|
veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
|
Another Drug War Victim [MT]
#7567980 - 10/27/07 09:02 PM (16 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Medical marijuana advocate kills herself October 27, 2007 - missoulian.com
Robin Prosser, a Missoula woman who struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded.
After her earlier attempt failed, Prosser wound up in even more trouble after investigating police found marijuana in her home. She used the marijuana to help cope with pain.
That marijuana charge was eventually dropped in an agreement with the city of Missoula, and Prosser had reason to rejoice in 2004 when Montanans passed a law allowing medical use of the drug.
She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.
The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.
At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.
“I feel immensely let down,” Prosser would write a few months later, in a guest opinion for the Billings Gazette published July 28. “I have no safety, no protection, no help just to survive in a little less pain. I can't even get a job due to my medical marijuana use - can't pass a drug test.”
Federal prosecutors declined to charge Prosser, but fear spread through the system of marijuana distribution set up in the wake of the medical marijuana act. Friends said Prosser turned to other sources for marijuana, but found problems nearly everywhere she turned.
“Most recently, she had found some people who said they could get her what she needed, but it didn't go well,” said her friend Jane Byard.
Without the relief that marijuana delivered to her, Robin Prosser killed herself at home last week. She was 50.
Prosser suffered from an autoimmune disease that gave her allergic and dangerous reactions to most pharmaceutical painkillers. So she turned to marijuana. When that was no longer available she had no where else to turn.
“She just said she couldn't take it all anymore,” Byard said.
In her guest opinion, Prosser wrote that: “I'm 50 years old, low-income and sick. I spend most days in my apartment in bed, with no air conditioning, unable to go outside because I can't tolerate the sun.”
Beset by financial problems, troubled by depression, unable to find a reliable source of pain relief, she took her own life three months after the piece was published.
“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July. “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?”
Before being disabled by her disease, Prosser was a concert pianist and a systems analyst. After the disease hit her, she became a tireless advocate for legalized use of marijuana in medical situations.
“She had so many difficulties, but she was a wonderful person,” Byard said. “She was kind and funny and just as smart as a whip. She was a very good friend to me, and it's a very sad story what happened to her.”
|
NineStorms
The Dragon
Registered: 02/28/07
Posts: 125
Loc: Existing between Heaven a...
Last seen: 9 years, 9 months
|
Re: Another Drug War Victim [MT] [Re: veggie]
#7568139 - 10/27/07 10:05 PM (16 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
This should not be happening.
|
letsmakekill
Tak Aprt Yr Hed
Registered: 12/20/06
Posts: 196
Loc: Iceland
Last seen: 15 years, 4 months
|
Re: Another Drug War Victim [MT] [Re: NineStorms]
#7568169 - 10/27/07 10:17 PM (16 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
This is terrible. Reading things like this make me absolutely sick to my stomach - hopefully this will affect the Supreme Court members and law enforcers deeply, if they even have a heart that is...
-------------------- In a life we live with shreds and trees Swallow them whole right down our bellies Soon enough our eyes grew wide Soon enough we had the time to feel alive To feel alive...
|
Acinaxuz
In SomnisVeritas.
Registered: 06/20/06
Posts: 231
Last seen: 16 years, 4 months
|
Re: Another Drug War Victim [MT] [Re: letsmakekill]
#7568295 - 10/27/07 11:08 PM (16 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
letsmakekill said: This is terrible. Reading things like this make me absolutely sick to my stomach - hopefully this will affect the Supreme Court members and law enforcers deeply, if they even have a heart that is...
Not likely. Events like this tend to be misconstrued, especially the meaning and the cause of which, to be blamed on the drug use itself.
I personally am not an avid drug user, but I am adamant in my belief that people should be allowed to choose natural alternatives to man-made medicines.
I stand by a generalized conclusion that the pharmaceutical companies make too much money off of those suffering from illness. Haven't you found it curious that most of the medicines we put into our bodies have more serious and detrimental side effects than that of marijuana use to accomplish the same end? It saddens me that this woman took her life because the govt refuses to give up its corner on "the market"
Rest in peace Robin and safe crossing.
-Zuxa
-------------------- :~:~:~:~{ * }~:~:~:~:{ * }:~:~:~:~{ * }~:~:~:~: All posts are made with only the intent to entertain myself and should ONLY be read with the understanding that they are FICTICIOUS. I do not warrant information I provide for use in illegal activity of any kind nor do I condone it for any reason. Furthermore, I am not, I have never, nor will I in the future, take ANY part in illegal activites.
Edited by Acinaxuz (10/27/07 11:09 PM)
|
thefourjacks
Misc.
Registered: 08/30/07
Posts: 18
Loc: north of hell south of he...
Last seen: 4 months, 21 days
|
Re: Another Drug War Victim [MT] [Re: Acinaxuz]
#7569883 - 10/28/07 02:49 PM (16 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
the government doesn't care about its people. Their a bunch of greedy corporate fuqsticks who will chalk this poor lady's death up to her drug use and villianize her and the drug further.Their have been many other people in positions such as hers who have taken their own lives because of pain and it makes me sick because our government is not for the people its become for its self. I fought in Iraq with the U.S. Army and I got blown up over their and have severe post traumatic stress disorder, and bad migraine headaches do you think they will give me ecstasy to take or mushrooms for my headaches? No they will make me a criminal even though I went and served and got fucked up in their Illegal ass war. They will not "Do for me". So I say fuck them!and may this woman rest peacefully and may some of those in our government have extreme guilt and no rest...
-------------------- "EACH MAN DECIPHERS FROM THE ANCIENT ALPHABET OF NATURE, ONLY THOSE THINGS THAT HE CAN UNDERSTAND"
|
|