Jacki Rickert

Jacki Rickert (born May 13, 1951) is founder and executive director of the medical marijuana patients advocacy group Is My Medicine Legal Yet? (IMMLY). Rickert lives with connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and a neurological disorder that causes chronic pain called Advanced Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. While preparing for surgery at a hospital, Rickert tried smoking a joint to relax her muscles at a friend's suggestion when attendants were having difficulty inserting a needle into her arm. Her doctor, William E. Wright, M.D., prescribed cannabis to control her muscle spasms and pain and restore her appetite.^[1][2][3][4]

Rickert and Dr. Wright filed the necessary paperwork and she was admitted into the federal Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program in 1990. Rickert is one of twenty-eight patients who were approved to begin getting marijuana from the government before President George Bush ended the program, in 1991, but never got their medicine. Governor Bill Clinton told her, if elected, he would "make it right" when Rickert met him during the 1992 presidential campaign. But President Clinton never kept the promise.^[1][2][4][5]

Rickert drove her wheelchair 210 miles from her home in Mondovi, Wisconsin, to the State Capitol in Madison on September 11-18, 1997, to raise awareness of her plight. In an Eau Claire Leader-Telegram newspaper interview, Rickert said "We're just ordinary people trying to do an extraordinary thing."^[1][2]

On March 13, 2000, Rickert's home was raided by local police, who rifled through her belongings and confiscated her property. Buffalo County District Attorney James Duval did not file any charges.^[6][7]

Medical marijuana bills introduced into the Wisconsin Legislature since 2001 have failed to pass. 2010's Assembly Bill 554 and Senate Bill 368, introduced in combined health committee on December 15, 2009, (called the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act) which would have allowed seriously ill patients to grow up to twelve marijuana plants or purchase up to three ounces of dry marijuana from nonprofit dispensaries, did not get to the floor of the State Legislature because Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker and Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan said they were not ready and did not have enough information about cannabis and whether the bill would hinder law enforcement.^[3]

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