<img src="http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/extra.gif" border=0>Grass-roots effort: Village legalizes medical marijuana<font color="#ff0000"> w/ Missouri HB 277, medical marijuana info</font>

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

It has been more than eight years since a train pulling into a station in Nottinghill, England, crushed Blundell and left him wheelchair-bound in an accident. He had titanium screws and brackets drilled into his spinal column.

For the first year after the accident, Blundell relied on painkillers such as morphine, codeine and Demerol. It was an area resident who eventually suggested he try a marijuana cigarette to help ease the pain. It helped. A lot, he said.

Blundell said he doesn’t hurt all the time, but when he does he described the pain as “screaming,” “excruciating,” and “blinding.” In the past, he has used marijuana when the pain comes, in the evenings to help relax and fall asleep.

“It has allowed him to be functional,” said Sarah Perkins, Blundell’s business partner.

Blundell, in arguing for marijuana’s safety, contends that using it has not compromised his ability to help develop a business offering innovative technologies.

That venture, Sustainable Living Systems Inc., is a green-construction and assembly firm that designs homes that completely heat and cool themselves without outside energy use, according to the company’s Web site. Perkins is president and founder; Blundell is listed on the Web site as a co-inventor and technology consultant.

Blundell said the Cliff Village ordinance was borne out of a desire to generate support for the bill introduced in the Missouri House earlier this year. That bill, if passed, would put the issues before voters as a referendum in November 2010.

“Really, I just want to see a vote,” he said of the state referendum.

The ordinance

The Cliff Village ordinance allows those with physician approval to grow a total of seven plants — four immature, three mature — and to possess up to three ounces at any given time.

The measure passed by a 3-2 margin on Feb. 1. Besides the mayor, the three supporters among the village’s board of trustees included Blundell’s father.

The two dissenting votes came from the couple Doug Grooms and Kerstin Landwer. Landwer on Thursday said they were declining to comment on the issue.

A random survey of residents in the village found no vocal opposition among village residents.

“I’m OK with it,” said Josh Estes, who lives just a few doors down from Blundell. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Village resident Troy Mondt said it “blows my mind” that the village voted to legalize marijuana, even if only for medical reasons. He added that he is in favor of it.

“They can legalize it all they want to,” he said. “I don’t think it’s anybody’s business what we do.”

Lindy Johnson said she is not troubled by it, either.

“If God lets it happen, it happens,” she added.

Sheriff’s guest

Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland, however, said he has received calls from three or four residents who were “extremely unhappy” about the measure.

Copeland said on Thursday he spoke with Blundell, who assured him that the ordinance was only a “symbolic gesture.”

Still, Copeland said he will likely step up patrols in that area for a while.

“You can’t pass laws and ordinances contrary to state law,” he said.

“My advice would not to be run out and start growing marijuana, or you’ll be a guest of mine,” he told others who were interviewing him about the issue.

Asked if he thought the laws should be changed to make allowances for medicinal use, Copeland said: “I have no personal opinion on that. We just enforce the laws.”

He did note that in his 30 years of experience in law enforcement he had “never seen a positive side of marijuana,” and that the substance usually leads people to experiment with other drugs.

The debate

Blundell and other supporters have countered that there is broad public support for allowing medicinal marijuana. They point to a poll conducted in November 2004 by the AARP, for example, which found that 72 percent of the respondents thought adults should be allowed to use marijuana for medical reasons with physician approval.

Efforts to obtain comment from the American Medical Association last week were unsuccessful.

Organizations such as the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML) point to research and studies suggesting marijuana has a number of clinical applications, including relief of pain, nausea, spasticity, glaucoma and movement disorders. It can also be a powerful appetite stimulant, particularly for patients suffering from HIV and dementia, advocates say.

Organizations such as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, however, have pointed to other studies showing that those conditions can be treated by other medicines that are already available and tested. They also cite studies showing marijuana as the cause of health problems including cancer, respiratory problems, a weakened immune system, loss of motor skills and an increased heart rate.

As the debate continues, Blundell said he hopes the village’s vote will help stir interest in what’s happening at the state level.

In the meantime, he said he doesn’t plan to go back to old painkillers such as morphine.

In light of all the attention the village has attracted now, he also said doesn’t intend to use marijuana anymore to help cope with his pain.

“I’m going to try to gut it out,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

How to learn more

n Joe Blundell has started a blog about his experience. Visit www.joeblundell.blogspot.com.

n The National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws Web site is norml.org/index.cfm

n To view the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s “Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana,” visit www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/marijuana.

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