Building BLOCK Debuts

Building BLOCK Debuts

Building BLOCK's founders, Christopher Largen and Erin Hildebrandt, were warmly received at the Fourth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Santa Barbara, CA. They spoke on a panel about being survivors of childhood sexual abuse and also patients who have used medical marijuana to relieve symptoms associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), resulting from the abuse. Coordinating the panel, Al Byrne, co-founder of Patients Out of Time spoke about his experiences as a veteran suffering from PTSD.

Erin began, "According to United States Department of Justice statistics, a child is raped every four minutes in this country. That's 15 every hour, 360 every day. It effectively ends their childhood. It breaks their bodies, their minds and their spirits."

Counterpunch covered the conference, reporting that, "Largen, a writer from Denton, Texas, contrasted the punitive treatment of marijuana users in our society with the leniency shown sexual predators. They also went on to say about Erin's presentation, "She pointed out the inherent creepiness of making schoolchildren pee in a cup, "even with the door closed or half closed." It breaks down the child's sense of personal sanctity and provides easy access for the potential predator. "

In a cruelly ironic example of the skewed priorities and twisted politics surrounding medical cannabis, shortly following the event, the FDA was criticized by the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, for their recent attempt to discredit medical marijuan. He wrote, "What is completely wrong about the FDA's position, is that in effect it continues to impede not just the medical use of marijuana but also medical research on marijuana, which could lead to superior therapies that don't involve smoking or getting high at all."

This came right on the heels of the Santa Barbara conference, where George McMahon, Elvy Musikka, and Irv Rosenfeld (3 of 5 citizens who receive their marijuana from Uncle Sam, under the federal Investigative New Drugs program) opened sealed cans of federally sanctioned and regulated medical marijuana. The cannabis was exposed in this landmark event, in order to put to rest specious claims made by Mahmoud ElSohly (the only marijuana cultivator licensed to do so by the FDA, DEA and NIDA) that the cannabis he grows and distributes to patients is free of sticks and seeds.

The patients in this closed federal program are specifically prohibited from consuming federal cannabis by any method other than smoking, while the FDA wails about the "danger" of smoked marijuana. Sick patients seeking medical treatment are being provided a medicine that is of poor quality, encased in paper and glue resins, and forced to inhale burning plant material, in spite of the glaringly omitted fact that there are safer ways to consume cannabis than by smoking.

Additionally, though our government has claimed that Angel Raich (Raich v. Ashcroft) poses a risk to all Americans by using cannabis grown and produced locally to her, and in a safer manner and of higher quality, than that which ElSohly grows, she must be prohibited from doing so because someday, somehow, her cannabis might cross state lines. All the while, this same U.S. government forces legal medical marijuana patient George McMahon to cross state lines, in order to obtain his state-sanctioned marijuana.

Thinking back over the conference, Erin reflected, "I think I can speak for both Chris and myself, when I say we were thrilled to be a part of this groundbreaking, historic event. Al Byrne and Patients Out of Time showed the world that patients who use therapeutic cannabis are your friends, family members, colleagues and neighbors. We're not criminals, and it's time for our government to stop treating us as if we're deserving of persecution and punishment for daring to get sick."