UPDATE May 16, 2014: For additional information on the timeline of the Weaver family involvement, see today's post, Joshua Weaver clarifies timeline of his family's involvement with MN medical cannabis politics. [end update]
If one's only encounter with Representative Carly Melin's opinion of Minnesota Citizens for Compassionate was a post she made in the MN Pediatric Cannabis Therapy closed Facebook group on May 10, 2014, one might take her as the fearless guardian of the line against stealth legalization of recreational cannabis.
And that her colleague in the Senate, Scott Dibble (Minneapolis)m was nothing but a patsy for MCC, a front for the Marijuana Policy Project. UPDATE: Melin claims that the new bill was written by non-partisan attorneys employed by the House with input from the Board of Pharmacy, the MN Medical Association, Department of health, and manufacturers from Colorado. End update.
Unfortunately for that representation to people interested in providing pediatric medical cannabis children who might gain from treatments that may reduce suffering, that's not an accurate accounting of Melin's history of working with MCC's "one employee."
Melin was (and remains) a co-sponsor of HF1818, original companion to Dibble bill
On May 1, 2013, Politics In Minnesota's Paul Demko reported in Medical marijuana bill attracts 40 co-sponsors:
Advocates of legalizing marijuana use for medicinal purposes claim that they have 40 co-sponsors for legislation that will be introduced on Thursday.
According to Minnesotans for Compassionate Care, they have lined up 35 co-sponsors in the House and five in the Senate. . . .
Rep. Carly Melin, DFL-Hibbing, will be the lead author of the House bill. Also listed as a sponsor is Rep. Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar. Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, will sponsor legislation in the Senate.
The bills were introduced the next day, with Carly Melin as the chief author in the Minnesota House, and Scott Dibble as her counterpart for the identical Senate bill.
On July 26, 2013, Charley Shaw at PIM reported in Medical marijuana push teed up for 2014:
When a bipartisan group of legislators threw a medical marijuana bill into the hopper during the last month of the 2013 legislative session, it wasn’t intended as an 11th-hour bargaining chip. Anticipating a short session in 2014, medical marijuana advocates said they were trying to set the stage for convincing lawmakers that they should join a growing list of states that allow patients with serious or terminal illnesses to use the drug to alleviate their pain.
The bill’s chief sponsor in the House, Rep. Carly Melin, DFL-Hibbing, said she and other advocates plan to lay the groundwork for a campaign to explain to lawmakers the bill’s safeguards and why it’s needed.
“We introduced it late knowing we weren’t going to pursue it in 2013, because it was a budget year and we had a lot else going on,” Melin said. “But obviously we have a short session coming up, and we want to get the ball rolling over the interim so we can pick up right away once the session starts in February.” . . .
. . .Heather Azzi, political director of Minnesotans for Compassionate Care, who advocated for the medical marijuana bill in 2009, said the groundwork is being established for a strong showing in 2014. And that means trying to make inroads with the most vocal opponent of medical marijuana: law enforcement.
“We introduced the bill at the end of session so we could begin conversations with the law enforcement community now,” Azzi said. “Our goal with this bill is to enact something in Minnesota that protects the sick and suffering patients whose doctors have recommended marijuana while preventing abuse. We don’t want anything like what we’ve seen in California [to happen] here.”
Was Melin completely ignorant of the connection between Azzi and MCC and the Marijuana Policy Project when she introduced a bill in 2013? Public lobbyist registrations suggest that she must have nodded off when presented with the draft of the bill Azzi presented her.
Azzi first registered as lobbyist with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board on February 5, 2013. Other lobbyists include medical organization Thomas Lehmann, who first counted MPP among the fifteen organizations on his client list on April 4, 2013; former Republican lawmaker Christopher DeLaForest (registered December 5, 2013); and Henry Erdman (registered January 1, 2014).
Public appearances together by Azzi and Melin
Moreover, Melin and Azzi appeared together in public in 2013 and well into the 2014 session. For instance, on November 8, 2013, MCC issued a Monday: Medical marijuana panel discussion featuring Minn. bill sponsor:
The University of Minnesota Duluth’s Center for Ethics and Public Policy will be hosting a panel discussion about the pending legislation that – if passed – would make Minnesota the 21st state to pass a medical marijuana law. This panel is free and open to the public, so feel free to attend.
What: Medical marijuana in Minnesota panel discussion
Who: Rep. Carly Melin, Heather Azzi, Rep. Bob Barrett, and Cody Wiberg
Where: University of Minnesota Duluth’s Bohannon Hall, Room 90
When: Monday, November 11, from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
The panel will feature Rep. Carly Melin, the lead House sponsor of the medical marijuana bill that is pending before the Minnesota House of Representatives. Rep. Melin (DFL) represents District 6A, which includes the Iron Range in Itasca and St. Louis counties. Joining Rep. Melin will be Heather Azzi, the political director for Minnesotans for Compassionate Care who is working to protect seriously ill people from arrest and prosecution for using medical marijuana with doctors' recommendations. Rounding out the panel are Rep. Bob Barrett (R), who represents portions of Chisago County, and Cody Wiberg, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. . . .
The event was covered by Lake Voices News and other media. Rosemary Bray writes:
The bill was introduced earlier this year by Representative Carly Melin, member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The purpose of the bill would be to allow doctors in Minnesota the right to prescribe medicinal marijuana to patients who are seriously ill or in chronic pain.
“I introduced the bill last year knowing there was going to be a lot of conversation surrounding it, with hopes to receive a lot of community input,” Melin said. “I continue to learn more and more about the benefits of medical marijuana and having forums like this is definitely beneficial in moving forward.” . . .
. . .“This legislation is to make sure people who are sick with chronic and terminal illnesses have access to medical marijuana if their doctor says it would be the best practice for them,” Melin said. “We’ve seen that there are a lot of other drugs out there that have more harsh effects than marijuana.”
According to Melin, the medical evidence of the benefits of marijuana is overwhelming; the biggest barrier is the legal and law enforcement issues. Minnesota is at an advantage because the law can be created based on what has been successful or not in the allowance of medical marijuana within other states.
While we are able to find a number of articles publics published in 2013 in which both Melin and Azzi are featured, what Bluestem has been unable to locate is any discussion of the pediatric use of medical cannabis.
UPDATE:We've found two 2013 references for Azzi and Melin discussing pediatric cannabis.
Via the Little Luella blog, kept by the parents of a Luverne, Minnesota girl living with Dravet Syndrome, we read in Katie Rucke's article posted in Mint Press News, Parents Weigh Children’s Health Against Medical Marij Laws:
Minnesota, where Luella lives, is one state where medical marijuana legislation is still under debate. Unlike New Jersey, which made it difficult for children to obtain medical marijuana, the proposal circulating in Minnesota intentionally allows children to qualify for the program, said Heather Azzi, political director for Minnesotans for Compassionate Care, a medical marijuana advocacy group.
“Children suffer from the same illnesses as adults,” she said, adding that they need to be protected, too.
While the version of the MPN article now online is dated Augest 22, 2013, Rucke first tweeted a link to her report on July 16, 2013.
In the December 10, 2013 ECM publication, Mille Lacs Times, Carly Melin shares the Weaver story in Legislators prepare to present marijuana bill in next session:
She become interested in carrying medical marijuana legislation, Melin said, after learning of a family in her district whose 7-year-old daughter suffers from Dravet syndrome. The child suffers as many as 400 seizures a month, Melin said, and the first time her parents heard her utter a sound for many weeks was when she began to cry after breaking her arm in three places, with bone jutting through the skin, in a condition-related mishap.
Dravet syndrome is a rare and “catastrophic” form of epilepsy that begins in infancy, according to the Dravet Syndrome Foundation. Without the advent of better treatment, individuals with Dravet syndrome face a diminished quality of life, the foundation notes.
We will continue to dig. [end update]
Neither Azzi nor Melin talk about this use until January 2014. On January 18, 2014, the Duluth News Tribune reported that the story of Hibbing's Amelia Weaver led Melin to author the bill; the story was also in other Forum Communications venues like the Bemidji Pioneer. On March 4, the Mesabi Daily News reported in Pot Politics that "The Weaver family was the inspiration for Melin’s bill."
We find it curious that Melin didn't share her inspiration for sponsoring the bill before January. While we understand that the Weaver family might have wished for privacy before the session, certainly Melin might have mention pediatric application of cannabis oil somewhere in passing. The Weavers talk about seeing a video of Charlotte Figi ( presumably this one first posted on Febuary 8, 2013) so the discussion was in the public realm before the bill was introduced (although the famous Gupta CNN video about Figi wasn't aired until August 7, 2013).
But by May 10, 2014, Azzi--who worked with Melin for months on the issue--was denounced as a stealth recreational pot advocate. It seems to be a curious move on Melin's part, given her own record of involvement with MCC>
We'll be looking more into the timeline of when pediatric medical cannabis use began to be publicly discussed in Minnesota politics and let readers know what we find.
SCREENSHOT: Melin blasts her former ally in
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
Medicinal cannabis bills were introduced as long ago as 1991; some of the sponsors then were Linda Berglin, Carlos Mariani, and Lee Greenfield, if memory serves, and also Alice Hausman, Karen Clark, and John Marty--who are still in the Legislature. The bills would pass a committee or two and then hit the prohibitionist stone wall. At one point in the '90's, the Drug Policy Foundation provided money to hire Bob Vanasek, the former speaker, as a lobbyist, but it didn't help. I don't recall exactly when Marijuana Policy Project first appeared in our state, but they thought it would be a cinch--take the bill away from the urban liberals and waltz it through. They had Sen. Steve Kelley sponsor it I believe in the 2005 or '07 session; then Steve Murphy carried it in subsequent years. They made an effort for bipartisanship and had Steve Sviggum as a co-sponsor while he was in the House but after he's lost the speakership.
It tuned out to be harder than it looked in Minnesota . . . and it still is. MPP wrote the bills; so they differed from the Revisor's previous efforts but reflected the experiences MPP had in other states.
Personally, I testified with objections to features in the MPP bills that I disliked; while still saying that overall they were better than the existing law (the 1980 THC Therapeutic Research Act.) One memorable hearing was when Paul Thissen denied my chance to testify although I had arranged beforehand with the committee administrator. In that case, it was just as well, but anyone who's tried to weigh in as a private citizen always finds lobbyists have more clout.
The outcome this year is disappointing because there was NO NEED to water down the bill, as was done, into a sort of Rube-Goldberg parody of a law. The only real objection came from the law enforcement lobby and they had no convincing case--since none of the 20 states which have adopted medicinal cannabis laws since 1996 have repealed them. There's no public safety threat: case closed!
As the cops and prosecutors and their stooge, Gov. Dayton, began to look really bad in their stand against the desperate parents, the heavy hand of the shadow government reached out to rope in the state medical association and other establishment-entwined entities to also voice opposition to the MPP bill (Melin's original version.)
The DFL leaders weren't looking for how much they could help patients, they were looking for how little they could do to help patients. And they were doing this out of deference to Dayton, who'd sold his soul to the police and sheriffs lobby. Cynical and sickening. In effect, the cops were holding the afflicted kids as hostages.
Rep. Melin ends up agreeing to an impractical, expensive and absurd pretended compromise--and throwing her erstwhile coaches and comrades from MPP under the bus--because the hard-line prohibitionists really were willing to let people continue to suffer, rather than that they should smoke cannabis or use it for intractable pain--not to mention migraines or rheumatism or depression or paraplegia which are all excluded from the program!
A different approach to the issue was taken in bills introduced by Sen. Ellen Anderson and Rep. Hausman in 2010, and in 2012 by Sen. Marty and Rep. Hausman, but the media ignored them and the lobbyists scoffed.
One constant has been the fact that public opinion strongly favors medicinal cannabis and has for the past 30 years; Jesse Ventura was elected after campaigning in favor of it; recent polls showed between 63 and 75% support (except for the notoriously inaccurate Star Trib poll which still reported majority support.) There was no electoral hazard to legislators! Indeed, with the possible exception of the minimum wage, every other DFL-enacted topic is much less popular, including marriage equality and the anti-bullying law. [Not counting tax relief--no controversy there!]
Rep. Melin has put her faith in her bill and is trying to prove she can serve two masters--the constituents who trusted her to help, and the law enforcement lobbyists who have lied about medical cannabis for 40 years and who only want it to fail.
Her alleged compromise excludes 95% or more of patients--denying them the fundamental right of equal protection of the law; it discourages doctors with red tape and intimidation; it reinforces the legal fiction that there is something radically dangerous and unsafe about cannabis; it intrudes law enforcement into medical decision-making.
It may eventually result in some handful of patients receiving cannabis preparations in some form--at some future time. It will certainly continue to keep the vast preponderance of patients in the legal category of criminals.
Meanwhile, it is in the best interests of all Minnesotans to push ahead politically and demand an end to cannabis prohibition.
When the herb is legal and easily available as it should be in a free, non-police-state society, then the Gordian knot will have been sliced. If you need cannabis for medical purposes, you can just go get it.
If you want to grow hemp for industrial purposes, go ahead and plant your fields with it. And if you want to smoke it for fun instead of drinking beer and beating up your buddies--then just roll yourself a big spliff and relax.
Were the contortions and maneuvers attempted by MPP for the past eight years in Minnesota some kind of conspiracy or Trojan Horse design to advance the cause of personal-use legalization? If so, they were wasted. It's not a good strategy anymore, if it ever was.
There are six states where both medicinal use and personal use have been placed on the ballot for voters to decide. In two of those states, Colorado and Washington, both medical use and personal use have been approved--but in four other states, medical use was approved and personal use defeated (California, Alaska, Nevada, Oregon.)
In Washington state, entities and persons with a vested interest in the existing medicinal-use set-up were outspoken opponents of the personal-use proposal (which did indeed have a lot of built-in flaws in it.)
Right now, public support for complete legalization is reflected in majorities measured in several national polls. To see Dayton and the prohibition lobby playing divide-and-conquer tactics against the patients and the advocates of medical cannabis reform is the real story here.
It was silly of MPP to try to create a front-group in Minnesota; the disguise was always transparent (the same graphic design down to typefaces and color scheme was used for both MPP and "Minnesotans for Compassionate Care," for instance) and the expenditure reports were public records.
Rep. Melin is an unconvincing in her indignation as the character of Sgt. Renault in the movie Casablanca when he exclaims "I am shocked, shocked, to learn that gambling is going on in this establishment"--while pocketing his own winnings. Without the ground-work and diligent lobbying done by MPP for the past four or five sessions, Carly Melin would not have any chance at all to pass a bill on this issue . . . but I will reiterate my original opinion that this bill's true effect will be deleterious to most of the patients, while helping very few IF ANY patients; consequently discrediting the reform and dissipating support for it, which was the law enforcement lobby's true motivation.
Carly, you can't serve two masters. In this case, sustaining the legal fiction upon which the Schedule I status of cannabis is based is going to require too great a sacrifice of Minnesotans' fundamental liberties and human rights. It would have been possible to stand up to the bullies with badges and STILL WIN THIS FIGHT---but you let yourself be intimidated, and the victims of those bullies must now once again find the doors of justice closed to them and the face of compassion turned away from them.
Posted by: Oliver Steinberg | May 16, 2014 at 11:13 PM