Legality of Cannabis by U.S. Jurisdiction

Valerie Leveroni Corral (born 1953) is a medical cannabis activist and writer.[1] As a young adult she experienced a traumatic head injury that left her with a seizure disorder that antiepileptic medication could not ameliorate. Her experimental use of cannabis to treat her seizures led her to grow it on her property in Santa Cruz, California. In 1992, she was arrested for cannabis cultivation, becoming the first person in that state to argue the medical necessity defense.[2] Following her success, she founded the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) and was a coauthor of Proposition 215, the first medical cannabis state ballot initiative to pass in the United States.[3]

Early life[edit]

Corral was born in 1953. Her great-grandparents immigrated to America from Italy.[4] When she was 20, Corral was involved in a traumatic car accident that would later indirectly lead to her career as a cannabis activist. In 1973, while she was still a premed student, Corral was a passenger in a Volkswagen Beetle being driven by her friend through Reno, Nevada, when a low-flying P-51 Mustang "created a vortex that caused us to lose control, skid, and roll for over 350 feet".[5] Corral and the driver were ejected from the vehicle and sustained massive injuries. Corral was left with "uncontrollable grand mal seizures, triggering confusion, loss of muscle control, convulsions, and fainting."[6]

Corral began taking a regimen of antiepilepsy and pain medicine that left her in a drug-induced stupor, but the spasms and seizures continued. For two years, Corral was left in what she describes as a "pharmaceutical delirium",[5] until her husband discovered an article in a medical journal highlighting the experimental use of cannabis to control seizures in rats.[5] Having tried everything else at that point, in 1975,[5] Corral took the $40,000 from the insurance settlement from the accident and purchased a house in the Santa Cruz mountains,[5] where her and her husband started a small cannabis garden to help treat Corral's symptoms from her head trauma as well as provide cannabis for their sick friends.[1]

Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM)[edit]

In 1993, Corral founded the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a cooperative organization that offers medical cannabis to qualifying patients for free. The group maintained and grew their own cannabis, which they closely monitored for quality, and provided educational resources to the community, including an early database informed by surveys and statistical analysis (run by a statistician) matching patient symptoms with different types of cannabis and their effectiveness. A three-year study of 77 patients was published in 2001.[7]

Legacy[edit]

Corral's Santa Cruz-based group was one small part of a larger coalition of cannabis activists in California, which was informally headquartered at the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club with Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary Rathbun. They were in turn joined by Dale Gieringer of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and Jeff Jones from the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative. Together, they worked on drafts in 1995 for the Compassionate Use Act and later Proposition 215 on the 1996 ballot.[8] In 2003, the Los Angeles Times described Corral as "the face of Santa Cruz's wildly successful medical marijuana initiative" in the wake of harassment from the federal government.[9] Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan called Corral "the Florence Nightingale and Johnny Appleseed of medical marijuana rolled into one".[10]

Selected publications[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Nieves, Evelyn (January/February 2001). "Half an ounce of healing". Mother Jones. 26 (1): 48-53.
  2. ^ Tiersky, Marcia (Winter 1999). "Medical Marijuana: Putting the Power Where It Belongs". Northwestern University Law Review 93 (2): 547-595.
  3. ^ Clark, Samantha (May 12, 2015). "Santa Cruz collective WAMM fundraising to buy cannabis garden site". Santa Cruz Sentinel.
  4. ^ "Not Your Average Pot Proponent". Associated Press. May 24, 2004.
  5. ^ a b c d e Grinspoon, Lester, and James B. Bakalar (1997)[1971] Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine. Rev. and exp. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 76-79. ISBN 0300070853. OCLC 36178980.
  6. ^ Hecht, Peter (2014). Weed Land: Inside America's Marijuana Epicenter and How Pot went Legit. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520275446. OCLC 868277441.
  7. ^ Corral, Valerie Leveroni (2001). "Differential effects of medical marijuana based on strain and route of administration: a three-year observational study". Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics. 1 (3-4): 43-59.
  8. ^ Heddleston, Thomas (2013). "A Tale of Three Cities: Medical Marijuana, Activism, and Local Regulation in California". Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. 35: 123–143.
  9. ^ Bailey, Eric (August 11, 2003). "Santa Cruz Clinic Leads Medical Marijuana Charge". Los Angeles Times.
  10. ^ Pollan, Michael (July 20, 1997). "Living With Medical Marijuana". The New York Times Magazine. p. 23. Retrieved April 15, 2024.

Further reading[edit]

  • Chapkis, W., Webb, R. J. (2008). Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 0814790097. OCLC 779828407.
  • Chapkis, Chapkis (2013). "The Trouble with Mary Jane's Gender". Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. 35: 71–88.
  • Everett, Everett (2004). "Raich v. Ashcroft: Medical Marijuana and the Revival of Federalism". San Diego L. Rev. 1873.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wo/Men%27s_Alliance_for_Medical_Marijuana