TULSA, Okla. – This Sunday, September 27th, Oklahomans for Health, the local group circulating petitions next spring to get a state question on the November 2016 ballot to legalize medicinal cannabis, will present Free Oklahoma, a block party, free concert and family friendly event at 18th & Boston in Tulsa. The event will feature more than 30 bands, including the Red Dirt Rangers, Brandon Clark, and Paul Benjaman, and will include food trucks, vendors, arts and crafts, an information booth on medical marijuana, and a bounce house for the kids. The main purpose of the event is to educate people on both the benefits of cannabis and the upcoming petition drive.
While opponents of medical marijuana keep framing the debate as “controversial,” a recent SoonerPoll shows that 70% of Oklahomans support legalization. One of those supporters is Choctaw Nation citizen, Craig Corbin, who suffers from chronic back pain, and just this month, had a spinal cord stimulator implanted into his back.
“It’s like a pace maker except the lead wires go in your spine and into your nerves,” Corbin explained, “It goes in your back, under your skin, and sends out electrical impulses, that deadens the pain signals that go to your leg, along you sciatic nerve.”
Corbin said his pain comes from years of moving sacks of concrete, moving pianos, wrestling people, injuries from car wrecks, and an injury from doing cartwheel flips that left him with two slipped discs. He has a plate fusion of two of his vertebra in his lower back with a prosthetic disc wedged in.
“It’s rather painful at times. The fusion does enable me to stand up, but sometimes my back gets so weak that I lose balance and it’s not pretty, which is why I walk with a cane.”
Two weeks since getting the stimulator, Corbin says it has helped. He described his pain before his operation as being an 8 on a scale of 10. The stimulator has dialed the pain down considerably, but at its worst, it’s still a 4 or 5 on a scale of 10. Corbin had used medical cannabis before the operation, and it always took the pain down to a lower level. He believes if he had access to medical marijuana now, it would take the pain down to a 2 and he could achieve his main goals, which is to get off of disability and go back to his job. He was a councilor before he lost his ability to walk and started this series of operations.
“When it’s really spiking I can intensify the modulation, which is better than swallowing more opiates.” said Corbin. “This allows me to take less opiates, but if I could take medical cannabis, I believe that would push me over to where I could go back to work. “
Of course, like the stimulator, which can cause paralysis, nerve injury, and death, opiates also carry a risk, specifically of abuse and overdose.
He says if medical marijuana doesn’t get on the ballot he is seriously thinking about leaving the state and relocating to his wife’s home state of Michigan where medical marijuana is legal.
In the meantime, he will work to get this issue passed here at home. “I’m petitioning for the Oklahomans for Health, once it gets started. Last year I got a couple of hundred signatures at the libraries and the post offices; the four or five times I went out I got a couple of hundred signatures. I had fun with it last year [and] I plan on having fun with it this upcoming year, because it’s something I believe in.”
Corbin is helping to promote the Free Oklahoma Festival, and hopes everyone will come out and learn about the medical benefits of marijuana, and have some fun and hear some good music in the process.
Free Oklahoma will have 3 stages in Tulsa’s SOBO District. The festival and outdoor stage is free, however for a $5 donation to the cause, you can also get into the stages in Venue Shrine and Area 18, which are 21+. The music will start at 1 PM and go on until 11. For more information visit:
https://www.oklahomansforhealth.com/
or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freeoklahomafestival?__mref=message