The Alaska Nurses Association is the eighth state nursing association to call on the federal government to allow the reinstatement of medical Cannabis (marijuana) into the National Formulary of the United States. This action was taken in September of 1998 and was considered to be a positive factor in that state's electorate voting to allow their physicians to prescribe medical Cannabis to the ill. Patients Out of Time both assisted and endorsed nurses in Alaska who presented their organization this opportunity to publicly act as patient advocates.

The original state nursing association to adopt a resolution calling on the federal government to desist from it's policy of incarcerating the sick and dying was from the conservative state of Virginia. The Virginia Nurses Association which represents 78,000 nurses throughout that state, did so in the fall of 1994. The sponsor of that original resolution, Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, CARN states that "nurses by their oath and code of conduct are required to protect the public from misinformation and misrepresentation about health issues and must promote community and national efforts to meet the health care needs of the public." Nurses also play a significant role in politics. With one of every forty registered voters in the US a nurse, their position on health issues is formidable and in direct contradiction of the "drug warriors" untenable stand that medical use and recreational use of marijuana are one and the same.

A compilation list of groups that have endorsed medical marijuana now numbers 63, 35 of which are health care organizations. Included in this list are the American Public Health Association (the oldest and largest health care group in the country), the American Preventative Medical Association, the medical associations of Florida and California and the Physicians Association for AIDS Care as well as the state nursing associations of Colorado, California, Mississippi, New York, New Mexico, and North Carolina in addition to Virginia and Alaska.

Patients Out of Time represents six of the eight patients in the US that receive their medical marijuana from the federal government. Patients Out of Time has compiled its list of supporting organizations to confront the assertions by the drug czar, General McCaffrey and other federal officials who claim there are no health care groups that support medical marijuana. We may be reached at (804) 263-4484; Patients@MedicalCannabis.com; or www.commonlink.com/~olsen/.

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