While viewing the news, I saw Chris Romer speaking just before a senate committee was set to vote on his legislative atrocity and hypocritical attempt to solve what he calls, “a small crisis,” in Colorado. Along with this story you will find the video I am referring to where Chris Romer makes all kinds of promises that are actually nowhere in the bill. To start off, I would like to analyze his language regarding the medical marijuana community.
He starts out by pointing out how insignificant he thinks the issue is regarding medical marijuana; at least in comparison to other issues like, putting people in Colorado “back to work.” Forging on with the statement, “we need to get this economy going.” The reporter didn’t ask him about what else was going on in that building, yet he felt it necessary to inform the public that there were more important things going on than addressing medical marijuana. For someone who is co-sponsoring a bill that will have a major impact on people in the state, it seems like he would have more interest in the importance of what he is trying to do with this bill. Beyond that, I would prefer to have politicians who view every issue with equality, not someone who discriminates arbitrarily. It only gets worse… much worse.
Mr. Romer goes on to liken the medical marijuana “craze” to the Wild West, and how his bill is really about putting an end to doctor fraud. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how SB109 is going to accomplish this. It will create a lot of problems for the people who are sick though, and that is easy to understand.
Moving on…
He goes on to talk about the voter’s intentions when they voted Amendment 20 into law, and says the law was meant for “chronic patients.” Yet, proceeds to offer his ideas of what kinds of people the medical marijuana community consists of. 1/3, he believes, are recreational users, 1/3 are using medical marijuana for, “pain relief, osteoarthritis, and just the aches and pains of life.” Then the final 1/3 are people who have, “MS, cancer, and [multiple sclerosis], there’s glaucoma clearly have a constitutional right to medical marijuana.” It’s starting to become very clear where the discrimination is coming from. The simple use of the words, “aches and pains of life,” tells me how out of touch this man is. It also tells me that he has no understanding of the fact that the people with MS, which he listed twice, also use it to help with pain management, and that some people with severe chronic pain have spasms which MS patients also use the medicine for. Beyond this, it sounds like he’s saying that only the latter 1/3 have a “right” to use medical cannabis, because it’s the only way he can easily quantify the whole situation. Accuracy is clearly not of great importance and you will see why.
When asked about the arguments brought up by patients on limited incomes, the senator does something I am unsure if should be considered an outright lie, or just blatant ignorance of the bill he is co-sponsoring. He says, “One of the things we’re going to do in the bill is to make sure that the low-income, fixed income patients have the ability to get reimbursed from the clinics we hope to create, for the cost of their doctor referrals.” Then he talks about how certain medical facilities cannot recommend medical marijuana, and how unfair it is that these patients have to go see another doctor who specializes in medical marijuana. What about how unfair it is to the rest of the medical marijuana population to have to pay for these special doctors, and not have insurance cover it? He then reiterates how patients at those particular facilities are going to get reimbursed for this expense. I have read and re-read the newest version of the bill, and I am unable to find anything about any clinics to be formed, or any reimbursement for the doctor visits. The bill does talk about waiving fees for the permit for indigent people, but absolutely nothing about all these wonderful things Mr. Romer seems to think this bill is going to do.
Maybe the question here is what are the intentions of the people supporting this bill? Did Mr. Romer just inadvertently let us know what new, exciting financial ventures he’s looking to create, but just got a little confused during the interview; or did he just out-right lie?
Senator Romer gives some interesting answers
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