Rep. Nancy Mace touts benefits of cannabis as a teenage rape victim

I recently used CBD oil for the first time to treat some bruising due to a recent accident. I was amazed at how quickly it helped soothe and heal my injury.

CBD treatment has only been legal in my home state of South Carolina since 2014. Based on my minor experience, it is insane and immoral that it wasn’t available to those who might have needed it prior to seven years ago.

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is also from my home state and District 1 in South Carolina, where she continues to promote her States Reform Act. This bill would allow states to pursue their own paths concerning marijuana with no federal involvement. As the Washington Examiner reported in November, “Mace’s bill would remove marijuana and THC, its main psychoactive compound, from the Controlled Substances Act, effectively decriminalizing the drugs, and allow states to regulate them like alcohol.”

Mace continues to gather both Republican and Democrat support for her bill calling it, “Most bipartisan piece of cannabis legislation ever filed in the U.S. Congress” during a recent interview on the podcast Based Politics.

Some of Mace’s personal comments registered with me most. When asked if working with veterans who have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder inspired her to pursue reforming federal cannabis law, Mace replied, “I am not a military veteran, even though I went to The Citadel. But there are special protections for military veterans who want to make sure that they’re not discriminated against if they are users of cannabis, that want to make sure that the doctors at the VA can prescribe them cannabis for medical use. So we have those protections in there.”

Then the congresswoman described her own traumatic experience and what cannabis did for her.

“I was raped when I was 16,” Mace said. “I have told this story before, but what I hadn’t told people until I filed this bill and talked about it publicly is that when that happened.”

“I had that trauma,” Mace explained. “I dropped out of school. I was prescribed pharmaceuticals, antidepressants, medication, that made my feelings of depression actually much worse than they really were.”

Mace continued, “I stopped taking that medication and started using cannabis. This was a long time ago. I’m 44, so we’re talking a very long time ago when I was 16. But even then I knew that it’s use cut my anxiety down and helped me.”

“So when I talk to veterans, when I talk to people with PTSD that have some sort of physical or emotional trauma, I can feel that pain in my heart and I know why they use it because I’ve had that pain before,” Mace said.

“As the daughter of a military veteran, as someone whose family are veterans, it’s just really important that we put special protections in there for our veteran community as well,” Mace added.

I know what a relative smidgen of CBD oil did for me and my injury. Mace claims cannabis helped her significantly as a teenager through one of the worst traumas a woman can endure.

I know the States Reform Act merely allows the 50 states to pursue their own paths and hopefully it passes with major bipartisan support.

But in the meantime, why should anyone, anywhere who is suffering to any degree, be denied the relief that this plant obviously provides?