Legal Pot or Not

Dro, weed, Mary Jane or chronic. 

Call it what you will, it's a controversial issue and right now medical marijuana is still illegal in the state of Alabama.  Chris Butts isn't advocating the drug for recreational use, saying, ""I'm a 42-year old Christian, father of three, I don't want people doing drugs either." But he does want to see some form of legalization of it here in Alabama.

 For the past 15 years Butts has been using marijuana for medicinal use.  An incident in 1992 caused him to suffer a spinal compression injury.  He began taking a cocktail of pills to combat the pain but, "after a while I was an addict and I guess I had an epiphany that I was an addict," said Butts.

 He asked his doctor to swap pills for pot.  Since then he's been an advocate for the medicinal use of marijuana.  Lobbying to convince lawmakers to make it legal.House Bill 66 would do just that.  It's a move not sitting well with Calhoun County Sheriff Larry Amerson.

He put out a press release saying if legalized it will, "Unleash the flood gates making marijuana legal to grow and available to purchase by anyone that suffers even from chronic pain of their caregiver."

Amerson says if this bill is passed it will create a huge increase in added law enforcement agents.  21 year old Chee Thao agrees with Amerson saying, "I think people are going to find a way to smoke pot anyway so that would just give them an outlet to do as they please."

But others, like William Mcclure disagree saying, "I think it's a good idea. It helps people, it helps with pain relief, it helps get over nausea and stuff for say AIDS patients, cancer patients."  Whether you're for it or against it, Butts says he and others will continue to push the bill all the way to the end.  Right now, Butts and other advocates for the bill are waiting to get it on the agenda before its first committee..

Copyright 2012 WBRC. All rights reserved.