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For the time being, Davis is stuck in a Catch-22 that has her worried she’ll become another statistic—a Black woman criminalized for marijuana use.
For the past four years Davis has been prescribed cannabis to treat chronic pain.
Next week, Davis plans to switch from vaping cannabis to smoking cannabis flower, which state lawmakers recently approved for the first time since medical cannabis was legalized in Minnesota in 2014.
Davis said she’s in physical pain every day, which stems partly from surviving domestic violence.
Today, she uses a vape pen as needed to manage her pain, sometimes running out to her car 20 to 30 times a day for several minutes at a time.
Davis said she suffers almost daily from migraines and nerve pain from fibromyalgia that courses throughout her body, sometimes causing her to vomit.
That would require an executive order from President Joe Biden that federal agencies consider taking cannabis off the federal Schedule 1 designation, which defines it as an illegal controlled substance with no medical properties.
Cannabis advocates differ on which method would be more effective and realistic.
That said, federal housing authorities can decide, at their own discretion, to enforce or not enforce the federal law banning cannabis, O’Keefe added.
For the time being, Davis is uncertain where she’s going to smoke cannabis flower once she switches to it.
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His work has appeared in Reuters, Public Radio International, Columbia Journalism Review, KFAI Radio, the Pioneer Press, City Pages, MinnPost and more.