Medical Marijuana Patient Discusses Advantages, Pitfalls of Use

Like many other service people during the Vietnam War, soldier Jay Benner occasionally got high with his buddies.

It was only for fun, the Royal Oak resident said, and having a family when he returned from overseas led him to stop smoking marijuana for 30 years.

All that changed in early 2007 when the Michigan native, a retired account executive for a communications company in Hawaii, came to Royal Oak for a 10-day vacation. Benner was staying with his sister when chest pains he described as "feeling like heartburn" worsened and caused him to crash to the floor.

It actually was a full-blown heart attack, an episode he said was "just like a TV commercial" for heart medicine.

"And it changed everything about my life," Benner said. 

'Medical Marijuana is Safer'

What followed was emergency surgery in which doctors had to perform five heart bypasses, splitting open his chest and harvesting veins from his legs. He never went back to Hawaii. Doctors said he had to quit work. 

Two subsequent heart attacks, constant chest wall pain from invasive surgery and a fear of the side effects from taking powerful narcotic pain pills on a daily basis is what led the early retiree to become an advocate and legal user of medical marijuana.

"(Medical marijuana) is safer," Benner said. "I was taking Vicodin to control pain, but doctors said it could have an adverse affect on my liver. I didn't want to be 20 years down the road with doctors telling me, oops, your liver is destroyed."

Benner, now 54 and single, said he thinks he's the kind of guy the state legislature had in mind when it passed the medical marijuana law in 2008: He deals with extreme health issues, is under the constant care of a primary doctor and has documented proof of why medical marijuana can help.

User Feels Persecuted

Benner said he also is an example of how fear, intolerance of any type of marijuana use and a general misunderstanding of the drug's medical benefits can force legitimate users to take on a whole new set of problems in addition to their chronic health conditions.

"The police have knocked on my door several times," Benner said. "One of my neighbors, who is the (past) condo association president (where I live), wants me out even though I'm not doing anything wrong." That neighbor declined to comment for this story.

It is not known how many people in Royal Oak have medical marijuana cards that allow them to use the substance legally to manage pain. Across the state, the number is close to 70,000 users. Benner beleives there are many more like him who probably have experienced similar struggles with neighbors and law enforcement in the wake of the new law.

Ruth Ennis, who lives in the Benner's condo development, said that at first there were problems with people coming and going from Benner's home, presumably to acquire medical marijuana because Benner also is a registered caregiver. "The people weren't normal. They were weird," Ennis said.

Benner said he has dispensed to hospice patients free of charge, but wouldn't elaborate any further. 

Ennis said the neighbors and Benner soon resolved the issue and she has learned to live with the new reality. Still, she said she would move if she could.

"(Benner's medical marijuana use) hasn't bothered me," Ennis said.  "Some people are close-minded and that's what's causing the problems now. It's affecting where I live. I think the more people stir up crap, the more crap you're gonna get."

State Law is Controversial

The state law does not address such businesses known as dispensaries, instead telling patients they must either grow their own plants or get them from "caregivers" who are authorized grow plants for registered medical marijuana users. This gray area in the law has left Michigan city governments scrambling to figure out how to regulate the distribution of medical marijuana in their communities.

"Study after study has shown that these places (dispensaries) attract a criminal element to neighborhoods that never existed before," Royal Oak Police Chief Chris Jahnke said. 

Benner said he never has sold marijuana out of his home and hasn't broken any law. "It's a knee jerk reaction, assuming crime is taking place just because of the marijuana," Benner said.

One recent morning in his Royal Oak condo where he discussed the new realities of medical marijuana in his life, Benner already had ingested a marijuana capsule with his coffee. "It gives you a body rush, not a head rush like when you smoke it," Benner said of the clear capsule filled with ground-up marijuana buds.

He soon after inhaled a plastic bag full of marijuana vapors produced by a specialized vaporizer he bought from a company in Germany. Benner is a graduate of Oaksterdam University in Ann Arbor, where people learn all aspects of the cannabis industry. The vaporizer, he said, is the safest, purest way to ingest the chemical in marijuana, called THC, that is responsible for providing that "high" and relieving pain for patients. 

Benner inhales the smoke fumes about every four hours. The routine starts all over each day with that morning marijuana pill.

In addition to being a medical marijuana patient, Benner is a registered caregiver. In his refrigerator was a jar of marijuana "butter" that can be spread on toast. He also makes cupcakes, brownies and sauces laced with marijuana. He has given the products to a couple of hospice patients dying of cancer.

Rather than grow his own plants, Benner said he gets his marijuana from a separate caregiver and then gives it away to other patients who can't afford it. He said he did not want to give any more details about the source of his marijuana because of lingering fears that local law enforcement officers still are not acknowledging people's rights under the state medical marijuana law.

"There's always going to be people who just wanna get stoned," Benner admitted. "But these people who really need (this marijuana) are benefitting from it."

Benner hopes one day city government will "become as progressive" as it thinks it is and fully embrace the legality of medical marijuana. Going a step further, he said he believes dispensaries eventually need to be legal in Royal Oak. City officials still are studying the issue of dispensaries, and an ordinance is not expected to be signed until early next year that would address what the state law does not.

It all will come down to acceptance, Benner said, of this new environment of medical marijuana in Michigan.

"Michigan cities are just going to have to start realizing that they are going to have to follow the state law," Benner said. 

Part 3 on Wednesday: Predictions for the future of medical marijuana.