A societal change in sensibilities needed w/ regard to cannabis use?

Learning about a lawsuit pending against a northwest suburban school district brings up beliefs with regards to marijuana that make me question the line of logic followed by those who seriously talk about “Mak(ing) America Great Again.”

For I have no doubt that many of those who follow the Donald Trump mantra are among those who are mocking a lawsuit against Schaumburg School District 54 (and the state of Illinois) in which parents are upset school officials won’t permit their 11-year-old daughter to use the marijuana prescribed for her by a doctor.

THE GIRL IN question suffers from leukemia, and chemotherapy treatment resulted in the girl suffering from epileptic seizures.

Which is what led a doctor to prescribe the drug that some people of an ideological bent are determined to think of as some sort of “hippie freak” drug leading our society all astray.

In this case, the girl is to receive her cannabis treatment through a patch on her foot. When the patch’s dose of THC is inadequate to control her seizures, she gets cannabis oil drops containing THC on her tongue or her wrists.

Except that school officials, citing Illinois law, say they can’t administer such a drug to her, even if she has a medical prescription. I suspect it’s like many other regulations concerning distribution of medication to students on school grounds – school officials most likely don’t want to be bothered.

SO THE END result, according to the Chicago Tribune, is that there are times when the girl in question is incapable of attending class. The lawsuit contends that if something doesn’t change in the school district’s attitude, she won’t be able to continue her education.

A drop-out, at age 11! Not a pretty image.

Which the parents contend in their lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, puts the state in violation of laws where children are required to attend school through their teenage years.

So what should we do? Just what should we do!

READING THE ANONYMOUS types who like to express themselves on the Internet on any issue, regardless of whether they have anything sensible to say or not, I stumbled onto too many people who want to write off this case as another frivolous lawsuit.

Parents reckless enough to want their child to get a jolt of THC – the substance in marijuana that creates the high sensation that some people find rather pleasing (or mind-deadening).

Personally, I think it’s the latter, and a part of me doesn’t understand recreational use of the drug for that reason. I always want to be in full control of my faculties.

But this has nothing to do with recreational use. It’s about a medical use, even though I know some people’s political leanings make them want to believe there is no such use as a medical use for marijuana.

THEY’RE THE ONES who want to throw up obstacles toward the drug’s use for legitimate relief. They’re the ones who want to have the authority to ignore a doctor’s prescription.

I suppose that in their own warped minds, they want to believe that allowing use of these THC-laced patches or drops somehow sets a precedent for teenagers at the high school to be able to go “smokin’ in the boy’s room” (remember Brownsville Station?) in between classes.

Which really is nothing more than putting politics ahead of medicine. Ideology ahead of sense! If this is the idea of making America “great” again, then it truly comes across as nonsensical.

Here’s hoping the federal courts issue the injunction that would allow a school employee to store the medication on school property (in ways so that others can’t get to it for their own personal use). And that the appeals courts don’t feel the need to meddle on the issue.

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I'm getting old(er) and ill(er)

PALOS PARK, Ill. -- I spent this past weekend lounging around, watching television, having my meals brought to me special order and having my every whim catered to.

I'd have rather spent the weekend at the ballpark, than in bed watching the ballpark on TV

Of course, I also had to put up with doctors prodding me and poking me with needles periodically while trying to figure out my problems (aside from my usual grouchy temperament).

FOR I SPENT the weekend in a hospital (Palos Community Hospital in suburban Palos Park, to be precise). I was diagnosed by a doctor last week with asthma and it also was discovered my blood pressure was running high. So I spent Friday night through Sunday afternoon under observation, while making sure I don't have some sort of kidney disease that could take me down permanently (I don't).

The bottom line is that doctors spent the weekend trying to calculate the proper mixture of medicines that I'll have to consume in order to keep me alive and thriving.

Blood pressure pills and a combination of inhalers. I'm only 50, yet it seems like this is the new routine of my life.

Yet as I laid in that hospital bed, I couldn't help but think how typical I have become. So many of us now have our medications we must take for various ailments. Whereas past generations would have just accepted complications in life and presumed it was evidence we're getting old(er)!

IN FACT, I recently attended a family function where the conversation turned to health and the medications we all were taking. It turns out I was the only one not taking anything.

Not any more. So was I really healthy? Or just oblivious to my own well-being?

So what was hospital life like?

My hospital room was similar, but my window view looked out onto a courtyard where I could look into the windows of other hospital rooms. And no, I didn't catch a glimpse of another patient half-naked. Image provieded by KJWW Engineering Consultants.

I got admitted late Friday and wound up being able to watch the entire weekend of Chicago White Sox baseball (that Saturday game was frustrating as the Sox should never have needed 12 innings to win). I even stumbled across reruns of "Hill Street Blues" (which a nurse's aide mistook for that "Chicago PD" cop show, as she called it), while I flipped through several cable news channels.

I ALSO WAS able to meet one nurse who took a blood sample who says she shares my exact birth date in 1965. I never would have guessed -- she looked significantly younger than myself.

Hill Street's "Hill" and "Renko" characters still amuse

I got to see how small food portions could be made and still be thought of as a meal (and they wouldn't let me have a pickle to go with a turkey sandwich -- too much sodium).

In short, a mind-numbing weekend whose end I anxiously awaited. Returning to work this week will be a relief. I'm even eager to make the trek to Gary, Ind., to cover a (non-)scintillating hearing of the Gary/Chicago International Airport Authority for a local newspaper I do some work for.

Although the moment I may most remember from my weekend of hospitalization occurred Sunday morning when another nurse brought my medication. She noticed me watching CNN where Donald Trump, Jr., was talking about his father's presidential campaign -- while also saying opponent Ted Cruz' only chance of victory was if he bribed delegates at the upcoming Republican Narional Convention.

Our future president?

THE THOUGHT OF Trump, the elder, as president caused my nurse, Greta, to say Trump was scary, but add, "twenty years from now, it will be (entertainer) Kanye West running for office. That's the direction we're headed."

My fear is that Greta is right -- superficiality above all else will prevail in future politics. That thought scares me more than anything I heard from a doctor this weekend.

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Will pot replace numbers racket as source to fund public schools?

It was the early 1970s when our state created an official lottery game, and one of the selling points to encourage political people to vote for legalization of what was essentially the numbers racket of old was the notion that money raised by the lottery would be used to help fund public education programs across the state.

What wound up happening was that state officials wound up thinking they could take other sources of funding away from public school programs, on account of “all that lottery money” that allegedly was going to fund our kids’ education.

THESE DAYS, PEOPLE complain more than ever about the lack of support the state provides for education, which in reality has to rely on local property tax revenues to fund school operations.

Meaning people in wealthier communities with better schools complain they’re overtaxed. People in lower-income communities say they don’t get enough for their children to have the same opportunities as those in the previously-mentioned communities.

And many rural school districts complain that their isolation harms them all the way around.

All of this rhetoric is what came to my mind when I read a Chicago Sun-Times report quoting a Chicago attorney who is part of a group that wants to operate a cultivation center in a downstate Illinois community where marijuana would be grown.

THE POT GROWN on the property in Edgewood would be the product sold at distribution centers licensed by the state where people with a legitimate medical need would be able to purchase their marijuana.

Of course, there are those people who want to view the whole issue of “medical marijuana” skeptically – as some sort of ruse by which people will legalize a product that too many ideologues have desired to criminalize for decades.

Which is what leads attorney Jon Loevy to his current tactic; he told the Sun-Times that his business group – if they are given a license to operate a farm – would give at least half of its earnings to programs that benefit education.

So grandpa needing his marijuana-laced brownies to deal with his glaucoma? People can supposedly “get over” their mistrust by saying, “We’re looking out for the children.”

THE TRICK TO considering the procedure now is that the business entities that want to get into the medicinal marijuana business are far from actually opening their doors.

The state law that legitimized the concept says there will be 22 cultivation centers and 60 dispensary facilities across the entire state. More than 200 groups, including the one that Loevy is connected to, have applied for those licenses.

We’re now going through a process by which local governments are reviewing any proposals intended for their communities. A whole lot of City Councils and village boards are studying the talk, and deciding whether they want any such facility.

Then, the state has final say. And as assorted news reports have indicated, the state isn’t exactly coming forth with what their guidelines will be for deciding who actually gets to make money from production and distribution of marijuana without risking arrest by the local police.

SO I’M SURE a promise like the one made by Loevy could make his group stand out. For all I know, there could be other groups that follow the same lead.

It’s almost as though I can hear many dozens of Helen Lovejoys cropping up across Illinois, telling us in her Simpsons-like cry, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!?”

Although I don’t have a clue as to how much money would wind up going for schools. Or what, exactly, they would be able to use it for. I’d only hope that before such talk of using medical pot funds for school kids goes too far, we give serious thought.

Otherwise, you just know a couple of decades from now, we’re going to hear protesters complaining, “What about all that drug money that’s supposed to help our schools?”

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Let’s not panic, okay?

I’m not trying to downplay the significance or risk of the Ebola virus that is starting to show traces of cropping up in the United States.

But I also sense that there are some people who are way too eager to panic and predict an epidemic of the virus that can kill. When we start to panic, we look for people to blame for the problem.

AND THAT’S WHEN we as a society become inclined to act stupid. Please people, let’s not be stupid; particularly when there’s potential for illness and fatality.

For the record, the virus was once thought to be a product of the nations of the western portion of the African continent. Some 4,500 people are known to have died from Ebola.

Of course, many of us cared less about this fact. It wasn’t until recent weeks when U.S. citizens who are doctors who were on humanitarian relief efforts in Africa started showing signs of the virus that many of us even gave Ebola a second thought.

Now, we have one person dead, and two nurses infected. One of those nurses had direct contact with the person who died. While another supposedly was on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas, and has now been isolated at a medical facility far from either locale. It has people panicking about how easily this virus could spread.

IT HAS HAD some people wondering how long it will be until this spreads beyond Dallas and winds up in Chicago – along with the rest of the country. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide (or so sang Martha and the Vandellas, could that be the new theme song for those inclined to panic?).

I couldn’t help but notice the Chicago Tribune, which reported about how nurses across the Chicago area are skeptical that their hospitals are equipped to deal with Ebola. They’re wondering if the so-called safety equipment isn’t safe enough to protect them from the fluid-spread virus.


Although I have heard reports indicating that the infected nurse with contact might not have been wearing the proper gear.

It also was interesting to see the Chicago Sun-Times report that officials are considering designating Rush University Medical Center as the official treatment center for Ebola.

AS IN ANYBODY anywhere near Chicago who shows signs of the virus and can document that they were in contact with someone who had the virus would wind up at Rush, rather than having them scattered around the dozens of hospitals in the Chicago metro area.

A concentration would reduce the likelihood of more people being exposed.

It was interesting to see President Barack Obama on Wednesday create the image of taking on the issue – he spent a couple of hours meeting with Cabinet members to try to figure out some sort of national strategy for addressing Ebola in this country. On Thursday, he gave authorization for National Guard units to be called into action to serve in west Africa to support U.S. operations that are trying to control the virus.

It also was curious to see the Washington Post report that Obama acknowledges a need to help try to deal with Ebola at its root – meaning the west African region where we once thought the virus was contained.

THAT DOES MAKE sense. But I wonder how long it will be until we hear the ideologues screeching and screaming about how we ought to focus on our own ill, instead of someone else’s.

The grandchildren of the isolationists of old can rant and rage as loudly and strongly as their ancestors. Even when it is that isolationist strain of thought that can cause panic that leads to short-sighted actions.

For now, I plan to try to relax. There isn’t much we can do, other than try to avoid irrational exposure that we probably wouldn’t do anyway. That, and turn down the dial for the mental volume I have set for the rest of the world – including when our own City Council feels compelled to hold (as yet unscheduled) hearings about Ebola virus spread.


Talk about the ultimate in individuals who will want to scream and panic when it is fairly certain they have a clue what they’re talking about!

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Governor makes up mind on medical marijuana – bad jokes bound to follow

I fear we’re going to have to dig up our old VHS copies of Cheech and Chong films – along with having to put up with the rants of the socially-conservative-minded ideologues who desperately want to believe that MARIJUANA!!! is some sort of liberal, hippie-freak drug that no sane person would ever want to touch.



QUINN: Digging up his bill-signing pens?

I write that because it seems that Gov. Pat Quinn is going to take action on Thursday that will make it possible for people to gain a prescription, of sorts, to use marijuana as part of their treatment for assorted medical conditions.

HIS PUBLIC SCHEDULE for the day indicates two events – the latter of which is an appearance at the University of Chicago Center for Care and Discovery, where he will appear with “veterans and people who are fighting chronic illnesses.”

These are the people who think that the marijuana high helps them to cope with the pain of their various medical conditions.

That is a concept that infuriates the ideologues because they want to believe that marijuana has no medical purpose whatsoever and is just the way certain people flaunt their disobedience to morals and all that is “good” about society.

Which is a bunch of bunk. Some people have watched “Reefer Madness” way too many times!

PERSONALLY, I EQUATE the concept that marijuana has no possible useful purpose with those same medical professionals of decades ago who argued that homosexuality was a mental illness – we know better now, and should quit listening to the quacks of the past whose theories have been disproved with more research.

Now before anyone goes any further, I don’t have any medical condition for which a marijuana prescription would be useful. I don’t anticipate taking advantage of the bill that was approved by the General Assembly this spring – which would allow people to purchase up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana.

Provided, of course, that they get a prescription from a medical physician and who suffer from some three-dozen specified medical conditions.

In short, the spaced-out guy who gets pulled over by the police (causing the cop to catch a whiff of smoke) is still going to be in trouble with The Law. Although with more and more communities heading in the decriminalization direction, it seems that marijuana is headed the way of being treated like alcohol.

THE PEOPLE WHO take so much that it impairs their judgment can face legal problems – particularly if their impairment causes them to have an “accident” of some sort.

We’re not exactly at the forefront of this issue – Illinois will be the 20^th state to permit marijuana use under limited circumstances. I can’t help but wonder why it took the state so long to get around to this.

Although at least we’re not state number 48 or 49 to address this issue; that would be embarrassing!

Because while some people are determined to see some sort of cultural issue at stake, it really isn’t. Personally, I have known people of every political persuasion who want to get high – even including a few who like to believe they’re “strict law-and-order” types on everything else.

PERSONALLY, IT BOTHERS me (again!?!) to think that we have been denying some people medical relief from their pains – all because some people are desperate to cling to the image of aging hippies. Even though many of the biggest hippie-haters are probably toking up while also ranting.

So Quinn, barring any unforeseen change-of-heart, is likely to give his approval. And many of us will respond with the cheap druggie joke.

All I have to say is that if one does have to dig out a “Cheech and Chong” film to watch, go for “Up in Smoke.”

It’s not high art. But it’s about the only one of their films that has much of a story-line – while also giving us Cheech Marin’s take on his song “Mexican Americans.” It’s always worth a giggle.

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Will medical marijuana be Quinn’s concession to ideological opposition?

Gov. Pat Quinn has made it clear he is eager to have the General Assembly send him legislation approving marriage for gay couples and limiting the size of ammunition magazines for firearms – both measures that will draw him the ire of the ideological right.

QUINN: Has yet to make up mind

But he is reluctant to say what he will do with the issue of medical marijuana – which the Illinois state Senate gave final legislative approval to last week.

WHICH MEANS IT is now in the hands of the Mighty Quinn to decide whether Illinois should become the 19^th state to let people use marijuana without hassle by police – IF they can get a doctor’s consent for a legitimate medical problem!

Those people who oppose the idea are the ones who have come to think of marijuana as some sort of “hippie freak” drug – and they’re the ones who can’t stand the idea of doing anything that might be interpreted as supporting something they consider “liberal.” Even though I have known people of all parts of the ideological spectrum who have gotten stoned during their lifetimes.

That is what makes this opposition a totally nonsensical way to view this issue. But that has never stopped the ideologues before.

The fact that marijuana might have a legitimate medical purpose is something they don’t want to consider. I guess they think that some ideological views are more important to uphold than anything science might say.

SO WHEN STATE Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, said last week during legislative debate that, “for every touching story that we have heard about the benefits of those in pain, I remind you today that there are a thousand times more parents who will never be relieved from the pain of losing a child due to addiction, which in many cases has started with the very illegal, FDA-unapproved, addiction-forming drug you are asking us to make a normal part of our communities,” I’d retort that he’s bringing up two, totally un-related issues.

McCARTER: Speaking out?

Anybody who actually gets a prescription from a doctor for marijuana use is going to have their use controlled, which makes the idea of someone’s overdose irrelevant. And as far as the “very illegal” part, that is an artificial status.

It’s only illegal because someone said it should be for ideological purposes. Illegal is whatever our government officials say it is.

Now having said all that, I do comprehend the argument made by police that the tests for sobriety that are used to determine if someone is driving while intoxicated by alcohol do not have a corresponding test for drug use.

Too many people associate pot with '60s counterculture

THERE IS NO real way to say someone is “legally” stoned. So the idea of punishing people for being impaired by pot is a dream. We’d be trusting the police and their judgment to figure out who has had “too much weed” to be out in public.

But somehow, I wonder if that argument will wind up carrying weight with the governor. Because a part of me wonders if rejecting this bill will be the governor’s attempt to appease the ideological critics who are going to be outraged by him for being so outspoken about wanting to back gay marriage and restrictions on firearms.

He hasn’t said he would do that. He’s not saying much of anything. “Open minded” is what he says he will be, which can mean just about anything.

So considering that anything could happen to this bill, we all have to keep in mind that people who want to view this as a matter of medicine and science might get their desires cast aside in the name of partisan politics.

WHICH MIGHT OFFEND people who don’t pay much attention to the workings of government and might think that all bills before the General Assembly and the governor are ruled on based on their merits.

But that ugly partisan factor always manages to creep its way into the process.

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Angry? Or stoned? Our Illinois House was “hard” at work on Wednesday

There is a sense where political people try to appear to be civil to each other – at least to each other’s faces.

BOST: Don't make this man angry!

They keep the cheap shots limited to situations where they can always try to claim that they really didn’t say something stupid, or perhaps there is an unreported context in which the nasty comment makes sense.

WHICH IS WHY I was surprised to read the Chicago Tribune account of how the Illinois House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected a measure meant to implement a “concealed carry” law for Illinois.

Not that I’m shocked they’re considering the issue. It comes up every year. And this year, there’s a court order saying something needs to happen by June to implement a version of the law.

But reading about state Rep. Scott Drury, D-Highwood, and his pot shot at state Rep. Michael Bost, R-Murphysboro, just struck me as a bit too cold and calculated – even if there might well be an element of truth to it.

Bost is among the legislators who wants a state law that makes it legal for as many people as possible to obtain a permit letting them carry a pistol on their persons when they’re out in public.

DURING THE WEDNESDAY debate, he became all hot and bothered – like many other legislators did as well.

But Drury was the one who used Bost’s shouting and screaming to say, “We don’t want someone like that carrying a concealed weapon.”

Would Mike Bost really whip out a pistol at a moment’s notice and fire a round or two at the toes of a political partisan whose rhetoric was particularly displeasing to him?!?

DRURY: Too low a blow?

That was a low blow, even if the idea that firearms and tempers do not mix is a totally logical concept. Too many otherwise law-abiding people do stupid things when they get angry.

AND THAT IS what came through in the debate over this particular version of “concealed carry,” which is one meant to give significant authority to the police to determine who can actually have a permit letting their pistol be legal.

The ideologues over at the National Rifle Association are an uncompromising bunch, and they’re not going to shut their holes until they receive something that makes it next to impossible to deny someone a permit.

Or at least, to deny a permit to anyone who isn’t exactly like them. There are certain people whom I’m sure even they don’t want to have firearms – only instead of trying to get the guns away from those people, they seem determined to change the law to give themselves the authority to shoot those people.

Which is why I always have had hang-ups with the concept of “concealed carry.” I don’t trust it, or the people who seem most vociferously in support of it.

WHICH IS WHY it may well have been appropriate that the Legislature – along with overwhelmingly killing off this particular bill – also wound up giving approval to a nice mellow mood with a medical component in mind.

I’m referring, of course, to the idea of marijuana being permitted for medicinal purposes. People who could get a prescription from their doctor would be allowed to use the drug.

Not that they’d be allowed to grow it themselves. They’d have to buy it from specific state-licensed facilities, and could only get so much at any one time.

In short, enough for their own use – and not a stash for good times at a “pot party” or any other nonsensical concept the ideologues dream up.

MOST OF THE opposition to this seems to come from the conservatives who have lapped up too much of the drug-related rhetoric that has spewed forth for the past half-century. As though voting for “pot” means voting for “liberal freaks.”

Will this soon be a common sight in Illinois? The Illinois Senate and Gov. Pat Quinn still have a say before anything is official

 

Does this mean the drug of choice for the alleged “real people” is alcohol? Because getting drunk has always struck me as being way too similar to getting “stoned.” The people who vote against the drug for medicinal use (the bill passed the Illinois House with one vote to spare) seem more interested in playing politics at the expense of medicine.

And maybe a little inhaling during the “concealed-carry” debate is what was needed to mellow out the mood of the House to avoid the cheap shots. For it certainly took a day like Wednesday for a sex education measure (a program emphasizing health concerns) to slip through the legislative process with little (by comparison) controversy.

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