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When Ricardo Pereyda returned home from serving in the U.S. Army Military Police Corps in the Iraq war, he found himself facing an unimaginably difficult impediment to living a normal, healthy life. Like so many other veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Some of the most common symptoms of PTSD include recurring memories, nightmares, insomnia, and feeling emotionally numb, angry, depressed and irritable. Pereyda says that marijuana helps him cope with many of the most negative symptoms of PTSD.
"There are a hundred scenarios in my head at any time and using cannabis quiets that, it allows me to go through my day being productive," Pereyda said in an interview with a local news station. “I have seen what war is. Indeed, I brought that war home with me and have been fighting for my life ever since. It’s an everyday battle.”
Unfortunately, too many of Mr. Pereyda’s peers have not been able to find any form of relief from PTSD, and have taken their own lives. In fact, more U.S. military veterans have been lost to suicide than to combat in the past decade. This fact prompted Dr. Sue Sisley, faculty at the University of Arizona who practices internal medicine and psychiatry, to spend the past few years of her life trying to to determine if others could find relief from PTSD symptoms by using marijuana, just as Pereyda has. After over three years of work and advocacy on her part, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved Dr. Sisley’s proposed study to determine how medical marijuana can help veterans suffering from PTSD. And it is specifically aimed at those men and women who have not responded to other forms of treatment.
Now that the hurdle of FDA approval has been cleared, HB 2333 was introduced in Arizona House of Representatives by Rep. Ethan Orr (R-Tucson) to use the state’s medical marijuana fund to pay for the study. The medical marijuana fund is generated by the annual $150 fee that medical marijuana card holders in Arizona pay in order to access their medicine. It passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 52-5, last week and was sent assigned to the Arizona Senate education committee.
The chair of the education committee, Senator Kimberly Yee (R-Phoenix), has refused to assign the bill to a hearing, thereby preventing the bill from being voted upon. Yee’s opposition to the bill was seen as a crushing defeat to veterans who are suffering from PTSD. "When they heard this week Kimberly Yee was refusing to allow this bill on her education committee agenda they were astounded, they were angered," said Dr. Sisley. Yee has said that she opposes the bill because its backers are using the medical marijuana study as an excuse to advance a marijuana legalization agenda in Arizona, and said the she prefers to use the state’s medical marijuana fund to pay for public service announcements urging Arizona teens and children not to use marijuana.
Yee’s stance has prompted outrage from many veterans groups and medical professionals in Arizona and has also sparked the ire of local student activists in the state, who plan to spend the rest of the legislative session lobbying Yee and her Senate colleagues to pass HB 2333. “I can’t think of many things that are more morally reprehensible than denying potential relief to veterans who are suffering and taking their own lives,” said Sarah Saucedo, President of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) at Arizona State University. “It’s just wrong, and it doesn’t take a finely calibrated sense of morality to see that. I plan to do what I can to convince Senator Yee of that fact.”
Chad Flannery, also an SSDP activist and student at ASU, served in combat during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “I know what these veterans are dealing with when they come home because I went through it too. I’m still going through it.” Flannery said. “No person can be expected to have a high quality of life when they are trying to deal with PTSD. And it’s not just veterans,” he added, referring to the consensus among doctors that any person who experiences a traumatic or violent event such as rape, robbery or an accident can suffer from PTSD. “Are we really going to deny relief to those millions of Americans who don’t respond to other treatments?” Flannery says he looks forward to asking Senator Yee that very question face to face when he visits the state capitol this week.
In the past three years, since Dr. Sisley first proposed her study, 25,000 veterans have committed suicide. If this study fails to receive funding due to being blocked by Senator Yee, Dr. Sisley will be left to wonder how many more vets might end their lives that might have benefited from the results of her study. “In terms of medical marijuana’s efficacy in treating PTSD, we have numerous anecdotal reports from our combat vets and even from other first responders like police and firefighters talking about how valuable marijuana has been in managing their symptoms” Sisley says. "Nobody’s suggesting this is a cure for PTSD, but it does seem to be extremely useful in managing day-to-day symptoms," she said.
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