Support For Medical Cannabis Is Broad And The Numbers From Michigan Make It Clear

This from NORML board member and Medical Marijuana patient George Rohrbacher

By a huge margin, 3,008,980 to 1,792,870, Michigan’s voters approved a ballot measure legalizing physician directed medical marijuana, making it America’s thirteenth state to legalize medical marijuana. State medical marijuana laws now cover over 25 percent of the nation’s population. Michigan became the first Midwest state to join this growing green fraternity.

Michigan Voters Pass Medical Marijuana Initiative Into Law, 83-0

A review the Michigan State Auditor’s website and their county-by-county election results proves interesting reading. Medical marijuana won in every single county! All 83 counties in the state of Michigan—urban, suburban, or rural passed the measure, and by a margin of over a million votes. It had won in farming, logging, mining, and manufacturing counties! Everywhere the question was asked in Michigan on November 4, the electorate said yes to medical marijuana. In the state’s five largest urban counties, the margins were enormous, an eye-popping 2:1 vote for marijuana.

Medical marijuana received 130,000 more votes in Michigan than even the Obama victory did.

What a vote like this means is that in every part of Michigan, in every school district and voting precinct, every family and every church, in every community, that the people, one by one, have learned the undeniable truth of the utility of marijuana as a medicine—a ‘Truth’ with no expiration date.

The publics’ first-hand knowledge on the subject (over 100 million Americans have tried pot themselves) is finally overcoming the wall of 71-years of lies and distortions about medical marijuana by our federal and state governments. The American public is slowly re-learning the truth about marijuana as a medicine, one person, one patient, one family, one neighbor and one election at a time.

When Uncle Bob uses cannabis for his MS, and Mom needed pot when she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer, and the kid next door uses it for his migraine headaches…the government can’t continue to lie to the voters anymore that pot is used only by ‘slackers who’re faking illness just as an excuse to ‘get high’. Sorry Congress and Executive Branch, America has seen too many instances where medical marijuana works, and works well. And, there are also now 17,000 scientific studies on the subject!

The great state of Michigan, as a microcosm of America, showed November 4th we, as a country, have passed our tipping point on medical marijuana. Knowledge is tyranny’s biggest enemy. In the 2008 election, the Michigan voters showed, no matter how thick the government lays on the propaganda, nothing can cover up the truth about marijuana as medicine.

-2008 MICHIGAN ELECTION RESULTS-

* MEDICAL MARIJUANA (YES) total votes  3,008,980 (63%)

* MEDICAL MARIJUANA (NO) total votes   1,792,870  (37%)

* BARACK OBAMA total votes  2,875,308  (57%)

* JOHN MC CAIN total votes  2,050,655  (43%)

-MICHIGAN COUNTIES WON- 

* MEDICAL MARIJUANA (YES) =  83  (100%)

* MEDICAL MARIJUANA (NO) =  0  (0%)

* BARACK OBAMA 48 Counties  (57%)

* JOHN MC CAIN 35 Counties  (43%)

In 1937, when marijuana was outlawed against the American Medical Association’s recommendation, cannabis was a component of at least 28 patent medicines made by many pharmaceutical companies still in business today. This national prohibition not only removed cannabis from use as a medicine, but has also produced the social wreckage of 20 million arrests (with an additional 2,200 arrests daily) and today’s pot prohibition bill to taxpayers approaching $25 billion annually.

With the ever-growing national realization that cannabis is one of “the safest therapeutically active substances known to man…”, the American people are taking back their rights to cannabis as medicine, one state at a time. Starting in California in 1996, thirteen states (eight states via voter initiative – five via state legislation) have now taken back their rights to marijuana as a medicine. After this week’s massive victory in Michigan, it is a clear sign that this culture war over medical marijuana is finally over, and the American people (and science) have won—the citizenry refuse to be denied the use of pot in their medicines chest any longer.

President-elect Obama immediately upon taking office should seat a national commission to update the Shafer Commission and bring forward national legislation to address this vital health care and social issue.