Hi, my name is Greg and I live near or in Bridgeport, Texas. That's just a little bit northwest of Fort Worth. I am a middle-aged grandfather, a conservative Christian Republican (not bragging, it's just that one should never be ashamed of ones belief system). I have a soft spot for senior citizens and amimals. I am here for one reason- to inspire you to action, as I have been lucky enough to be. I cannot tell you how liberating it is to be free from the chains of words like, "One person can't make a difference", and, "my vote doesn't count, so why bother?" I was here a couple of years ago, for a few months. But, I was too busy fighting to end horse slaughter for human consumption to have the time I wanted to spend working on legalizing marijuana. I was already obligated to the other cause when I came across a story of a man who was riding his horse across country to try to stop the drug war. You sure don't have to dig deep in the prohibition issue to discover medical marijuana. Already a true "bleeding heart", you can imagine how angry those stories of suffering patients and innocent dead people (because of raids) made me! I was hooked. But, I'd spent the last ten years fighting for this other cause and I needed to move on. That fight was almost won. I had entered into it back when saying horses shouldn't be slaughtered was like Cleavon Little and Gene Hackman in Blazing Saddles. You know that part where they come upon the KKK meeting and Cleavon says to the KKK guy, "Where de white women at?" It was like that. People were attacked in public places for saying horses shouldn't get slaughtered. On line, I'd be cussed, called names, be insulted, have my family, pets, friends, and anything else personally insulted. In my ten years of activism for that cause, I saw that public opinion turn so far around the other way that we closed down all 4 slaughter houses in the U.S. and now, no city or county will let another one open up, because the people in the area won't allow it. We campaigned using the truth, and it was all powerful! Same goes for this cause. I was pretty tired and burned out. I'd spent an average of 60 hours per week on the computer. I'd been to Washington, DC. I'd been on the TV news, on the front page of the Houston Chronicle's Sunday paper, in several other newspapers, given at least one radio interview, and studied how to get a bill passed into a law, and I don't mean just the technicalities of it. I mean, who listens to who, who is friends with who on Capitol Hill, what gets a politician's attention faster than anything, and what doesn't work so well. Now that I'm rested up and not sick and tired of benig on the computer anymore, I'm back. And, just in time, too, because my state has yet another medical marijuana bill pending. It hasn't even been assigned to a committee yet. At this point, I have the maximum amount of time to get the maximum number of Texans aware that HB 164 exists. I'm excited to be here and wish to invite everyone over to my thread about Texas' newly pending medi-pot bill. Naturally, I feel like the information I will be posting there will be very important for all of us, as we are truly all in this fight together. Of course, if I didn't feel that way, I would not bother posting it! Here's to all of you... :cheers2: Greg, in Texas
