December 26, 2011

What Is The Ohio Patient Network?

December 26, 2011
ohio medical marijuana

ohio medical marijuanaThe Ohio Patient Network Is Leading the Charge To Bring Medical Marijuana To Ohio

One of my favorite things to do is Google marijuana terms and look at the recent news. When I Google the term ‘Ohio marijuana’ an article comes up asking ‘whatever happened to Peter Lewis’ wish to bring medical marijuana to Ohio?’ Peter Lewis of course put out a request for activists to submit their proposals for how to bring medical marijuana to Ohio earlier this year. It appears that Peter Lewis has yet to get a medical marijuana proposal that he wants to support, however, there is a group in Ohio that is fighting hard to bring their medical marijuana proposal to Ohio voters regardless of Peter Lewis’ endorsement.

The Ohio Patient Network is “a coalition of patients, caregivers, activists and medical professionals who support the compassionate use of cannabis for various medicinal purposes. Our mission is to coordinate information between patients, medical professionals, and attorneys, as well as to educate the public and keep Ohio Patient members current with the latest developments in medical marijuana.”

The Ohio Patient Network has been working very hard to bring medical marijuana to Ohio. Below is an excerpt from the ‘Legislation Page’ on the Ohio Patient Network’s website:

“On September 7th the Ohio Medical Cannabis Act of 2012 was submitted with 2365 signatures to the Attorney general. After the signatures are validated by September 16th, the proposed ballot language will have a legal review. The “Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment” ballot petition was submitted a month earlier but due to a technicality the 2,143 signatures were rejected and are in the process of re-submitting the petition.

According to a press release about the OMCA “this proposed initiated Amendment to the Ohio Constitution will establish governmental agencies to regulate cannabis in a manner similar to the system that has successfully overseen vineyards and adult beverages”. This would be the state’s liquor control board. This is a different model than the “Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment” and the HB214 that is currently stalled in the Ohio Representatives Health committee. HB214 is based on the successful Oregon model and the Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment is based upon HB214.

The Ohio Patient Network urges medical marijuana patients to read both proposal and to submit their own analysis and comments to OPN.

Ohio Medical Cannabis Act

Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment

Ohio House Bill 214 and similar previous legislation ( HB478, SB343, and SB74) has been introduced in the past four Legislative sessions of the Ohio Legislature over the past 8 years. Only once did it have a hearing that was because it had to according to revised Ohio Senate rules. That was SB343 which was sponsored by a Dayton Senator.

Note that every single medical marijuana ballot has won a higher percentage of votes than any of the presidential candidate:such as Clinton, Dole, Gore, Kerry, Bush, McCain, and President Obama. More than a hundred separate polls have been conducted on medical marijuana in more than thirty states, representing the opinions of more than 50,000 respondents. More than two-thirds (68%) support the medical use of cannabis. Here in Ohio, the support is even higher at seventy three Percent (73%) !

We also urge you to use our RESOURCES menu to find your state Senator and Representatives. Then contact your Senator and ask them to introduce HB214 and your Representative to ask the Health Committee chairman to schedule a hearing for HB214. Please send OPN your representative’s response using our Contact Us menu. Please consider making a donation to OPN so we can assist the ballot initiative that makes it to the 2012 ballot box.”

If you are in Ohio, support these great people as they are fighting for medical marijuana reform! Even if you don’t plan on becoming a medical marijuana participant, you should support the cause anyways because I guarantee you know someone that would benefit from a medical marijuana program in Ohio. Ohio Patent Network, I tip my hat to you! If there is anything that TheWeedBlog.Com can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask!

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