By DAVID LAUDERDALE, The Island Packet
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Margaret Richardson of Hilton Head Island seems designed to be a debutante, possibly a Junior Leaguer, not an activist for authorized marijuana.
She is a daughter of John D. Carswell, a Savannah insurance coverage legend who introduced the profitable commerce to Hilton Head in 1960 as Carswell of Carolina.
She is the spouse of Scott Richardson, who served as a Republican state consultant and state senator from the island, and was appointed by Gov. Mark Sanford to be director of the state Division of Insurance coverage. He sits on the Heritage Basic Basis board.
Margaret Richardson identifies as a Christian conservative, and her life backs that up.
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But in a prim pink jacket, a string of pearls, and a handbag stuffed with information about pot, she is shouting from the rooftops that South Carolinians in ache want medical marijuana — they usually deserve it.
“There are folks — kids, grandmothers, moms, sons, most cancers sufferers — struggling needlessly when a protected different to pain-killers and opioids exists,” she says.
The important thing phrase is “needlessly.”
That’s her high motive for being a vocal advocate for the Compassionate Care Act (S. 150) that has been debated over the previous week within the state Senate.
State Sen. Tom Davis, a libertarian-leaning Beaufort Republican, has been pushing it for seven years. He eventually obtained to argue for it on the Senate ground Wednesday and Thursday. The invoice would legalize below strict circumstances the usage of some types of marijuana for medicinal functions.
Thirty-six different states have seen match to do this.
Richardson acknowledges her place of privilege in life, and says it comes with an obligation.
She has testified earlier than a state Senate committee, spoken at a information convention within the Statehouse foyer, written op-eds, videotaped a private message to legislators, referred to as legislators, and spoken out within the media.
“I don’t wish to be crucial,” she stated, “and that’s why my op-ed stated ‘thanks’ as a result of I do know it’s been onerous for individuals who come from my period who consider the stereotypical Woodstock hippie.
“I perceive that, however I’m so grateful for ones who’ve opened their minds and gotten the information. However it’s their job to face up for the individuals who don’t have a voice. It’s not honest, and that’s how I really feel.”
Years of crushing ache in her cranium drove Margaret Richardson to a vape pen stuffed with hashish.
“It looks like a Bunsen burner has been turned on inside your head,” she stated of the uncommon dysfunction it took a few years and 9 medical doctors to diagnose.
She has trigeminal neuralgia. When it flares in nerves wrapped across the face and cranium, it might probably ship you to the ground screaming.
Or as Johns Hopkins places it: “Though the situation will not be life-threatening the depth of the ache might be debilitating.”
Richardson has had three neurosurgeries, Botox injections and wires wrapped inside her physique to battle the ache.
“There are three branches of these nerves in your face,” she stated, “and considered one of them comes what looks like out of your again high tooth. So that you go to your dentist and beg them to drag your tooth as a result of that’s what if looks like. And I’ve an excellent dentist who wouldn’t do it, however lots of people have gotten each tooth pulled out of their head.”
Regardless of the routine to manage the ache, it doesn’t at all times work, she stated. Opioids, the drug of alternative in South Carolina, was disastrous for her.
“I solely took them for 4 months as a result of they wrecked my abdomen so badly that I obtained all the way down to 113 kilos,” she stated. “I couldn’t get off the bed. I had blue rings below my eyes. I turned yellow. I had Scott feeding me each meal as a result of simply strolling to the kitchen was an excessive amount of. I couldn’t do it.”
Richardson clearly remembers her first true aid. It was vaporized hashish.
“I used to be on the (household’s Lowcountry) farm one Thanksgiving and I believed, I don’t assume I can endure this type of ache. I used to be on the finish of my rope, and I’d been open about what I used to be going via, and my mates knew, and somebody had given me a medical hashish vape pen, and I didn’t wish to use it however I used to be so determined that that night time, I used it and I slept for 13 hours, and it stopped the ache.”
Thereafter, she stated, she would solely take medical hashish when she couldn’t stand the ache as a result of it was both that or the opioids.
She instructed legislators in a video:
“I’ve at all times thought-about myself a law-abiding citizen. It’s onerous sufficient to by no means know when the flares are going to hit and when you will scream out loud and hope you might be within the presence of somebody who can perceive, as a result of it is rather embarrassing in addition to painful.
“However I creep round like a CRIMINAL as a result of it’s the one means I’m assured to have aid in my possession. But if I’m arrested on a airplane flight, I’ve to concern that that’s a chance. If I’m driving round and I’ve a small bit in my purse simply in case, that’s not honest. It actually isn’t.”
Her state of affairs is, in the meanwhile, below management partially because of injections she will get quarterly in North Carolina.
However, she stated, “You by no means know when it’s going to blow.”
Beneath the proposed legislation, professionals may give her hashish in kinds aside from uncooked, smokable pot. She would know what she was getting and the way and when to make use of it. At present, she calls herself a human “guinea pig” as an unfamiliar traveler on the planet of unlawful marijuana.
Many others have instructed ugly private tales of ache and struggling to hesitant legislators.
Richardson is aware of that many hurting South Carolinians don’t have insurance coverage, a husband and loving household like she does.
“There are individuals who have misplaced their jobs, there are suppliers for households who can’t go to work, there are individuals who wish to go to work and be a part of their kids’s lives who’ve change into caregivers,” she stated.
She is aware of what it’s like for a legislator to place a hand on the Bible and swear to defend and defend the state’s residents.
“If it’s inside your energy to be a voice for individuals who haven’t any voice, use that sacred belief to serve folks in dire want and be courageous and step out.”
Choking up, she provides, “I’m uninterested in being the grandmother within the pink jacket and the pearl necklace begging, as a result of it’s not only for me.”
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