Thank you to the show Parenthood for your portrayal of someone becoming a medical marijuana patient.
During the Thanksgiving holiday, my procrastination on home projects
led me to getting caught up on the fall season of a few shows, including
NBC’s Parenthood.
I was moved to watch the main characters Kristina and Adam Braverman
and their family struggling with her cancer and all that the disease
brings. At my patients’ advocacy organization, Americans for Safe Access (ASA),
we see thousands of our members and families embark on a similar
struggle. The story of Kristina Braverman’s cancer spills into several
story lines as the family experiences the news in their own ways.
In the episode "One More Weekend with You," aired November 20,
Kristina Braverman’s character, played by Monica Potter, tries to stay
strong for her family, but becomes violently ill after receiving
chemotherapy. Her husband Adam, played by Peter Krause, finds her on the
bathroom floor and panics. He cleans her up and then packs all the kids
into the car to visit his musician-producer brother, the first person
he could think of who might have marijuana. His brother produces some
from his sock drawer and warns that it was not the same pot from when
they were kids, it was "genetically engineered" (a common
misunderstanding of the decades of modern breeding of the plant for
human consumption).
In the next scene Kristina Braverman’s character is laying in bed
smoking a joint. She is visibly better. She says it is strong and puts
it out, saying "Save that for later." Her husband asked if it helped,
and he is visibly relieved to see her smile. She acknowledges the relief
she’s found from marijuana, and says her husband will need to get "a
lot more." She settles back into her pillow and finally sleeps.
This episode reflects a situation that thousands of cancer patients
and their caregivers are experiencing, but not always with the same
ending. As a medical cannabis advocate I see this story play out in many
ways. Many caregivers don’t have a pot-smoking brother and instead find
themselves asking for marijuana from friends, family members or even
their children. Over the past decades I have heard heartbreaking stories
of people having no idea where to look and who to ask for this
medicine.
But even for those patients who can find a supply of marijuana for
their needs, many questions still arise. What if their source runs out?
What if their source gets into a legal entanglement? What if there is
mold or mildew on the medicine? What should they do if they live in
public housing?
These experiences and these questions are what voters and legislators
are trying to answer by passing laws in 18 states and the District of
Columbia. These laws don’t make marijuana medicine — cannabis is a
plant that has been used medicinally for thousands of years. The laws
are an attempt to reconcile the legal system with the reality of sick
patients seeking effective medicine. For patients and government
officials in medical cannabis states, it is now federal law that is
creating the most significant hurdle.
As 2012 comes to a close, there is a focus on what the government can
accomplish in the coming years. As Americans become more aware of the
struggles patients must go through in order to find relief, it is time
for the federal government to bridge the gap, with science and
overwhelming public support on one side and our current, harmful federal
policy on medical cannabis. Instead of denying there is any medical use
for cannabis, trying to dismantle state programs that are creating
access, and throwing providers like Montanan Chris Williams
in jail for life, the federal government should be figuring out how to
get doctors to recommend this treatment before their patients end up on
the bathroom floor.
This is not the first time we have seen medical cannabis as a
sideline topic on television or in the movies and it won’t be the last.
The arts tell the stories of our society, and with one million legal
medical cannabis patients and over one hundred million Americans living
in states with medical marijuana laws, there are many stories to tell.
I’ve told my own story of becoming a medical cannabis patient and
struggling with a lack of safe access to medicine in Washington D.C.,
most recently to the Washington Post.
If you are a medical cannabis patient or caregiver, I invite you to
tell your story in the comments, and to bravely tell your story to your
friends, family, and to your local, state and federal representatives.
Another way to get the word out is by joining Americans for Safe Access in our effort to change public health laws across the country.
Join me as well in thanking the writer of the Parenthood episode
that dealt with medical cannabis, Monica Henderson, for her thoughtful
portrayal of this difficult experience. We will encourage Hollywood to
tell more of these stories. Cancer is not going away, and neither is
cannabis. What we can change is the federal government’s lack of
compassion, and telling our stories is one way to do that.
