By Joanna Dodder Nellans | The Daily Courier
Chino Valley’s new medical marijuana growing facility would be hard-pressed to find a better lawyer and adviser than a former U.S. Attorney for Arizona.
That is, unless it hired a former U.S. Attorney who also happens to have personal knowledge of the benefits of medical marijuana.
Mel McDonald is both of those men.
“They hired me to make sure we implement policies that are going to work,” McDonald said. “I don’t want to hurt something that’s keeping my son alive.”
McDonald is a Mormon who led the drug war in Arizona during the Reagan years. He also happens to have another local connection: he successfully prosecuted Michael and Patrick Poland for killing two armored van guards after then-Yavapai County Attorney Charles Hastings declined to pursue the cases. The brothers were executed in 1999 and 2000.
In 1997, McDonald’s 14-year-old stepson Bennett was hit by a car while crossing a Gilbert street on a GoPed scooter.
Bennett suffered severe brain damage, and his weight dropped from 180 to 119 pounds because of constant nausea. He often couldn’t keep medications down, let alone food. And he began to suffer from epileptic seizures.
A few years after Bennett’s accident, a neighbor who took marijuana for pain offered it to Bennett. Suddenly Bennett was able to eat and take his other medications.
If you’d like to discuss medical marijuana, contact Ryan Hurley, director of the Rose Law Group Medical Marijuana Dept., rhurley@roselawgroup.com
