Love! Cannabis! Compassion!

(Friday, June 11) The building at 2010 E Michigan Avenue that houses the medical marijuana Capital City Compassionate Caregivers Club isn’t fancy.

Volunteers have painted the façade  white with green trim, and an old sign for the United Nations Association has been taken down. Inside are some standard looking, beige offices and waiting rooms, a few counters selling T-shirts, tapestries, snacks and artwork, and, apart from a large, mural on a wall in the main room, there’s not much to see.

To someone who believes in marijuana stereotypes — that it will ruin your life, or that it’s all for hazed-out dudes with long hair — the club would be shockingly mundane. But that’s the whole point.
The volunteers at the club aren’t there to make a statement or, certainly, to make money. They volunteer for the single purpose of helping ease the pain of the sick, because they believe medical marijuana is the best way to do it.

“Medical marijuana is the safest painkiller known to man,” says Robin Schneider, head of the club. “I have a Crohn’s patient who is no longer experiencing any pain or dysentery. I know of diabetes patients who use it and are decreasing their insulin. It’s a magnificent medication.”

The club is not a dispensary, a fact that Schneider is constantly struggling to make clear. No marijuana is grown, stored, sold or smoked on the premises. The club is a nonprofit organization with no paid employees, only volunteers. All of the goods they sell and all the furniture in the club was donated. The building is owned by Ingham County Drain Commissioner Pat Lindemann. Schneider remarked that he has been a gracious landlord.

The building is simply a clubhouse for patients and caregivers. It is only open on Saturdays and Sundays for “safe transfer” days, in which patients can use the building as a safe place to meet caregivers to exchange medical marijuana, or to discuss the medicine. A doctor is present every Sunday to help new patients get a medical marijuana registration card, and there is an attorney present to answer any legal questions. Every second and fourth Wednesday of each month, the club hosts a meeting for the public to answer any questions about the operations of the club or becoming a patient or caregiver.

Schneider hopes to add more safe transfer days, but can only open on Saturdays and Sundays until the club recruits more volunteers.

Caregivers and patients arrange payment plans privately, but Schneider said patients usually pay from $150 to $300 per ounce of medical marijuana. Caregivers often make special arrangements with patients who can’t afford their medication. Caregivers sometimes deliver medical marijuana to their patients’ home.

The club also offers a “synthetic survivors” support group to help wean people off of synthetic medications. The group has personal significance for Schneider.

“I had a spinal cord injury when I was 19. I was paralyzed, had nerve damage, was put in a wheelchair, everything. I was a wreck,” she said. “I used a lot of alternative methods—acupuncture, archipuncture, pool therapy things like that instead of surgery and learned how to walk again. But the pain never really went away. I’ve always had nerve pain, like an electrical jolt, going through my legs. I was given pain medication: Vicodin, Flexeril, morphine, a lot of pain meds. And that was really not good for me—I mean for me and my whole family. I was messed up on the pills. I didn’t abuse them but mentally I didn’t feel right from the side effects. I was ornery, I couldn’t get out of bed on time to get the kids to the bus, that type of thing. I was a wreck.”