Larry Myers was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1980, when he woke up to numbness in his limbs one morning while on his honeymoon in California.
Since then, the 55-year-old Pinconning man has found relief in marijuana. The only thing that helps calm the spasms the disease causes is puffing on a pipeload of pot.
He said his doctor is aware of his use and advised him to continue using it if it provides relieve from his symptoms.
Myers is glad the law legalizing marijuana for medical use has passed, but wishes it included provisions to get prescriptions written and filled.
"As someone who's got some experience growing marijuana, I'll tell you it's not such an easy thing," Myers said, "especially for a person who's dying of cancer or something."
Myers has pleaded guilty twice to marijuana-related crimes in Bay County. In 1987, police took the media along for a raid of the home he lived in at the time on Kaiser Tower Road. They found marijuana plants growing in a semi-trailer in his back yard.
Myers eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and served probation but no jail time.
"I had three kinds of pot," Myers said. "Good, better and best. The state police said it was the best marijuana they had ever seized. It was dubbed in High Times (marijuana magazine) as Pinconning Paralyzer."
Myers again pleaded guilty in 2007 to delivery of marijuana after he says a friend of a friend set him up.
"I'm a convicted felon now," Myers said, sitting in a wheelchair in his modest home, overlooking the Saginaw Bay.
Myers says he plans to get himself on the marijuana patient registry as soon as he figures out how so that he can legally continue using his medicine of choice.
"I think it's great that the voters of Michigan passed Proposal 1," Myers said. "I don't want to have to worry about getting arrested again."
eace:
