What's the Matter With Kansas City?

At The Pitch, Kansas City's alt-weekly, Eric Barton profiles medical marijuna activist Jacqueline Patterson. It starts with the story of Patterson's recent, disastrous appearence in front of legislators, trying to sell them on decriminalizing small quantities of cannabis.

Patterson launches into a tangent about her broken neck and how doctors had to drill holes in her skull. She follows that with a diatribe about the inconsistent quality of cannabis. At least a couple of the reps look disgusted as she describes the time she begged a friend to let her smoke a bowl with him while she was eight months pregnant.

She's lost all of them.

The rest of the article follows like this; it's a soul-crushing story of how the people who could make the most use of decriminalized marijuana can be easily marginalized.