Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) needs your help.

WAMM is in trouble and OPN has committed to help WAMM by matching your generous donation. When WAMM opened its doors 14 years ago to people dying of cancer and AIDS, they realized that sick people could not afford the high cost of medical marijuana. WAMM has established a communal garden where medicine is grown for terminally ill people with a doctor's recommendation. Patients take what they need and give what they can--even if that is nothing. If WAMM dies, this model dies with it. Please make a donation to keep WAMM alive; perhaps someday we will have a WAMM-type facility here in Ohio.

Please make a donation via our website donation link. OPN will double your donation and send it to WAMM at the end of July. Below is a description of WAMM and one of its co-founders. WAMM is a collective of patients & caregivers creating community, building hope, dissolving barriers, providing support & medical marijuana at no cost.

WAMM provides community service to the Santa Cruz County, serving more than 250 seriously ill men and women who suffer from life-threatening illness. They do so as a legitimate city agent, functioning in compliance with HS11362.5 and acting in accordance with Santa Cruz City Ordinance SC 2000-06 & 2000-12.

WAMM members receive a multitude of services including medical relief, but the creation of community is an aspect of paramount concern to those disenfranchised by illness. WAMM enlist a collective council responsible for initiating ideas and responding to internal problems. During weekly support and supply meetings, participants join together to find much needed emotional and social support. Sick and dying people often face discrimination, intolerance and arrest. Problem solving, attention to the personal, empowerment, consciousness and awareness are among the gifts that are shared.

Valerie Corral, co-founder of WAMM, was in an automobile accident that left her severely epileptic. She often suffered from five seizures a day. She began using marijuana as an adjunct medicine. This treatment replaced a rigorous pharmaceutical regimen. With deliberate application and mindful monitoring, marijuana was to eventually become the sole medication that has controlled her seizures for well over a decade. A North Eastern Ohio medical care facility called upon OPN with a situation that was similar to Corral's experience. Her story was an integral part of our aid to a young Ohio man who suffered a similar conditon.

A WAMM member described by Valerie Corral.

“A week ago my beloved friend died. He jumped out his "space suit" as Nina (Graboi) would have said. Seems to me like he just walked from this life. This amazing being was 19 years old. Taken too swiftly from us and too slowly from the disease of Ewing's Sarcoma, a particularly aggressive form of childhood cancer. Only 10% of young people go into remission for more than a year. James got 3 months free to plan a future he would never fulfill. A parent's haunting realization, one that should never ever be... the loss of a child.

James came to us from Stanford, Lucille Packard Children's Hospital a few years ago when first diagnosed. His father is a high school drug counselor. So to make a leap from the potential harm that marijuana might cause to an understanding and acceptance of its medicinal value was a leap of faith... faith that didn't quite align with the principles of a born again Christian system. Seldom can parents watch their child suffer without opening themselves profoundly to any possibility of relief. So was the case with James’s folks. They came to speak with me about the potential use marijuana. We talked for hours, cried, hoped for a cure & left signing him into our collective with Dad as his caregiver, both members. (James was underage at the time).

I was able to spend a great deal of time with James. You know that way you can fall into the depths of love when hearts are open? We spoke of everything. One day James called to say he wanted to come by for a visit. He was having trouble accepting his situation... the cancer was back, the pain, the nausea, the hopelessness. I rolled him a joint. We smoked and then he began to emerge... This man in a boy suit. He cried. He had no options left to take away his illness. He spoke of love, of how he missed sex, just kissing a girl's lips and holding her close to him. He spoke as a man. He asked the questions that have no answers. He challenged all belief systems and held that what IS cannot be spoken. He journeyed willingly, courageously and he won my heart & he taught me. As he turned toward death he opened his arms to embraced the unknown.

He showed me many things....I don't know how it works, why some parents must stand by, able only to watch. And all that they to do is to love more and more and more, still, unable to kiss away the pain. But I see that these children are grace, they are miracles. If such things we call miracles ever existed it is in these moments of realization where the child becomes the master, as they lead us to the places we can only imagine. And we follow. Parents to such a child know what no others can... that their child becomes the teacher. That they can hold the jewel in their hands briefly, for merely a moment, a timeless moment.”

For more information about WAMM, see http://www.wamm.org/.