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If you missed it, the Montana Kaimin earlier this week thought it a good idea to denigrate the work of activists who have fought to produce kinder, more sane drug laws, saying "the right to smoke pot should be the lowest priority." This morning, the Missoulian chimed in, chastising activists for working locally, when the real focus should be state and federal laws.
Thanks, armchair quarterbacks.
Beyond the bloviating, there's been real news about marijuana this week, as the War on Drugs claimed another casualty -- of course, you have to turn to the Independent to find out about it: Robin Prosser didn't look or sound much like a fighter, but she was. A mother and a musician, the Missoula woman also acted as Montana's most outspoken advocate for medical marijuana, the only remedy that could ease the ravaging pain of the lupus-like immunosuppressive disease she endured for 23 years. Prosser's fight ended Oct. 18 when she took her own life.
In recent months, Prosser, 50, would sit at the kitchen table in her small apartment, pain welling up in her eyes, and talk quietly about the victories and defeats the last several years had delivered. Allergic to nearly every pharmaceutical that could render her chronic pain bearable, she had learned that the political fate of medical marijuana also carried intensely personal implications.
[...]
[I]in March, federal Drug Enforcement Agency agents seized a small shipment of medical marijuana in transit from Prosser's state-approved caregiver. Though she was never criminally charged, Prosser was crushed. She said caregivers became afraid to supply her with the medicine she needed so badly.
In July, she penned an op-ed piece in the Billings Gazette, pleading with Montana's politicians and her fellow citizens to speak out against the DEA's actions and improve the lives of people like her.
"Give me liberty or give me death," she wrote. "Maybe the next campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would they help me to die, humanely?" Why didn't someone have the good sense to tell Robin Prosser that her medication should be the "lowest priority" in the whole arena of things to change in the world.
I'm sure then that she would have understood why it was so important for her to live with so much pain.
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