cannabisnews.com: Boy Dreamer Becomes Pot Activist





Boy Dreamer Becomes Pot Activist
Posted by CN Staff on April 16, 2003 at 08:34:52 PT
By Michelle Meyers, Staff Writer
Source: Tri-Valley Herald 
Hayward -- When Phillip Mol was a boy, he dreamed of becoming a physicist or an astronomer, not an advocate for patients of medical marijuana. "I never thought I would be the guy trying to change things," said Mol, who founded the Helping Hands Patients' Center, a downtown cannabis dispensary. But after he overcame heroin addiction -- on top of severe manic-depression -- Mol's career goals took on a higher calling, he said. 
Mol, 41, is a leader in the local effort to legalize Hayward's three downtown dispensaries under city code. His business, opened in October 2001, is aimed at offering cannabis patients an efficient, comfortable setting, with some of the lowest prices in the Bay Area, he said. "Some people do it just for the patients," said Jane Weirick, a Hayward resident and president of the Medical Cannabis Association. "Phil is a terrific example of this." But Mol's broader mission, one he calls "Green and Sober," is to help spread the word about the use of pot to treat the addiction of harder drugs. "Pot saved my life. It's saving others' lives," he said. Pot is by no means a cure for drug and alcohol addiction, and is hardly an ideal solution, Mol said. But for those who continually fail attempts to clean up through abstinence, a cannabis-only regime can be life-changing, he said, as it was for him. "It gets you out of the endless cycle of drug addiction," he said. Mol, who grew up in Southern California, said he turned to drugs at an early age as a way of coping with his abusive, now-estranged father. Without a high school diploma, he joined the Navy in 1979, studied physics and graduated with honors from the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program in Orlando, Fla. The Navy diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, although Mol said he denied it for years and used drugs to cope. He was discharged in 1983 and eventually worked as a physics technician at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center until a mass walkout in opposition to weapons research. In the mid-1980s, he returned to the Riverside area and worked in the private sector, doing land survey maps used by civil engineers and urban planners, among other things. In 1992, through participation in Alcoholics Anonymous, he stopped using drugs for two years. "I was sober, but I was not treated," he said. "All of a sudden, it all fell apart." Mol later was arrested in San Francisco for possession of heroin and was able to convince a judge and a probation officer to let him enter a program in which he would be given methadone as a way of getting off the heroin. Mol said he also underwent therapy and used pot; the routine urine tests at the methadone clinic didn't screen for cannabis, he said. "In 14 years of 12-step attendance, I had two years of clean time," he said. "During eight years of Green and Sober living, I have had eight years of staying off hard drugs, IV drug use and alcohol abuse." In addition to helping Mol with the addiction, the pot helped him keep down his regular pharmaceutical drugs used to treat his bipolar disorder. "Before I was able to stabilize my life on this regime, I was often suicidal, often barely employable, and a shut-in who hid in his trailer for days on end," he said. Weirick said Mol's ideas about treating addiction with pot are becoming more accepted, although they're not mainstream. "Anything that helps people get off hard drugs is a good thing," she said. Mol, who lives in Oakland with his wife of 11 years, came to Hayward as a patient of the first dispensary, the Hayward Hempery, then owned by Bob Wilson, one of the region's medical marijuana pioneers. Upset with the Hempery's new ownership, Mol decided to give patients another choice by opening his own dispensary. Despite the later opening of a third dispensary, his patient base has grown to about 50 customers a day. Mol said he's not making any money, lives in "a security fortress," has had to give up privacy, works countless hours, and lives with the constant fear that "any time, the knock (of federal officials) could come on the door." Marijuana is considered illegal under federal law, although the passage of Proposition 215 made it legal for medicinal uses in California. But what makes it all worthwhile, Mol said, is patients like a woman with cancer from San Jose, or the man with a thrashing disorder, who can function in society because of the pot. Note: Phillip Mol founded medical marijuana dispensary in Hayward.Source: Tri-Valley Herald (CA)Author: Michelle Meyers, Staff WriterPublished: Wednesday, April 16, 2003Copyright: 2003 MediaNews Group, Inc.Website: http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Contact: apacciorini angnewspapers.comRelated Articles & Web Site:Medical Marijuana Information Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htmHayward OKs Dispensaries Committee http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15808.shtmlPot Facilities in Hayward Highlight Viewpoint http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15764.shtmlHayward Council To Review Pot Dispensarieshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15753.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by Truth on April 16, 2003 at 14:36:37 PT
liberator
To work on freeing folks that were immorally caged for using God's gift of cannabis is a noble cause indeed.
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Comment #1 posted by The GCW on April 16, 2003 at 09:07:55 PT
Mol be good.
I hope Mol makes his message known and progresses big.If they will allow someone Methadone to get off H. addiction, they should allow the clean pure superplant. Then, If cannabis were Re-legalized it would certainly help keep people away from H. to begin with. Re-legalizing cannabis is a WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -WIN -------------0000000000000000 situation.This is good news except to the "self-condemned" that habor the "deluding influence".
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