Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1362577
30 cannabis patient care | vol. 2 no. 1 cannapatientcare.com advocate focus And then the stigma of cannabis kicked in. Physicians tried to attribute everything to his cannabis usage. "Of course, they were saying I was suffering from cannabis hyperemesis syn- drome (2). My anxiety comes from not having cannabis, they were saying. My night sweats and the night terrors came from cannabis. They completely denounced the inguinal hernia that two physicians confirmed," he said. Atkins explained that the doctors were going to supplement his pain medications with psychiatric drugs like Cymbalta (3), Celexa (4), and a few others. "That's when I was deemed non- compliant again because I told the VA I'm not going to take medications that could potentially create a chemical imbal- ance for something that's musculoskeletal," he said. They sent in a psychiatrist who told him that there was phys- ically nothing wrong with him. "They told me that since I didn't want to take the psych meds, they could not help me," Atkins said. "In September, I was actually sent to a substance abuse training program, which is a substance abuse treatment plan for cannabis consumption. I was forced into this program." The fight with the VA went on and on. He explained that his physicians were totally against cannabis as well as the psy- chiatric teams. "I feel that there are some physicians at the VA who are open to it," he said. "But given their contractual posi- tion with the Veterans Affairs, they cannot openly advocate or recommend it in their facilities." The Advocate Makes His Mark After Atkins struggle with his VA doctors, he decided to dig deeper into the rules and regulations about medical canna- bis in his home state of Georgia. He found advocacy groups like Georgia NORML (5) and the Georgia Campaign for Access, Reform and Education (CARE) (6), and started getting involved with them. That led to an even deeper dive into what was going on in his state with cannabis. He helped work on several pieces of cannabis legislation. He learned that he didn't have a qualifying condition to get medical cannabis in Georgia, and turned to cannabis groups on Facebook to see what else he could find out. "I started finding articles about parents, caregivers, or sometimes even patients who were unable to access the medication in their ju- risdiction or in their local state," he said. "They packed up and went to states and became cannabis refugees." Go to another state—that struck a chord. He started a Go- FundMe to get the money to get to Colorado, and go to a med- ical cannabis facility that would treat his gastrointestinal is- sue. But it didn't work. "I raised a total of $50," he said. So he stayed in Georgia, suffering, wondering what to do next. "Things got really dark for a while," Atkins said. "I found some people that really helped me out, and some organi- zations to help me out with tinctures. Some even sent me some terpenes for aroma therapy." He went back to cannabis ac tivism and advocacy in Geor- gia with a renewed sense of determination—and growing desperation. It was about at this time, in 2018, when the idea to organ- ize a group he called The Good Medic came to him. It was de- signed to initially assist with public programming, community health, public resources, public health resources, and commu- nity development. "I based it off the fact that when it comes to public health, the bodies or the groups of people that ac- tually have the heaviest impact on public health are often the ones never invited to the public health dialogue," he said. "And that is first responders like myself." He discovered that there were few organizations to sup- por t first responders. He found one, Safe America Founda- tion (7), organized in 1994 in Marietta, Georiga to improve the awareness of safety preparedness in the US through a num- ber of training and networking programs. Good Medic par t- nered with Safe America Foundation to assist them in their mission. Together they launched an official employee procurement program to address the issue of paramedic staffing shortag- es in Georgia—something he witnessed firsthand. "What every supervisor that's in charge of logistics and every ambulance company and every fire department knows is that the number one thing they're going to say every morning is that they just need a good medic," he said. To accomplish that goal of providing training and other re- sources for paramedics, he created the Good Medic Foundation. The partnership worked well for a time, helping veterans, people with opioid addiction, and victims of human traffick- ing. "We were able to connect with a large national ambulance company here in Atlanta," he said. "We got two medical units donated to us." Atkins left the Safe America Foundation in 2019. But he rev- eled in the good that Good Medic did. The Stanley Group Comes Together Atkins began to broaden his medical cannabis advocacy work as a speaker at the 2019 Southeastern Hemp and Medical Cannabis conference (8), and MJ BizCon in Las Vegas, Nevada (9). In January 2019, he was appointed as the Georgia chap- ter president of Minorities for Medical Marijuana, an advocacy group that was created in May 2017, based in Orlando, Florida (10), with directors in 27 states. During the 2019 Georgia legislative session, Atkins worked with legislators to ensure minority inclusion within the pro- posed Georgia medical cannabis program and the Georgia in- dustrial hemp program. Atkins was also the founding member of the Crisis Intervention Team training group (CIT) (11), a col- laboration with the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, and the Georgia Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.