We are grateful to those courageous Town Council members who voted their conscious to allow Nature’s Medicines to be open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.

Patients can now access their medicine all day Saturday and Sunday, which shows compassion.

When presenting to the Town Council, we emphasized the need to treat ADHS Certified Medical Marijuana Patients fairly by giving them equal access to their medicine, as would be given to traditional pharmaceutical medicines. Nature’s Medicines-Fountain Hills’ patients must have the same access as patients of CVS and Walgreens pharmacies.

As it stands now, both pharmacies are open 87 hours weekly, or +24 percent longer than Nature’s AZ Medicines. Our Phoenix location is open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the state allows 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., so why discriminate in Fountain Hills?

Our presentation from nationally renowned Medical Research Doctor and Psychologist Suzanne Sisley, local Naturopathic Physician Carol Jamison and former U.S. Attorney Mel McDonald (appointed by Ronald Reagan), made it crystal clear that medical marijuana is medicine.

We are beyond those naysayer arguments.

Those still doubting the efficacy of MMJ are now considered as irrelevant as the Flat Earth Society and those poor ignorant souls still disputing global warming.

Most now know that tax and regulation is good public policy; far superior to prohibition.

History has proven this to be a factual truth, evidenced by the events that followed the end to the alcohol probation. Black market criminal cartel related gang violence fell dramatically, along with teen alcoholism.

History is repeating itself once again as 27 states with medical or outright legal access to cannabis see huge benefit. The CDC Teen Health Surveys show big progress across the United States. In Arizona, first- time cannabis use among teens has fallen -17 percent since 2010, when our Prop 203 came into effect.