Sun, Nov 08 2009
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Published February 15, 2009 12:02 am - CLIFF VILLAGE, Mo. — It’s early evening and Joe Blundell is splayed out on his bed, on his stomach. After a couple days of media interviews, it’s just him, some friends, and a bout of pain.  Grass-roots effort: Village legalizes medical marijuana w/ Missouri HB 277, medical marijuana info By Derek Spellman dspellman@joplinglobe.com CLIFF VILLAGE, Mo. — It’s early evening and Joe Blundell is splayed out on his bed, on his stomach. After a couple days of media interviews, it’s just him, some friends, and a bout of pain. “I’m on my stomach because I couldn’t sit (in my wheelchair),” Blundell said. More than three weeks have passed since Blundell, 30, stopped using marijuana. He abandoned the drug not long before he introduced an ordinance legalizing its use for medical reasons inside Cliff Village, a hamlet on Joplin’s southern fringes, where Blundell serves as mayor. That ordinance passed two weeks ago. Cliff Village has no employees and levies no taxes. It gets about $1,300 a year in distributions of state fuel taxes for road repairs and $120 to $200 more in cable TV franchise fees. But the village doesn’t make many headlines. Until now. The ordinance is largely a symbolic gesture. Cliff Village has no local court system of its own and the small Joplin suburb is still subject to state laws that ban marijuana even for medical purposes. But Blundell and others are hoping their action will raise debate about the uses of marijuana. “This is symbolism, pure and simple,” Blundell explained during some of his interviews. “I would like to be the brave one who grows the first plant, but they’ve built a lot of cages for the people who stick their necks out.” Again this year, legislation has been proposed that would put to Missouri voters the question of whether medical marijuana should be legalized. Similar legislation has been proposed in the past, although it usually stalls at the committee or subcommittee level. But there are now 13 states that allow medical marijuana. The Obama administration also has signaled that it could change federal drug policy, if not federal law, on medical marijuana. Last year, supporters of a measure that would have lessened penalties for personal possession of marijuana in Joplin came up 531 signatures short of getting it on the ballot. The organizers of that campaign say they plan to try again in the region, perhaps in Springfield, and this time they will likely pose an additional ballot question that would address medical marijuana. All of this attention has made Cliff Village, which had a population of 33 in the 2000 census, an unlikely ground zero for a grass-roots movement about, well, “grass.” Pain relief 
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