Support the passing of the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act

Protect Patients: Vote 'Yes' for the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act

Greetings,

I'm writing to urge your support for Assembly Bill 554, the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act.

This act seeks to enact statewide legal protections shielding those seriously ill patients who use cannabis therapeutically with a doctor's recommendation from criminal prosecution.

The use of marijuana as medicine is a public health issue; it should not be part of the war on drugs. According to a recent national survey of U.S. physicians conducted for the American Society of Addiction Medicine, nearly half of all doctors with opinions support legalizing cannabis as a medicine.

Some 80 state and national health care organizations, including the American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association and The New England Journal of Medicine, and the Wisconsin Nurses Association support immediate, legal patient access to medical cannabis.

Most recently, the largest association of doctors of internal medicine and the second largest medical association in the country, the American College of Physicians, released a policy paper in support of medical cannabis, stating, "The ACP strongly urges protection from criminal or civil penalties for patients who use medical marijuana as permitted under state laws."

Prior to the 1990s, even the federal government allowed specific patients to use marijuana medicinally via the Compassionate IND program. Jacki Rickert, a Wisconsin native, was accepted into this program -- only to learn that it was abruptly closed to new applicants. A handful of patients still receive medical marijuana from the federal government, but most patients like Jacki are forced to suffer needlessly.

Today fourteen states - Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and most recently New Jersey - have enacted laws protecting medical marijuana patients from state prosecution. These laws are operating primarily as lawmakers intended and have not led to widespread abuses among adolescents or adult recreational users.

I believe it is unconscionable to criminalize patients who find therapeutic relief from marijuana, and I urge you to support the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act.

[Your name]