I am not a patient.
Anymore.
And that’s okay.
I didn’t consciously let State of Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry license #MMRB00244 lapse.
But it did. A family emergency took me away from Colorado for a month — the time it takes between a physician certifying that you’re ill enough to rate a red card and the Registry rubberstamping your transmutation from person to patient complete.
Strangely enough, now that I’m back in The Mile High City, I haven’t felt a pressing need to renew my membership in the privileged club. In fact, I’ve resolved not to.
You may be wondering why someone in their right mind would turn down admission to a club where buxom budtenders serve Cannabis Cup-winning delicacies on a silver platter. Well …
At the same time I was writing cautionary tales about the perils of statewide MMJ initiatives and patient rights, I was gushing over all the exotic strains that were available to me at dispensaries — wonderweed I could purchase for one reason only: I’d signed on the dotted line to be “patiented.”
My subconscious must have recognized a classic case of “having my cake and eating it too.” The duality wasn’t sitting well with me — a guy who smells hypocrisy a mile away and regularly chides guy ‘n gals, groups, and governments for dishing it out.
So then, do I get to be a hypocrite but they don’t? Er … well … uh … what I feel about that is:
If someone writes voluminously about all the hypocrisy swirling around the magical weed — like I do — that writer would be wise to eliminate the exact same failing from his own life.
I certainly hadn’t done anything of the kind. I was still pigging out at at the same smorgasbords I routinely denounced … although I was feeling increasingly uneasy about it. If I wanted to free my mind, only one sequence of action made any sense:
- Looking in the mirror
- Highlighting the hypocritical behavior
- Hitting Delete
I did and thankfully I’ve survived the unburdening relatively intact. Having successfully shed hypocrisy, I’m free to pursue global legalization with a clear conscience.
Speaking of pigging out, I feel a whole lot better that the Colorado Department of Revenue no longer tags me as Patient #MMRB00244 — which is basically the same drill as the Department of Agriculture tagging the porker below Pig #3154.
In case you’re new to these “pages,” you may be wondering how, why, and where someone forms an unpopular notion like there’s something unsettling about the State of Colorado referring to persons as patients. Other patients aren’t bitching about their entitled status, are they? Nope: most of ’em feel that as long as they have their “safe access to meds,” all is right with the world, and who cares whether anyone in Georgia has to ask a friend of a friend of a friend if they know where there’s any dirt weed?
Uh, I do, for one. That would be the crux of the issue.
Personally, I prefer the sound of “we we we” to the tone of “me me me.”
That’s why patientude rankled me so much.
Of course, I’m around patients more than most people, living as I do in The Queen City of the Plains which has about 75,000 of them. I rub shoulders with them everywhere I go. Not being nearly as obsessed as my fellow Coloradans with the National Football League, or the love lives of celebrities, I’ve had ample time to cannalyze the medical marijuana phenomenon.
My conclusion, in a sentence:
Confronting quasi-legalization on a daily basis has convinced me that the preferred road map for maximizing cannajobs, cannatax, and the cannabiz is not medical marijuana for patients, it’s marijuana for persons.
Regular readers know I haven’t been at all shy about expressing that contrarian viewpoint — though it swims against the current.
So, yeah, I feel the term “patient” should be reserved for folks in ICUs, not healthy-enough college students in Boulder who are “I”s from CU.
And my reward for opting out of patientude?
I’m out in the cold, scratching and clawing like every other non-patient.
That’s the bad news. It’s definitely a heavy blow.
I have a hard time thinking about anything in the quality of life department better than being able to walk three blocks in two minutes and buy retail pot in a vibrant marketplace where hundreds of dispensaries compete for my affection with ever higher quality and ever lower pricing.
The good news is that this pot-deprived perch is an enhanced vantage point to stick up for the 98% of Americans not served by statewide MMJ amendments, not to mention the billions of Earthlings facing anything from severe consequences to firing squads for daring to express cannalove in The Rest of the World.
If I’m going to bat for herbal rights over patient rights ― and there’s no way I’m sitting that drama out― my patient rights had to be sacrificed.
Do I have any reservations about standing up for my principles, Why, yes!
Will I miss being able to drive five minutes to The Clinic, one of the finest dispensaries on god’s green earth, to select from their jaw-dropping assortment of top-shelf offerings? In the scholarly parlance of Sarah Palin, “You betcha!”
Will I miss stoneathons like The Cannabis Cup? That, too.
Will I be sorely tempted to relent and apply for another red card? Unless I can successfully transcend lust, longing, and desire … probably so.
But it is what it is.
Perhaps if Colorado Amendment 64, the referendum supposedly about treating marijuana like alcohol and tobacco — you can only carry an ounce of it while you can push around a wheelbarrow full of Jack Daniels and Camels — passes, it may be the end of patientude as we know it … and I can go back to transacting at retail shops.
[Update 11/08/2012: it passed. But no one can buy recreational buds till January, 2014, at least, and the State hasn’t had a chance to sort out where they’ll be available. More on this soon.]
Until then, I’ll scavenge for prerolls like a pig foraging for truffles. Of course, I’ve always thought there was something noble about that porcine pursuit; I’m okay with rooting around like our hunter/gatherer forebears.
It is what it is.
No red card, no cry.
4 comments
Senior Medical Cannabis says:
Feb 5, 2013
I wonder what will be the impact of the Colorado Senior cannabis market in January 2014? When no red card is needed, will seniors who understand the financial and medical advantages of using cannabis over pharmaceuticals take to Trenchtown in droves?
Lory Kohn says:
Feb 5, 2013
Um, if seniors (or juniors) wind up in Trenchtown on their way to medicate in Colorado, they took a serious wrong turn somewhere and would have had to have been driving amphibious cars. I know a little bit about amphibious cars, cause one day when I was about 12 and living in New Jersey, my grandfather showed up in an aqua amphibious car, then proceeded to take my brother and I to Nyack, New York, where he drove us into the Hudson River and paddled around for a while. He blew his last million on the car of the future. Oh well. He tried.
This couldn’t be Dr. Beth Fisher, senior medical marijuana maven who beams out seniormedicalcannabis.com, could it? I imagine if you stay the course on your mission, you’ll get the word out that seniors are definitely included not excluded at plenty of dispensaries. Some dispensaries cater to to a young crowd, but not all. There are plenty of them that take the time to make seniors feel comfortable and explain their various choices. Of course, every budtender is different. But with a little shopping around, I feel comfortable saying that seniors can find the right dispensary with the right budtender for them that won’t allow them to feel out of place. And it goes without saying that seniors probably have the most to gain from THC-therapy. So good luck with your mission and your site and thanks for dropping by at Cannabis Commerce!
Rickey Ashcraft says:
Jun 4, 2013
Please don’t leave West Virginia out of this grand happening! All the states should see all the benefits that will come out of this. I am all for it.
tdiddy says:
Feb 27, 2015
Your card expired and you couldn’t renew? Mine expires today, howw long do i have till i can’t see a doctor anymore??? answers appreciated