1/14/18 notes on Medical Board Watch creation, Mimi, Valerie

1/14/18 notes on

Medical Board Watch creation, Mimi, Valerie

Due to a few requests, I would like to re-create my first website 

MedicalBoardWatch.com (also MedBoardWatch.com ).

Although I haven’t found the program for the old site yet, I will be posting the individual documents which I either wrote or collated from other sources, for my first website.

I created MedBoardWatch when I was among 12 of the 20 more outspoken medical cannabis physicians in California, who were being investigated by the Medical Board.  The multiple investigations were having their intended effect of making almost all physicians nervous and/or reluctant to write recommendations, even for severe illness.

(Although I was not the FIRST doctor to do a cannabis evaluation in California, I did my first ones BEFORE Prop 215, since San Francisco already had a medical cannabis law before Prop 215. Dennis Peron’s club just required the patients name, diagnosis, and physician signature.)

Physicians and attorneys needed a resource so that physicians could continue to perform safe and appropriate recommendations for cannabis.  And the physicians and attorneys needed to know who was being accused of what, so that we could make sure that those with appropriate standards could continue to practice without constant fear and obstruction, and those with substandard practices would have some insight into appropriate practice.

My friend Mimi Hill

Mimi designed my first website at no cost, since it was my blueprint of what I had found out, that would be useful to other doctors.

I met Mimi after Ram Das’ Reaching Out seminar in about 1991.  She also introduced me to Valerie Corral, founder of WAMM (WoMen’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana). 

The hundreds of attendees at Ram Das’ course broke up into groups of about 10 or so, based on geography, since it would be easier to meet up periodically if we lived relatively near each other.

Mimi Hill was one of the 10 in my group, and we met weekly or monthly for some years after, comparing notes on what we were each up to. (10/20/19 note: some of us still meet periodically to this day!)

I had decided that since I was interested in activism, and interested in medicine, that I would ask the local PSR (Physicians for Social Responsibility) chapter what I could do.  The answer: please join our Steering Committee.  

And I’m still on San Francisco Bay Area PSR since then.

I convinced SF PSR to support Prop 215 as an access to healthcare issue.  We were unanimous, and I was able to write a LTE in support of 215, and able to sign as Frank Lucido MD, member of San Francisco Bay Area Physicians of Social Responsibility.

About that time, Mimi invited to an evening gathering on a Santa Cruz beach, where I met Valerie Corral for the first time.  As I listened to her story, I realized that this woman was very special.  She was fighting for patients to be able to use their medicine legally.  Hers was an inspired mission, not a financial mission.  She is one of several that I have met in the cannabis movement where the word “saint” keeps crossing my mind, (and I identify more as agnostic than anything).  The other was Mike Alcalay MD, but that is another hero whose story I need to write about.