This article was written by Mr. Johann Moore, Director of the New York Medical Marijuana Buyer's Club. For additional information call 718 789 9643.
Marijuana is medicine. Despite the mantra of repeated assertions by the flat-earth types, Marijuana is used as medicine by millions of people. The will of the people of California and Arizona is that marijuana be viewed as medicine. There are about 50 or so buyer's clubs and other not-for-profit, in some instances free, distribution services. Marijuana has a history of medicinal use dating to proto and pre-historic Eurasia. Marijuana is a folk medicine in many communities on this continent- Chicano, Queer, Afrikan-American, counter culture, to name a few. We will not stand by and watch our communities die through starving to death with A.I.D.S. wasting syndrome and opportunistic infections. We will not watch our communities suffer, stand by and do nothing.
Compassion without action is worthless "I feel your pain" as Clinton said - bullshit. The medical marijuana movement is compassion is direct action, sometimes civil-disobedience, but always a direct challenge to illegitimate authority. We believe in the right to self-prescription. My health-care provider's opinion plays a role here; the opinions of police, judges, bureaucrats and social conservatives have NO role to play.
We believe in undermining the profit-motive which has long driven both the commercial marijuana business and the pharmaceutical industry. Our movement is in many ways modelled on the food coop movement, both in philosophy and specifices, i.e. not-for-profit, "food/medicine to the people", small locally based, decentralised, organic focus. This is not so much a movement with a goal, in that the very existence of the movement is the goal - to distribute clean, mold-free, medical grade marijuana to people with life-threatening/challenging illnesses. This is our mission. We carry out that mission every week, and as a movement serve thousands of communities and tens of thousands of people. We do not so much petition the power structures for change, as we refute them and replace them. It is in and through our community-based institutions that the revolution will be made, in conjunction with insurgent petitioning of power structures, as in ballot initiatives, electoral! activism and court challenges. A much needed revolution, need I say, for we will not stand by and watch our communities suffer and die and do nothing.
Q-zone
copyright © 1997 Healing Well
Last modified: 1/28/97