“…Twenty-eight states plus the District of Columbia now include PTSD in their medical marijuana programs, a tally that has more than doubled in the last two years, according to data compiled by the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project. A 29th state, Alaska, doesn’t incorporate PTSD in its medical marijuana program but allows everyone over 20 to buy pot legally.
The increase has come amid increasingly visible advocacy from veterans’ groups.
Retired Marine staff sergeant Mark DiPasquale says the drug freed him from the 17 opioids, anti-anxiety pills and other medications that were prescribed to him for migraines, post-traumatic stress and other injuries from service that included a hard helicopter landing in Iraq in 2005.
“I felt like a zombie, and I wanted to hurt somebody,” says DiPasquale, a co-founder of the Rochester, NY-based Veterans Cannabis Collective Foundation. It aims to educate vets about the drug he pointedly calls by the scientific name cannabis.
‘Do I still have PTSD? Absolutely,’ says DiPasquale, 42. But ‘I’m back to my old self. I love people again’.
In a sign of how much the issue has taken hold among veterans, the 2.2-million-member American Legion began pressing the federal government this summer to let VA doctors recommend medical marijuana where it’s legal . The Legion started advocating last year for easing federal constraints on medical pot research, a departure into drug policy for the nearly century-old organization.”
TRUCE has had veterans as members since our inception and applauds this development.
#MMJ #Vets #Veterans #PTSD #UTpol #UtahNext #TRUCE
http://ift.tt/2Adwf8B
See full article – Veterans are key as surge of states OK medical pot for PTSD
