Conservative Republican state Rep. Stephen Barrar is now on board with people using marijuana for medical conditions if prescribed by a licensed medical practitioner.
The representative for Pennsylvania's 160th Legislative District still opposes recreational use of the plant, but now says permitting the medical use is the right thing to do.
“I finally educated myself,” Barrar said in a telephone interview.
Barrar, who has been opposed to marijuana use for years, said he began to change his mind this spring when he met with a group of parents whose children were suffering from debilitating and life-threatening problems that pharmaceuticals weren’t helping.
“I guess I didn’t take enough interest in it at first,” he said. “I didn’t think it was a viable solution as part of our healthcare and medical needs.”
He cited the mother of one child with epilepsy who told him using marijuana reduced the number of her child’s seizures from 300 per month down to 12 per month.
“In talking to the parents and listening to their stories of the suffering and how the use of medical marijuana has changed their treatment options and has improved their chronic illnesses made me take a second look at it,” he said. “How can you say no to a parent whose child is suffering?”
Part of his change of mind, though, involves his own family history. Barrar had a brother who died of AIDS in the 1980s. He said the only legal treatment at the time was radiation and that his family considered buying the drug AZT on the black market. That was the only place it could be found at the time.
“Here we are now. It’s the same situation with medical marijuana. People shouldn’t have to break the law to treat their children if they think that’s what’s best for them,” he said. “I can’t think of anything worse than a mother watching her child suffer when there’s something that would greatly reduce that suffering. We have to give them that opportunity.”
As a Republican, Barrar said he’s always believed that a parent should be able to treat their children in a way they think best, but outlawing medical marijuana was an obstacle.
“We’ve learned a lot about marijuana over the last 20 to 30 years. I’m a child of the ‘60s and ‘70s. My idea of marijuana was a bunch of hippies sitting around getting high on joints. We’ve learned a lot about the human body since then. Now I think it does have a place in our medical treatment system,” he said.
There is one bill in the state Senate that would allow doctors to prescribe marijuana. Democrat Daylin Leach of Montgomery County and Republican Mike Folmer of Lebanon County filed the bipartisan SB 1182 in January and Gov. Tom Corbett has said he could support the limited use of medical marijuana in some cases.
Barrar said he cosponsored a House bill along with fellow Republican state Rep. Jim Cox, but that hasn’t yet been officially introduced.
The nine-term representative faces a Democratic Party challenger in this year’s election — Whitney Hoffman — and there are some new municipalities in the district. But Barrar said his new stance is not based on anything political.
“I just took the time to educate myself,” he said.
Hoffman’s opinion is basically the same as Barrar’s, that marijuana does have legitimate medical value, but that more studies and science are needed to determine whether or not there are medical uses beyond what marijuana is generally used for. She also opposes recreational use.
“If it’s under control and it’s tightly regulated, then I’m comfortable with it. I think there’s still a lot of science to be done. This is an area where we need to move cautiously, but it’s helping a lot of people,” she said.
More than 20 states have already legalized marijuana for medical use, two — Colorado and Washington State —have legalized it for recreational use. Medical marijuana became legal in California in the 1990s.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...
Thank you for a fair, balanced and informative article. I really appreciate this, and the information you are sharing with the community.