Greener Country

Oklahomans for Health fights to bring medical marijuana to a vote

Former state representative and 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe Dorman recently endorsed Oklahomans for Health, a medical marijuana legalization advocacy group. The newly-minted board member said the group’s petition for a statutory change that would legalize medical marijuana without qualifying conditions “will bring to a vote of the people the ability to have medical marijuana as a treatment plan, to allow doctors to work with their patients.”

Dorman’s support for medical marijuana began in 2014, when he met Tulsa mom Brittany Hardy. Hardy’s daughter, Jaqie Warrior, was diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome at five months old. The syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy, causes relentless pediatric seizures and developmental impairment. Studies show that marijuana is capable of reducing and in some cases eliminating seizures. CBD oil—then illegal in Oklahoma—was the ideal treatment for Jaqie.

Because she couldn’t find the treatment her daughter needed here, Hardy moved to Colorado to find it. It worked.

“That’s when I really first took [medical marijuana] as a serious issue,” Dorman said. “When Brittany sat down with me and told me what was going on with Jaqie it became clear CBD oil was the only way to treat her child.”

In the past year, not one but two cannabidiol (CBD) oil bills breezed through the Oklahoma House floor. House Bill 2154 opened the way for children under 18 to gain access to CBD therapy, and was signed into legislation by Gov. Mary Fallin last April. In January, House Bill 2835 – expanding CBD oil access to adults – passed on the floor and is currently headed to the Senate.

For children like Jaqie, this legislation is life-changing. 

“I’ve met [Jaqie] before and after [CBD oil treatment],” said Chelsea Marlett-Kennedy, another Oklahomans for Health advocate. “She went from being pretty well catatonic to smiling, joyful, enjoying her life. Before, she couldn’t even smile.” 

But, Dorman believes Oklahoma’s CBD bills haven’t gone far enough, thus his support of Oklahomans for Health and their push for the legalization of medical marijuana. He is careful to point out he does not support recreational marijuana legalization, but believes legislators should stay far away from constituents’ private medical decisions, like the one Hardy was forced to make, which took her away from her friends and family to another state.

“I trust a doctor in deciding what’s best for a patient, far more than a politician,” he said.

Other Options

Marlett-Kennedy has lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. She struggles to manage her pain without narcotics. 

“I would like to have [medical marijuana] as a legal option to treat pain,” she said.

Marlett-Kennedy joined Oklahomans for Health at its inception in 2014, and volunteers as a co-coordinator in Oklahoma City, because she wants an alternative to “120 Lortabs a month”—a controlled-substance prescription medication that can easily lead to addiction.

“I’ve had friends go down that road, and I don’t want to go there,” she said. “I’m not on narcotics now and don’t use [marijuana] because it’s illegal.”

Medical marijuana can’t cure her lupus or RA, “but it can help,” she said.

Chronic pain sufferers like Marlett-Kennedy say CBD treatments aren’t enough because they must contain no more than three-tenths of one percent of THC, which does not significantly ease pain, and can only be given if the patient has a qualifying condition such as pediatric epilepsy or cancer. 

“The problem with CBD- only treatments is it gives patients access to only part of the plant,” Marlett-Kennedy said. “Most patients need access to the whole plant because one part is not enough.”

Yet many Oklahoma legislators are wary of allowing access to THC, the psychoactive component of the marijuana plant; so while high-free CBD oil is now legal with qualifying conditions, Oklahomans are still denied access to the whole plant and its possible medical benefits.

Enter Oklahomans for Health. The group filed a petition (State Question 787) on Monday, April 11, to legalize medical marijuana without qualifying conditions. Now, they wait for the paperwork to be verified by the Oklahoma Secretary of State and Oklahoma Attorney General. 

In early May, the 90-day race to collect 66,000 signatures will begin. 

It’s a tall order for an all-volunteer operation like Oklahomans for Health. “We’re not rich or anything,” said Frank Grove, a Tulsa-based founding board member of the group. “We have hundreds of donations from individuals, but we have no corporate backers. No out-of-state donors. This is all Oklahomans. No big money here.”

Try, Try Again

Back in 2014, Oklahomans for Health was a fledgling coalition of like-minded volunteers, none of whom had run a large-scale petition initiative before. They came out of the gate with a proposed amendment to the state constitution, a move that required 125,000 signatures to earn a spot on the ballot.

Grove described their 2014 effort as a “fly by the seat of your pants” learning process.

Though they fell short of their goal, the group garnered more than 70,000 signatures “without a lot of organization,” Marlett-Kennedy said. “Basically, we hit the ground running.”

“It was everyone’s first time then,” Grove said. A scientist by education and political activist by nature, Grove became involved with marijuana reform “as a matter of principal.”

“I know it’s hard to consider 2014 a success since we did not get the required amount of signatures,” Paul said in an April 11 statement released by Oklahomans for Health. “But what we accomplished in that year gives us great hope for this petition drive. We completely changed the conversation in Oklahoma.”

Changing the Conversation

Chip Paul formed Oklahomans for Health after years of working with the sick and dying as the owner of Right at Home, an in-home care service for the elderly. 

“We were with so many people who were dying,” Paul said in a 2014 interview with TTV. “You’ve got somebody dying from cancer who is not being treated with medical marijuana, and they’re addicted to opiates, they’re not themselves, they’re not rational. Mom is now this lump that just lays there in the bed and is going to die soon.” 

Paul sold Right at Home and started Palm Beach Vapors, an electronic cigarette franchise concept. Potential franchisees often asked Paul about the possibility of selling vaporizers marketed to marijuana users, which led him to start thinking about legalization from a business standpoint.

“It occurred to me, why is no one doing this? It’s clear the legislature never going to deal with this, so why hasn’t anyone put forth a petition?”

Not just any petition will do, however. Their first petition attempted to change the Oklahoma constitution. This time, with the assistance of Dorman and others, Oklahomans for Health drew up new language for a statutory change, which means fewer required signatures.

“We’re pretty confident we’re gonna knock it out of the park this year,” Grove said. “The numbers are right. We’ve got political support. There’s so much activism this year.”

Paul is also confident in Dorman’s support because his politics play well with the group’s goals. “Joe took on addiction issues, end-of-life care and health care reform as missions in his days of legislative service,” said Chip Paul, founder of Oklahomans for Health. “So we are very pleased that he has seen the value of marijuana as a medicine and how it can assist with these critical health issues.”

Clearing the Way

However, a statute change isn’t ironclad, no matter how well it does in a general election. “It can be changed by the legislature with a bill that’s filed in an upcoming session,” Dorman said. “But we certainly hope they won’t water down something that is a vote of the people.”

To prevent this possibility, Oklahomans for Health included anti-tampering language that would protect their statutory change as well as ease the petition process for the future. The group seeks to extend the time allotted for gathering signatures from 90 days to one year, as well as to require a supermajority – two-thirds – to alter legislation for two years after a petition passes.

“This will give grassroots movements more capability to run petition initiatives [while also] preventing our overbearing legislature from repealing them or something,” Grove said.

“It reforms the petition process,” Marlett-Kennedy said. “It’ll give people a chance to be really hands-on with the law.” 

Other groups are getting hands-on with the law this election season, too. Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform has filed a marijuana decriminalization petition using “the exact same strategy” as Oklahomans for Health, said Grove.

Their petition offers a statutory change to lower the penalties for drug possession including methamphetamine and marijuana, minor property crimes and shoplifting, as well as nonviolent felonies. 

The petitions are two sides of the same leaf. Oklahomans for Health approaches marijuana legislation to allow patients access to the plant’s medical benefits; while Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform attempts to loosen Prohibition-like drug laws to reduce prison overcrowding and ruined lives. Both are endorsed by the ACLU, Oklahoma Policy Institute, and Family & Children’s Services, among others.

Oklahoma maintains the nation’s highest rate of incarceration for women, and third highest rate for men. And it’s been this way in large part because of the severe penalties the state inflicts upon people for possessing or distributing the drug.

The goal is to stop “destroying people’s lives over nothing,” Grove said.

Going Off-Label

Oklahomans for Health’s 2014 petition restricted medical marijuana to 37 qualifying medical conditions. Their decision to drop the qualifying conditions this time around is meant to give Oklahoma doctors the freedom to prescribe medical marijuana as they see fit.

“Off-label uses for prescriptions are everywhere,” Grove said. “If the doctor thinks something works for your condition, they give it to you. Cannabis is a good anti-inflammatory. There are no side effects, no overdose possibility. It could apply to so many conditions and to palliative care. … California has [qualifying conditions] but they also have a clause that covers everything else. We’re not the first ones to do this. But we would be the first southern state.”

Dumping the Stigma

Say Oklahomans for Health collects the required signatures, and voters overwhelmingly approve State Question 787. Will skeptical doctors prescribe the long-maligned plant to their patients, even if it’s legal?

“With some doctors, we’ll need to educate them and get rid of the old way of thinking,” Dorman said. “There is a great stigma with this … With more research, more knowledge and with what we’re seeing in patients, this will be one of those issues that moves forward with time.”

Grove, too, thinks legalized medical marijuana, and its regular prescription, is “inevitable.” 

“But for the people who have cancer now, telling them it’s inevitable is not really much of an answer,” he said.