By Steph Sherer, Executive Director, Americans for Safe Access
This weekend’s Medical Cannabis Unity Conference was a big success! More than 250 patients, advocates, medical professionals, workers, and industry professionals from thirty-four states met in Washington, DC, for three days of education, strategy, and skills building. Thanks to our generous donors, 125 people came to the conference with the help of a scholarship! Most of the attendees were on Capitol Hill on Monday visiting more than 200 legislative offices in support of new bills to protect medical cannabis patients. Staff from at least thirty offices came to ASA’s legislative briefing on Monday afternoon. Thank you to everyone who helped to make this event so great, we appreciate those who had to take time off from work and rearrange their lives to make this a historic event.
Whether or not you were able to be in Washington, DC, this weekend, you will want to pre-order one of the conference DVD’s today so you can have a record of this historic event. The DVD will include videos of panel discussion, workshops, and interviews with patients and experts alike. Check out the agenda to see some of what our conference has to offer, and then pre-order your Medical Cannabis Unity Conference DVD at a discounted price right now.
This weekend, we heard from groundbreaking medical cannabis researchers and clinicians, including Dr. Sunil Aggarwal, Dr. Mark Ware, Dr. Donald Abrams, Dr. Jahan Marcu, Dr. Amanda Reiman, and more. International experts joined us from Canada, Israel, and the Netherlands. The Americans Herbal Products Association unveiled their first guidelines for distributing cannabis. And patients, advocates, workers, industry professionals, and others shared their hands-on expertise in medical cannabis activism. I have never seen a more prestigious and well-inform groups of experts and activists. What a privilege to meet them and hear them speak!
Monday’s lobby day was remarkable. We met personally with members of Congress and their staff to support important new legislation and put a human face on the issue of medical cannabis. Our citizen lobby day will reinforce medical cannabis as a mainstream movement in Washington, DC. There has never been an event like this in medical cannabis advocacy in the United States, and I know it will yield great things moving forward.
Let’s take the knowledge and skills from this conference back to our home states to keep fighting for safe access to medicine and patients’ rights. Thank you for your commitment to helping us make safe access a reality!
P.S. – Did you visit a lawmaker in Washington, DC, on Monday? We need your survey back! Scan and email it to this address, fax it to (323) 882-6263, or mail it to ASA, 1806 Vernon St., NW, Washington, DC 2009.
