ROCKINGHAM — Richmond County’s leading advocate for medical cannabis is taking his fight to the campaign trail.
Perry Parks — along with his cousin, Darrell Davis, who is a disabled veteran —plans to attend the Donald Trump rally in Florence, South Carolina tonight, in uniform, to ask the candidate what he plans to do to make cannabis available to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I want to see if he is aware of the disparity in treatment for the veterans,” Parks said Thursday evening. “Half the soldiers can be treated with cannabis, the other half can be arrested for it.”
Parks added the he wants to know if Trump will “stand up to the powers that be and remove cannabis from the controlled substances list…(and) stop the disparity, making cannabis available to patients everywhere.”
The federal Controlled Substances Act lists marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance — alongside heroin, LSD and peyote — which are defined as “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse…(and) are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.”
Parks said that never should have happened.
“It’s not right that my treatment is dictated by drug policy that was skewed from the start,” he said. “Skewed in spite of the evidence to the contrary.”
Trump won’t be the first candidate Parks has quizzed in the current election cycle. He has also approached Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who dropped out of the race this week following a poor showing in the Iowa caucus, and Carly Fiorina, who is still in the running.
The Donald’s views on the issue have changed over the years — and during the campaign season — according to the Washington Post.
At an October political rally in Nevada, Trump said he supports making medical marijuana available for those who are sick and that legalization should be left up to the states, the Post reported, although earlier in the year he opposed legalization.
An April 1990 article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune cites Trump as calling drug enforcement “a joke” and calling for the legalization of drugs.
“We’re losing badly the war on drugs,” he said. “You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.”
He added back then that tax revues from legalization could be spent on drug education.
CANDIDATES ON CANNABIS
The other remaining Republican presidential candidates have differing views on the subject.
According to ontheissues.org, neither Fiorina nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz supports full legalization, but they believe that decision should be left to the individual states.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says he’s open to medicinal use, but thinks the federal government should enforce federal law on states that have legalized recreational use.
Both former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Dr. Ben Carson want to ramp up the war on drugs, though they differ when it comes to medicinal use.
“I think medical use of marijuana in compassionate cases certainly has been useful,” Carson said in a 2014 interview with Fox News. “But recognize that marijuana is what’s known as a gateway drug — a starter for people who move on to heavier drugs.”
Bush, on the other hand, opposed medical marijuana in Florida, as well as treatment for nonviolent offenders.
Hillary Clinton — a former first lady, senator and secretary of state — said in an October Democratic primary debate on CNN that she supports medical marijuana and “the idea that we have got to stop imprisoning people who use marijuana.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders supports the use of medical marijuana and believes states should be left to determine legality. He also believes that prohibition has been a failed policy.
Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, has been advocating the legalization of marijuana since 1999.
“Bad personal decisions should not be criminal if they don’t harm anyone else,” he wrote in the 2012 book “Seven Principles of Good Government.”
“People will always use drugs. We can’t change that,” he continued. “Our real focus should be on reducing death, disease, crime and corruption. These problems are all related to drug prohibition, not drug use. But what I’ve found is that most people base their position on this issue on emotion instead of facts. The truth is that marijuana is safer than alcohol.”
WEED WARRIOR
Parks, who was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, has been using cannabis to treat chronic pain since 2003 after retiring from the National Guard. Prior to using cannabis, he was being treated with injections and pain pills.
“I’m going to continue to do this until I’m forced to stop,” he told the Daily Journal in 2014. “I will not go back to the pills that were slowly killing me.”
He is currently the executive director of the North Carolina Cannabis Patients Network and has been reaching out to politicians on both the state and federal levels to end prohibition, at least for medicinal purposes.
Parks has spoken at medical marijuana conferences across the country and was recently featured in a special edition of Time Magazine and Bruce Barcott’s book “Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America.”
POLLING POT
There are currently 23 states throughout the country — and the District of Columbia — that permit medical cannabis. In 2012, Washington and Colorado legalized recreational use for adults. Recreational marijuana was legalized in D.C. last year.
While North Carolina is not one of the 23 states, it is one of 11 states that allows the use of cannabis oils for the treatment of seizures in children with epilepsy.
In recent years, legislators have quashed several attempts to bring the Tar Heel State into the fold, including a bill in 2015 proposed by Rep. Kelly Alexander, D-Mecklenburg. That bill was shot down within two months of being introduced.
Last January, Public Policy Polling asked North Carolinians, “Do you think doctors should be allowed to prescribe marijuana for medical use or not?”
According to the poll, 70 percent of participants were in favor of the idea, with 20 percent being against it and 10 percent not sure.
When asked, “Do you think use of marijuana should be made legal?” the results were 41 percent yes, 47 percent no and 12 percent not sure.
A similar poll in December by the Civitas Institute showed that 53 percent of those surveyed were in opposition of recreational use and 43 percent were supportive.
LAGGING LEGALIZATION
Alexander told the Daily Journal last year there is at least $700 million in activity involving cannabis across the state — including underground medical users and recreational users — that is not taxed, adding North Carolina could generate $40 million to $50 million in revenue if it went the way of other states, like Colorado.
He said there would be “so many positives from us changing our drug policy.”
“With all the things going on in this world and country right now, it’s a waste of resources going after people using (cannabis) for medical use,” he said.
One of those was Todd Stimson, a Henderson County man convicted last March on five felony drug charges — including two counts of trafficking marijuana and one count of manufacturing.
Stimson ran the Blue Ridge Medical Cannabis Research Corp. and was transparent, showing where he had paid the taxes on his crop and obtained an Art of Healing license from the state.
Parks said he is also planning to attend a rally for Stimson next Wednesday in Raleigh for hearing at the N.C. Court of Appeals.
“This is a tragedy,” he said. “We’ve got a good-hearted, honest citizen who’s being incarcerated…one of millions who don’t deserve it.”
Reach reporter William R. Toler at 910-817-2675 and follow him on Twitter @William_r_Toler.
