Proposition 64

Back in the 1960’s the very thought of legal marijuana in the United States was virtually unheard of, taboo even. Now over 50 years later, California along with four other states in the union will be voting on the legalization of recreational marijuana use, a measure that has been proven to work in other states that has already legalized it.  Marijuana has always been attributed to rising high school dropout rates, the criminal underworld, and other negative elements by propaganda put forth by politicians and law enforcement agencies. What they tend to ignore are the facts that marijuana is one of the most harmless drugs available when compared to the tobacco and  alcohol industries. With the measure proving to be a total success in other states it would be in the best of interest for this state to take advantage of this proposition. The legalization many citizens will have more access to medical marijuana as means to cope with illnesses, businesses related to the industry will soar creating more jobs and boosting the economy, and the taxes implemented on sales will go towards police departments, scientific research, and improving the very livelihood of California residents.

Proposition 215 was passed in 1996, making California the first state to legalize the use of medical marijuana, with a physician’s approval of course. This paved the way for how state governments across the nation looked at the benefits of marijuana use with several copycat ballots proposed and passed in many other states after Proposition 215. Although patients who were approved for medical cannabis and carried the necessary licenses to use it were still finding themselves getting cited and even arrested by law enforcement if they were suspected of taking advantage of the drug. “Many legal patients have been raided or arrested for having dubious recommendations, for growing amounts that police deem excessive, on account of neighbors complaints, etc. Once patients have been charged, it is up to the courts to pass judgment on their medical claim”(Gieringer). Patients live in constant fear that police are targeting them even when they are within legal jurisdiction. With the passing of Proposition 64 this paranoia will cease to exist and patients will have more focus on dealing with their illnesses.

Colorado has seen a surge of economic growth in the marijuana industry since its legalization of the drug in 2012. Many up and coming entrepreneurs have found themselves thriving in a business that has been once viewed as distasteful and using their newfound success to better themselves and others. Gone are the shady drug dealers on street corners selling buds compared to all the educated business owners with the necessary licenses and state credentials needed to grow, sell, and distribute marijuana to their consumers all the while paying state taxes. “Now these newly minted moguls are providing jobs, paying taxes (an estimated $134 million this year) and navigating the strict regulations and ambiguities of an industry that— while illegal on the federal level—may rack up $1 billion in sales this year”(Dodd). With all that money being generated into the economy and all the jobs being created it’s difficult to comprehend how people are still opposed to this idea. California can see this potential economical success if given the chance on Election day.

Proposition 64 would propose a sales tax on all marijuana sales in comparison to the current taxes implemented on all tobacco sales. The money collected from these taxes would go towards programs such as medical marijuana research at California universities, developing new protocols for law enforcement agencies, and grants for health departments for use in drug education and treatment programs. These taxes have been proven to work and has actually exceeded expectations in the states where marijuana use is legalized. “Colorado marijuana tax revenues now greatly exceed original estimates of $70 million per year. Collections of $56 million in calendar year 2014 grew to $113 million in calendar year 2015, and will likely exceed $140 million in calendar year 2016”(Henchman). However, Colorado is seeking to lower the sales tax on marijuana sales dued to the rise of black market sales which is something that Proposition 64 has taken into consideration. It’s estimated the taxes collected from sales would bring in revenue ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars to one billion dollars annually for California, surpassing tobacco and alcohol tax revenues. This proposal is certainly an opportunity that this state would greatly benefit from.

With every idea that is proposed there will always be a counter argument to go against it and Proposition 64 is no different. The legalization of marijuana has always been met with opposition ranging from law enforcement to parents who argue that their children would be influenced negatively by cannabis. One of the main counter arguments against Proposition 64 has simply led down to the welfare of children and their potential futures under the legalization. Arguments range from children being able to walk into any establishment and mistakenly confuse pot brownies with regular brownies thus leading to an accidental overdose or even death. Another argument is that children will be bombarded by advertisements showcasing marijuana use and products, leading to eventual use that the parents will have no control over. These assumptions are completely absurd as Proposition 64 has taken these concerns into consideration and proposes plans for safe usage for adults 21 and over only. By following the trials and errors the other states went through such as Colorado during their process of legalized recreational use, our state government should have no issues of regulating proper guidelines. “…shortcomings and challenges exist, and they cannot be overlooked or dismissed. Just as important, however, is that the state government has met the most basic standard of success: it has done what Amendment Sixty-Four instructed it to do. Colorado has effectively created regulatory and administrative apparatuses that facilitate the legal retail marijuana market”(Hudak). While there may be few cases of accidental overdoses or usage by children it’s ultimately up to the parents to teach their children right from wrong and to keep their recreational marijuana out of their children’s hands.

Proposition 64 will not only be a historical vote here in California but also for the entire country as other states are looking at us before making propositions of their own. If passed, we will be the biggest state in the union to legalize marijuana and with that the largest revenue gained from marijuana sales taxes. This proposition would be a proving ground for other states to follow and copy our regulations and guidelines towards recreational use. Some states might even start off with legal medical marijuana, benefiting those battling with their illnesses. Try to take advantage of the rising success of the marijuana industry and the jobs it’ll help create. Perhaps they’ll see the enormous amount of revenue gained from sale taxes implemented on all marijuana sales and use it towards improving their state. Whatever the case may be California will be a shining example of how we must throw away our assumptions and take advantage of an idea that will benefit our state for years to come.   

Works Cited

Gieringer, Dale. “Patients’ Guide to Medical Marijuana Law in California.” canorml.org,  http://www.canorml.org/medical-marijuana/patients-guide-to-california-lawAccessed 25 October 2016.

Dodd, Johnny and Bane, Vickie. “Marijuana Millionaires.” People, Vol. 82 Issue 4, 28 Jul. 2014, p82-85. 4p. EBSCOhost. Accessed 25 October 2016.

Henchman, Joseph and Scarboro, Morgan. “Marijuana Legalization and Taxes: Lessons for Other States from Colorado and Washington.” taxfoundation.org, http://taxfoundation.org/article/marijuana-legalization-and-taxes-lessons-other-states-colorado-and-washington. Accessed 25 October 2016.

Hudak, John. “Colorado’s Rollout of Legal Marijuana Is Succeeding: A Report on the State’s Implementation of Legalization.” Case Western Reserve Law Review,  Vol. 65  Issue 3, p649-687. 39p. EBSCOhost. Accessed 25 October 2016.  

 

The Invisible Wound

In Grace W. Yan’s, (PhD, ABPP)  medical article, “The Invisible Wound: Moral Injury and It’s Impact on the Health of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom Veterans”, she explains through extensive research and various studies that herself and her team conducted on a number of volunteering OEF/OIF veterans that moral injury impacts a veterans overall health and their providing healthcare doesn’t take that into consideration. Moral injury as Yan defines it is “-damage done to an individual’s core morality or moral worldview as a result of a stressful or traumatic life event”(451). To elaborate on the subject, she explains such events that were witnessed by the service member could completely contradict whatever moral beliefs or expectations they believed in thus leading to severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although in her studies she finds that physical issues such as chronic pain and obesity along with PTSD has been documented in OEF/OIF veterans and proper treatment has been administered for these medical issues some variables such as shame, guiltiness, and existential struggles have been largely ignored during treatment. These symptoms tend to linger long after the service member’s separation from the military and unfortunately lead to increased suicidal tendencies(451).

Religion or spirituality plays a major role in certain veterans mental well-beings, Yan claims. She reports that the staff of various Veterans Health Administration medical centers “feel unequipped to deal with patient’s spiritual needs and that support for addressing veteran’s spiritual concerns are not in place…”(452). She claims that veterans who are religious tend to lose their faith overtime due to the traumatic events that they’ve experienced and the VA has very few spiritual based health programs available for them. With the loss of faith, veterans have an increased chance of falling into depression which affects their physical and mental health. Despite this, Yan explains that spirituality and moral injury are different from each and a moral injury can occur in both a spiritual veteran and one who’s not.

To gather data for her study into moral injury, Yan searched for volunteers that served in the OEF/OIF conflicts through the VA system. Participants were gathered at the New Jersey VA offices through flyers and letters mailed to their residences. Whoever replied back with consent to participate in the study were then mailed a questionnaire along with instructions and a description of the study they were partaking in. The questionnaire contained questions relating to a veteran’s age, sex, military history, combat exposure, and physical and mental health. Yan developed a system called The Integration of Stressful Life Events Scale(ISLES) which she used to measure “the extent to which an individual has adaptively integrated a stressful life experience into his or her broader life narrative”(453). In other words, it’s asking how a veteran has coped with PTSD they might have experienced due to combat throughout their life. Through the data that was collected after all the questionnaires were returned, Yan discovered that moral injury had a severe impact on both physical and mental health of veterans that have it. She also finds out that veterans do not report most physical and mental problems when they undergo a health assessment prior to separation from active duty. This has led Yan to believe these assessments are not designed to provide the most accurate diagnosis on a veteran’s health due to the veteran not being able to report such issues until years after separation as the weight of their self-guilt grows throughout their lives.

In her study, Yan observed that some veterans of the OEF/OIF conflicts do not recognize their PTSD and medical issues as the source of their problems. Rather, she argues that veterans are convinced their relationship with their God and their very existence was affected due to the traumatic events they’ve experienced. Through this Yan suggests that more studies on moral injury are needed in order for veteran medical providers are better equipped to handle these issues. In her closing argument Yan states “Our nation’s veterans would be best served by health care providers who recognize the importance understanding the Veteran as an existential whole, and not just a ‘problem list’ of symptoms to resolve”(457). Yan emphasizes that medical providers must see veterans as actual human beings rather than a list of symptoms and injuries that need to be resolved. Grace Yan hopes through her research moral injuries and it’s related symptoms will be brought to light and be thoroughly researched for the sake of our nation’s military veterans.

Grace, Yan W. “The Invisible Wound: Moral Injury and It’s Impact on the Health of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom Veterans” Military Medicine.  May 2016, Vol. 181 Issue 5, p451-458. 

Twenty-Two Lives a Day

Ben was only twenty-four years old when he took his own life. It came as a shock to me and anyone else that knew him. The day I was told of his tragic suicide is a day that will forever haunt me.  It started off as any other day serving in the United States Navy. I climbed out of bed after resetting my alarm, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and started my morning routine to start work at 0630 hours. I donned my uniform, strapped my boots, put on my cover, and headed out to make the twenty minute drive to base. During the drive, as I was fighting to keep my grogginess from closing my eyes, I couldn’t help but notice something didn’t seem right with the world. It was a feeling of  despair and sadness that somehow buried itself into the pit of my stomach. The feeling wasn’t new obviously, every human has experienced this sort of emotion at some point in their life, but the odd thing was I hadn’t the slightest idea why I felt this way. Nothing had transpired the day or even the week before to garner such powerful emotions to swell up inside me. I started to panic, on this usually normal drive through the Central Valley countryside at six in the morning, panicking about something that came suddenly out of the blue without warning. Before I knew it, I was showing my identification card to the gate guard and parking outside the hangar where my command worked out of. I headed straight to the restrooms to splash cold water on my face to get a hold of myself. “You’re freaking out over nothing!”, I mentally told myself, “There’s nothing wrong, get over it!”. Even though mentally screaming at myself seemed to help quite a bit I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened. Either way, I had a job to do and I couldn’t spend my time in the restroom trying to figure it out.

The morning came and went as the command and I started out normal work routine. Working tends to help me get worries off my mind as I came to find out. The work schedule was particularly heavy that day so there was plenty of work to go around and I somewhat forgot about the random emotional trauma which transpired earlier in the day. Everything seemed to be normal for the most part, that is until lunch time rolled around. I remember it very clearly as the news broke out throughout the command. I was sitting at a work desk eating my lunch as one of my coworkers ran out the shop, face covered with both hands. Loud murmurs coming from the work-center next to us, some sounded shocked, some scared, and some choked up with emotion. “Oh no,” I thought, “something terrible has happened.” Not even a second after I finished that thought another co-worker came up to me and said something I find difficult to accept even to this day. “Ben’s dead.” he said with tears running down his face, “Ben died last night”.  I stared at him, at loss for words. Ben? The same Ben that I hung out with all those days back when we lived in the barracks? The same Ben who use tell jokes and make everyone’s day a little bit better? The Ben who had recently separated from the military to marry his girlfriend and move back to his hometown? “He killed himself.”, my coworker continued, “Last night, he killed himself.” That feeling of despair and extreme sadness returned in full force but I managed to say out of anger, “You better not be joking.” With a hand that was shaking, my co-worker  pointed to his face and exclaimed, “Does it look like I’m joking?”. That’s when it clicked, those feelings I had earlier that day, those horrible emotions that arose out of nowhere. Somehow in someway I sensed something terrible had happened even before I knew what it was. I sat there in disbelief, in absolute silence as the outside world became a blur. Ben was supposed to be happily married and enjoying life outside of the military. How could it have come to this?

When I returned home that day I took a shot of Sailor Jerry’s, which was his favorite, to honor him. After, I reflective all the good times we had together. Playing video games in the barracks lounge, going bar hopping in Waikiki,  and playing beer pong in Fallon were just a few of the memories that surfaced. It was surreal to say the least; having someone you know and loved suddenly taken away from you.  In the days that followed many questions arose out of his suicide. What compelled him to do it? Why didn’t anyone stop him? Why didn’t he reach out for help? As it turned out he recently lost his job, was on the verge of total bankruptcy, and his wife was also threatening to divorce him. Life outside the military wasn’t really going well for him so he decided to end it all. Just like that.

Where was the help and the support he was promised once he left the military? It’s an extreme change in one’s lifestyle while transitioning from the military to the civilian world. Some are not as prepared for it as others. The Navy makes its service members who are separating  to take a week long class that teaches service members the basics of living as a civilian again. I took the class myself when I was transitioning and to be honest, it was helpful in some areas but were very vague in others. On the last day of the class I left even more confused than when it started. At that point I was seriously reconsidering on separating as I was uncertain if I would be able to support myself in the civilian world. Without a doubt, I’m assured Ben was feeling the same way. Now it’s been seven months since the day I received my DD-214 and I still have my doubts. Is there really support out there that I can rely on or will they leave me in the dust like they did to Ben? Ben and thousands of other veterans who served this country with pride have taken their lives because the support just isn’t available for them. Twenty-two lives are lost each and everyday due to this problem. In the end, the only form of  support our government gave to Ben was the free tombstone that marks his grave. I honestly feel it is time for a serious change in the way our government handles our veterans.

Does America really “support the troops”?

You’ve might have heard the statement “support the troops” or “God bless our soldiers” or something along the lines of that. It’s been taught in our schools, mentioned during church sermons, overheard in televised speeches, and read on social media. This ideology has been implemented in our minds and has become a part of what we call the American culture. In other terms, it’s just the American way of life. Sure, not all citizens have the same ideal and some even downright despise our military for the various war crimes they’ve committed over the years or so they say. Other than those few naysayers, a majority of Americans say they support the military and a few who were surveyed by CNN/ORC would even want our government to send more troops into battle.

What most Americans don’t take into consideration however is the sacrifices the service member is going to have to make. While most go on with their daily lives the service member is forced to say their goodbyes to their love ones as they prepare to go to war. The service member is then gone for months at a time, defending the freedom and democracy that America holds so dearly to heart. After a year or more overseas the service member will hopefully come back physically unharmed into the arms of their love ones as the American population would come to respect not only their sacrifice but also their dedication and honor in defending the homeland; that is a given fact. But what about  events that transpire after the homecoming or even after the member leaves the service? The PTSD episodes, the alcoholism, the drug abuse, the domestic violence against family members, and the suicides that unfortunately happen twenty times a day according to a recent study conducted by the Department of Veteran Affairs. The average American wouldn’t see those issues being mentioned on the media mainstream.

The truth is, nobody likes listening to negativity especially when it involves the very strength this country depends on in its time of need. Americans view the military as an unstoppable force; the strongest in the world perhaps. It’s hard to believe that with all this love and support that, based off of an article from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, there are close to forty thousand homeless veterans sleeping in America’s streets on any given night.It’s hard to believe that while many want our men and women in uniform to come home some service members would rather go back. The feelings of disconnection from society and the missing sense of self-worth make many veterans according to Sebastian Junger’s new book “Tribe” wish they were back on deployment.  There are charities and various other programs made available to both active duty and veterans alike to help cope with some of these issues. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) or The American Legion are fine examples but there are “support” groups that take advantage of veterans. Take the Wounded Warrior Project scandal for example, a supposedly non-profit organization aiming to help support veterans and their families but instead spent most of the donations on lavish company retreats which was exploited by CBS News. How is that for supporting the troops?

Granted, there are Americans that stand by that statement and actually do help in any way they can, those are the true supporters. Not the keyboard warriors on social media who say they do only to turn a blind eye when they see a homeless veteran standing on a street corner begging for food. Support comes from actions, not words.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ― Ernest Hemingway

I chose this quote due to the fact that I’ve been to his house in Key West, FL where it was home to many six-toe cats that descended from his original pet cats. I also chose this quote because I personally thought it was the most realistic advice about writing that I’ve ever read. He basically describes what writing is; you sit down and pour your soul, emotions, wisdom, and your point of view of the world onto the paper and you don’t let any outside forces sway you into the wrong direction. It’s your writing and your writing alone, don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. I’ve always found it difficult to put my thoughts into words as I was always worried that I would be judged or criticized on my writing. I’m planning to put those assumptions aside as I start my first year of college and through this it will be easier for me to succeed.