pot wasn't necessary because of synthetic drug substitutes for this "gateway" drug.

Perhaps Jerry Cox and the self-assured repressors waving Bibles around ought to read this compelling op-ed from a sitting New York judge battling end-stage pancreatic cancer. Marijuana has been the only thing — the only thing — that has given him an appetite or relief during his long struggle. He comes out as a lawbreaker to help others.

Given my position as a sitting judge still hearing cases, well-meaning friends question the wisdom of my coming out on this issue. But I recognize that fellow cancer sufferers may be unable, for a host of reasons, to give voice to our plight. It is another heartbreaking aporia in the world of cancer that the one drug that gives relief without deleterious side effects remains classified as a narcotic with no medicinal value.

Because criminalizing an effective medical technique affects the fair administration of justice, I feel obliged to speak out as both a judge and a cancer patient suffering with a fatal disease. I implore the governor and the Legislature of New York, always considered a leader among states, to join the forward and humane thinking of 16 other states and pass the medical marijuana bill this year. Medical science has not yet found a cure, but it is barbaric to deny us access to one substance that has proved to ameliorate our suffering