Veteran and farmer Steve Acheson would love to be able to grow his own marijuana, a plant he says allowed him to replace numerous prescribed medications.
Steve Acheson spent almost a year in Iraq with the U.S. Army as the personal Humvee driver for a colonel. After completing more than 400 missions, he was in an accident that crushed his vertebrae, requiring surgery and subsequently numerous prescriptions.
“I was very heavily medicated on pills for a while through both the Army and the VA, and I just couldn’t function anymore,” Acheson says. “I finally found medicinal cannabis and it was like a light switch for me. The first time I tried it, I realized right away that I could replace every medication I had been taking with one thing.”
Since leaving active duty in 2008 Acheson has been running the Waunakee-based Peacefully Organic Produce, which trains and employs veterans in how to operate a CSA, or community supported agriculture. His work has been awarded grants from the USDA, Farmer Veteran Coalition and AgrAbilty.
Despite his success in farming, Acheson is not allowed to grow the plant he’s come to rely on to treat his injury. And he’s tired of being a criminal for using the only medicine he considers safe, effective and natural.
“If I had the legislation in place, I could grow it myself and wouldn’t have to rely on pharmaceutical companies and the VA to provide me with medication that comes with umpteen side effects and medications to counter the side effects of the other medication,” Acheson says.
Acheson, as a member of Veterans for Compassionate Care, is urging the Legislature to legalize medical cannabis in Wisconsin. It remains a tough sell in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which has shown little interest in legalization.
But advocates aren’t giving up.
Twenty-eight states, including neighboring Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan, allow people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Eight states have also legalized pot for recreational use.
Carolyn Fath
“People shouldn’t have to break the law to go out and get something that is going to help them...deal with a condition.” — Sen. Jon Erpenbach
State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton), author of the Compassionate Cannabis Care Act, says it’s time to stop making criminals out of Wisconsin residents who use marijuana for medical reasons.
“People shouldn’t have to break the law to go out and get something that is going to help them or someone in their family deal with a condition,” Erpenbach says.
Erpenbach introduced the bill in previous legislative sessions, but it’s failed to get beyond a committee hearing. He remains hopeful the Senate will eventually consider it.
“It’s one of those things you keep introducing every year to keep talking about it, and at some point it will become law in this state,” Erpenbach says. “Medical marijuana will be the law at some point; hopefully it will be sooner than later.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said earlier this year that he’s open to the idea.
However, the bill has never made much progress in the Health and Human Services Committee, chaired by Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield). Vukmir, who did not respond to Isthmus for a request for comment, has been a powerful opponent. In a 2009 hearing, she called the proposal “nothing more than a ruse for you to use toward full legalization of marijuana.”
Erpenbach denies that is the case. The legislation outlines specific conditions that would qualify for use, requires that a doctor prescribe the marijuana, and mandates state regulation of all dispensaries, he says. Although he supports legalizing pot for recreational use if voters approve, he doubts that will happen anytime soon.
“We can’t even have a debate among Democrats and Republicans and the governor on medical marijuana, so recreational marijuana, if it ever happens, I think is a long way away,” Erpenbach says. “I can’t even get the health committee chair to listen to self-described Republican families saying ‘this is what we have to do.’”
Erpenbach has also introduced a bill calling for a statewide referendum on medical marijuana use in November 2018. Although laws cannot be passed in Wisconsin via referendum, Erpenbach hopes it will gauge support for medical marijuana and put pressure on the Legislature to act.
Advocates of medical marijuana won an ostensible victory earlier this month, when Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a bill approving the use of CBD oil — a marijuana extract with low psychoactivity — for the treatment of seizures and other conditions.
But Acheson says the new law does little to change the landscape. It allows those with a prescription to possess CBD oil with concentrations higher than .4% (which is also allowed by the federal government). However, the law explicitly states that CBD cannot be purchased, dispensed or produced in Wisconsin.
“It really didn’t do anything for the advocates, for the families with these medical conditions, for these children with seizure conditions,” Acheson says. “It didn’t do shit for them except encourage their parents to commit felonies to access proper medication. I just sat there in these hearings shaking my head listening to these Republicans straight up just lie to these families.”
Acheson says the debate demonstrated how much misinformation is circulating in the Legislature regarding legalization.
“I heard a lot of both intentional and maybe not so intentional misinformation about marijuana and CBD, and it was really sad for me to just hear for myself how completely uneducated and unaware some of the representatives in our Legislature are around this topic,” Acheson says.
Acheson is encouraging other veterans who use medical marijuana to speak out. He hopes to meet with Vukmir and other legislators opposed to medical marijuana.
“I’m sure we’ll be meeting with her to try to build a relationship,” Acheson says. “As veterans we are not in the business of shaming anybody for their stance. We understand this is a very politicized issue.”
Wisconsin may be behind the curve on medical marijuana, but Acheson says it is positioned to learn from other states that have already approved it.
“This is one of the best medical marijuana bills ever constructed, in my opinion,” Acheson says. “It takes the best things from all of the bills that came before it and it cherry picks them all. All of these things that we know work that have been successful are written into this bill.”
“There have been disasters, no doubt about it, and there have been places where it works extremely well, even in red states,” Acheson adds. “We just need to get it into a hearing just to start that conversation with real facts. We have real statistics to show that it works.”
Acheson says he’ll be working with Wisconsin Veterans for Compassionate Care on getting other organizations such as the American Legion, VFW and Disabled American Veterans to adopt policies supporting medical cannabis legalization to put more pressure on legislators. He helped persuade the Wisconsin Farmers’ Union to endorse it.
“I would consider it a win to just get a hearing in one of the subcommittees,” Acheson says. “That would be a win for this bill because it hasn’t even had that.”
