medical marijuana – C-VILLE Weekly

Know your polling place

It’s been an eventful couple years, and if you want to speak up when it matters (by voting in the midterms on November 6) your deadline to register is October 15. With that in mind, we also want to remind 15,000 voters in Albemarle County that their polling places have changed.

The county has added three new precincts and folded the Belfield precinct into Jack Jouett, says Albemarle registrar Jake Washburne.

Split are Cale, which begat the new Biscuit Run precinct; Crozet and Brownsville, which gave birth to Mechums River; and Free Bridge, which adds Pantops precinct.

And voters in the University precinct who had cast ballots at the soon-to-be demolished U Hall will now do so at Slaughter Rec Center.

The splits will make Election Day lines more manageable, says Washburne, and there’s another deadline he’s considering: “After February 1, 2019, we can’t change any precincts until after the 2020 presidential election.”

Some are predicting massive turnout in November. Compared to last September, Albemarle has added 2,000 voters. And Washburne mailed over 700 ballots on the first day of absentee voting, compared to 94 on the first day of the last midterm election in 2014.

In the city, registrar Rosanna Bencoach says there’s always a surge of registrations in September and October from the student population. But according to the state elections website, Charlottesville has 922 more active voters as of October 1 than it did a year ago.

Bencoach issues a caveat to would-be voters: Don’t wait until the last minute to register or to request an absentee ballot, which must be applied for by 5pm the Tuesday before the election.

“With the current postal delivery practices, that’s way too late,” she says.

Quote of the week

“The Court is not typically in the muck and the mire of partisan politics. But this throws it right into the swamp.”—Barbara Perry, Miller Center director of presidential studies, on the Kavanaugh hearing

Lucrative gig

City Council appointed Brian Wheeler interim clerk of council at its October 1 meeting. The current city spokesperson and former editor of Charlottesville Tomorrow temporarily replaces Paige Rice, who resigned last month. Since starting with the city in February at $98,000, raises have upped Wheeler’s pay to $116,438, an 8 percent increase in less than a year.

A12 anniversary costs add up

Charlottesville spent $921,334 over the August 12 anniversary weekend putting downtown on lockdown, and the University of Virginia reports its costs were $422,981. Adding the Virginia State Police’s expenses of $3.1 million, that puts the police-heavy weekend at around $4.4 million—and that’s not including Albemarle County’s costs.

Mayor tops duchess

Mayor Nikuyah Walker is No. 51 on the Root’s list of 100 most influential African Americans ages 25 to 45, coming in ahead of No. 52, Meghan Markle.

Chris Greene closed again

After a dog swam in the lake over the weekend and then died suddenly, Albemarle County officials have closed it for water recreation until results from new water quality tests are available.

Pot arrests surge

Despite decriminalization and legalization around the country, Virginia’s marijuana arrests hit their highest levels in a decade last year. Arrests statewide spiked 20 percent and convictions still carry the possibility of a six-month driver’s license suspension and up to $800 in fines, according to the Virginia Mercury.

Indigenous Peoples Day

“We have been categorized as people of the past,” Karenne Wood, an enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation, told C-VILLE in March. She pointed out that in school textbooks, American Indians are often written about in the past tense: They lived in this type of house; they ate squash and corn; they wore feathers.

But she also hopes those textbooks will tell the story of Virginia Indians present and future. For Wood, director of Virginia Indian Programs at Virginia Humanities, that means working with textbook writers to tell a fuller—not just colonist—history of Native Americans. “We have adapted to live in this century along with everybody else,” she says.

To acknowledge their history on Indigenous Peoples Day, and to give a native perspective on how the story of Virginia’s first people can be expanded, Wood will give a talk called “Stone, Bone, and Clay: Virginia Indians’ History of 18,000 Years” on Monday, October 8, from 6:30-8pm at Lane Auditorium in the Albemarle County Office Building.

Monacan tribal dancers will perform immediately following her presentation.

Within the next few years, three Charlottesville families will be able to legally obtain the cannabis oil extract that eases the seizures of their children with debilitating intractable epilepsy, thanks to unanimous approval in the General Assembly in February, passing even the usually marijuana-averse House of Delegates 99-0.

Good news, right? Yet none of those families will speak on the record with C-VILLE Weekly. The reason? Marijuana is still illegal, and they fear that could bring repercussions for those who have a federal security clearance or ties to law enforcement or professional licensing, according to one of the parents.

“Nothing we do changes federal law,” says Delegate Rob Bell, who chairs the criminal law subcommittee.

Some, like Fairfax resident Beth Collins, moved to Colorado in 2013 to be able to legally obtain cannabidiol oil, aka CBD, when doctor-prescribed pharmaceuticals couldn’t control the seizures her daughter, Jennifer, was experiencing, and their side effects were making her suicidal, in a rage and violent, says Collins.

THC-A, another non-psychoactive cannabis extract, lessened Jennifer’s seizures and “stopped her grand mal seizures entirely,” says Collins. But they missed the family they left behind, and after a year returned to Virginia.

Jennifer wrote a letter to members of the General Assembly. “Within 10 minutes we heard from Senator [Dave] Marsden,” says Collins. “He said, ‘This is ridiculous.’”

In 2015, the General Assembly passed an affirmative defense law, which offered a small protection for those who had a certificate issued by a practitioner stating that the oil was to treat intractable epilepsy.

So while parents were less likely to be busted by the state, they still had no legal way to obtain the oil. “The parents said that doesn’t help us get it,” says Bell.

The latest bill allows the Board of Pharmacy to issue permits to processors to manufacture and provide the oil in approved facilities, but that doesn’t mean families will be able to get it from their nearest CVS anytime soon.

It’s still illegal for a doctor to write a prescription, and the narrow law only applies to intractable epilepsy, not Crohn’s disease or cancer or any of the other health conditions advocates claim medical marijuana aids.

A bill that included those conditions moved from Bell’s criminal law subcommittee to the Joint Commission on Health Care because members felt it required medical expertise, he says. “We felt this wasn’t our strong point.”

“That’s phenomenal,” says Jes Vegas, chapter leader of Jefferson Area NORML. “I am very overjoyed. It was a watershed this year.”

That the General Assembly made a baby step toward medical marijuana, Collins believes, was the result of parent-led lobbying to educate legislators one at a time. “They were so against it at first,” she says. “The fact we had a unanimous vote speaks to how far we’ve come.”

Bell agrees. “For complicated issues, it helps to have more than 15 minutes before the bill is heard. We wanted medical evidence and stories.”

Legislators like Bell learned how profoundly the kids with intractable epilepsy were affected—and how the cannabis oil helped. Jennifer Collins, now 17, testified before the committee. “She was visibly different,” says Bell. “She testified how debilitating it was when she was 15, 16.”

Some of intractable patients’ parents are also lobbying Congress, and met with Representative Tom Garrett last week. Garrett introduced a bill February 27 to federally decriminalize marijuana and remove it from the list of controlled substances, where it’s been categorized a Schedule I drug along with heroin and LSD—drugs deemed to have no medicinal value.

nicole&sophiaMiller — Nicole Miller says the effect cannabis oil has had on Sophia has been “life changing.” Contributed photo

Richmond resident Nicole Miller’s daughter’s rare epilepsy is called Dravet syndrome. “[Sophia] has been having uncontrollable seizures since she was 8 months old,” says Miller. Despite being on four medications, Sophia had life-threatening seizures every 10 to 14 days, says Miller.

When Sophia, now 6, began taking CBD oil in July 2015, she went three months without a seizure, says her mother. “It was life-changing,” says Miller.

Severe seizures can affect a child’s cognitive abilities. Sophia “can say the alphabet, she can add,” says Miller. “The quality of life she has is phenomenal.”

The parents C-VILLE spoke with were circumspect about how they obtain CBD oil, and are concerned about its quality. And there’s the cost. “It’s just so expensive,” says Miller—$275 a month for that one medication.

One of the Charlottesville parents spoke to C-VILLE only on the condition no identifying information was used. Collins finds that fear of publicity understandable. “I think it’s the fact we’re all committing crimes to give our children medicine,” she says.

Before using cannabidiol oil, the local mother described her child as “doped up on a lot of medications that weren’t controlling the seizures,” and that have side effects.

“It’s definitely been better,” she says. And while her child has not been seizure-free, she has seen a significant improvement in them. “Every seizure has different aspects and carries risk of injury and death,” she says.

Collins hopes she and other parents have educated legislators enough to be open to how marijuana can help other conditions. “This is not a legislative decision,” she says. “It should be one made by doctors.”

Asks Vegas, “How long should children suffer?”