21
patient focus
cannapatientcare.com december 2021
|
cannabis patient care
Plants Over Pills
veterans rally at
the White House in
Washington, D.C. in
March 2018.
and empowerment of alternative therapies for veterans and
their families. BVN partners with professionals, businesses, and
other organizations to support veterans and their families to
live a better, more balanced life.
Ron Millward is the founder and president of BVN. Millward
enlisted in the United States Air Force at 17 years old, served
for seven years as a combat vehicle operator and an aero-
space flight medic where he lost some friends to suicide, then
began to experience PTSD at home as he sought to change the
direction of his life by serving as a pastor for
several churches.
But he continued to struggle with mental health issues re-
lated to his combat service. "I was really stuck on the pharma-
ceutical trail, struggling with suicidal ideation, just not feeling
myself but just could not figure it out," Millward said.
A friend introduced him to cannabis, and Millward found
that he was able to get some relief and star t to transition off
pills. "But what I realized was there really wasn't much of a
community for help with these opioid and mental health is-
sues," he said. "There were a bunch of different organizations
doing cer tain things or fighting for legislation, but there was
not much community around the cannabis space. So I was
looking for individuals who were tr ying to understand how to
transition off of medicines, which was extremely difficult."
There are some other larger cannabis advocacy organiza-
tions, but BVN is a smaller grassroots organization based in
Philadelphia, with veterans in the group representing ever y
state and multiple countries. "We've seen folks that have
never even touched THC in their lives," he said. "They've got-
ten off pharmaceuticals, and took just CBD, which I think is
incredible as well. So there's such a spectrum of people. But
for me, I really felt like in the space there was a need for
community and then introduction to other alternative thera-
pies. I quickly realized that cannabis is not the end all be all.
It's not the tool for ever ything, but doing other things such
as learning mindfulness and breathing techniques and med-
itation and incorporating yoga into my life was ver y helpful.
So we wanted to create a space for veterans to get that in-
troductor y level to those things."
BVN operates in four different areas: Operation 1620 (17), a
movement area, a mental wellness area, and a project triangle
area. "Each of those areas touches on mind-body-spirit in dif-
ferent ways," Millward said.
As advocacy organizations such as his continue their work, he re-
alizes that every veteran still has to face the challenges of working
with the VA. "People are still afraid of it, because, honestly, our ben-
efits are not protected," he said. "They could change something if
they wanted to. We could be labeled with cannabis use disorder and
whatever they wanted to do. So there is a scare there.
"A lot of us are just confused. We've seen people's lives
changed. I see it every day. And it's difficult to at least not even
allow the research or for us to be able to have marijuana rec-
ommended. Why wouldn't they be able to do that?"
References
(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6397040/
(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2396820/
(3) https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp
(4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278188/
(5) https://www.veteransinitiative22.com
(6) https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/docs/data-sheets/2021/2021-National-
Veteran-Suicide-Prevention-Annual-Report-FINAL-9-8-21.pdf
(7) https://www.dav.org/veterans/resources/medical-cannabis/
(8) https://mzactual.org/about-us
(9) https://www.army.mil/goldstar/
(10) http://www.veteransformedicalmarijuana.org/content/about-vmma
(11) https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB2
(12) https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?212+sum+SB1406
(13) https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title4.1/chapter6/section4.1-603/
(14) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/world/europe/
cannabis-united-nations-drug-policy.html
(15) https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2588?s=1&r=6
(16) https://www.balancedveterans.com/pages/bvn-about
(17) https://www.balancedveterans.com/pages/bvn-operation1620
