Alabama Medical Marjuana Coalition meets at Blue Springs State Park

August 13 2011, AMMJC found their way to Blue Springs State Park in Clio, Alabama for our District #7 Picnic. What a beautiful place with a great family atmosphere. If you get the chance to go check it out do it, and go swimming in the crystal clear spring pools. (68 degrees years round!) Even in the dead of winter. The locals told us it looks like a steaming cauldron when winter time rolls around.

Honestly, DJ and I got wet up to the knees but that was it, THAT WATER IS COLD! The kids didn’t mind a bit though. They went swimming and had a blast. One of the State Park Officials Mark Jernigan told the children; “You can’t walk in, you have to jump in. If you walk in you can’t make yourself get in.” He was right! Brrrr!
We met an awful lot of new faces and got to finally meet some people personally that have supported us AMMJC from the start. We thank you all for coming out and supporting the patients of Alabama. From the bottom of my heart I say; We couldn’t do this without you guys. AMMJC is only as strong as the people we have on the ground and that force is getting stronger every day. Please continue to send friend suggestions to our Alabama Mmjc profile! Continue adding your friends, family, elected officials and persons you know supports this case to our facebook group page. In this beginning phase of the organization we need everyone who supports medical marijuana to be aware of AMMJC and lend their support in areas where they can.



As many of you know, Alabama Medical Marijuana Coalition has been in negotiations with Representative K.L Brown virtually since we started. He came out to our last picnic in Jacksonville; he talked to patients and members of the AMMJC staff and was very optimistic about the future of medical marijuana in Alabama.

Representative Brown recommended no changes to the legislation that we presented to him, which is Americans for Safe Access’ State Model Legislation. We had made some changes to their original before we presented it to Rep. Brown, but that was mainly just adding some conditions for which a doctor could recommend medical marijuana, among those were Lupus, Tourette’s syndrome, PSTD and inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s & Colitis).
We had looked at a lot of legislation before deciding what to go with. The laws are different in many ways, but there are, basically, two types of medical marijuana laws and legislation.
First, there are the laws that are so liberal that they are almost impossible to enforce. The amounts of marijuana allowed and the regulations they recommend make it impossible to regulate, and is just seen as a backdoor to general legalization.
Second, there are the laws that appear that someone is just trying to get something, anything, passed. Laws that would be impossible for a patient to follow, and would probably end up with the same problem we have now, which is patients going to jail.
Then there was the ASA legislation. It was in the middle. It was more liberal towards patients and the protection of their rights, but at the same time, it is easy to regulate.

This is our plan for the legislation.
Now is the time to push!!!
Now we have a sponsor and we have a plan for the legislation. Part of that plan is to get the bill out of the gate early.
Representative Brown and AMMJC want to pre-file our bill just as soon as we can talk to the health department. That way we should be able to get an early committee hearing and ensure that we have time to get the bill all the way through the legislature.
That means that we need to start now. With this plan, we will not have the luxury of waiting for the session to start.
Over the weekend, we are going to be putting together a plan to launch our legislative effort with a “Write your legislator campaign.” We will put together a sample letter that you can use as a guide to write your own letter, copy-paste-send, or for you to use along with your reasons for supporting medical marijuana. We will have this information out by Monday.
We need every legislator in the state to get at least a half dozen letters next week. That can only happen if you do your part and encourage others to do theirs. We can do this; we can change the law and the lives of patients in Alabama.