[420 Girl]

A bill to decriminalize marijuana for medical use by people suffering debilitating illnesses passed its first committee in the Minnesota House, the Health Care and Human Services Policy and Oversight Committee, on Wednesday by a vote of 9 to 6. The testimony in support of and against the bill was largely identical from that of last week’s hearing in the Senate.

K.K. Forss of Ely, Minn., suffered a ruptured disk in his neck and suffers daily pain and showed the committee a large trash bag of painkiller bottles he says didn’t work.

“Before medical marijuana, I was in such pain I had no life,” he said. “It was so horrible I wanted to die every day. No one should have to face a choice between suffering unbearably and risking arrest and jail.”

Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, hailed passage of the bill in the committee. “This sensible, humane, bipartisan bill is modeled after laws that have been working well for years in states like Montana and Rhode Island,” he said. “We should not be using our scarce law enforcement dollars to arrest suffering patients for using a medicine their doctor has recommended.”

The bill has now passed a committee in both the House and Senate.

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