Search Results: compassionate-care/ (2)

Photo: Loretta Nall
Loretta Nall: “We plan to keep fighting our way through the process”

​An Alabama House committee approved a bill Wednesday that would legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes in the Heart of Dixie.

This is the first time in Alabama history that a medical marijuana bill has advanced out of committee to the House floor.

Patricia Todd (D-Birmingham), who sponsors the bill, said it had no real chance of being approved by both the House and the Senate before this legislative session ends in five days, reports Scott Johnson of the Montgomery Advertiser.
The bill, known as the Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act, is named after a medical marijuana patient with a brain tumor who fought to make the herb legal for medicine in Alabama. Phillips died in 2007 at the age of 38.
Marijuana was the only thing that allowed Phillips to function normally, according to his mother, Jackie Phillips. Without it, she said, Michael had seven or eight seizures a day.
“I could see the difference in him when he smoked and when he didn’t,” Phillips said.

Photo: Loretta Nall
Loretta Nall: “We plan to keep fighting”

​Alabama is the last state many would expect to legalize medical marijuana; after all, the Heart of Dixie isn’t exactly known for its liberal ways.

But one determined group of Southerners there exemplifies the rebel stubbornness for which the state is famous — by refusing to give up their fight for the safe, legal, medicinal use of cannabis.
The brave efforts of Alabamians for Compassionate Care (ACC), ably led by legendary libertarian and former gubernatorial candidate Loretta Nall, have arguably made the state a good bet to be the first former member of the Confederacy to get a medical marijuana law.
For the past several years in a row, ACC has, against all odds, gotten a bill onto the floor of the Alabama Legislature, and 2010 is no exception. House Bill 642, the Michael Phillips Compassionate Care Act is expected to come before the House Judiciary Committee later this month.
Toke of the Town got a chance to chat with Nall about the state of medical marijuana in Alabama.