At some point in all of our lives, we experience illness and injury. We fall off the jungle gym, get the flu, or break a bone. It hurts, we feel miserable, but it’s only a matter of time before our bodies return to normal. However awful we felt, our lives were only temporarily disrupted. But what if normal never came back? What if being sick and injured were your norm? What if everything in your life, from picking up a glass of water to carrying your own child, became a tremendous and painful chore?

 

I chose to create Cannabis Panacea not only because marijuana is a truly beautiful plant, but also because of its untapped potential to benefit the human race. Stigma surrounds and overshadows it, preventing the uptake and spread of real information. Millions of people suffer unnecessarily, unaware of the help available not involving addiction. When used with intent and knowledge, marijuana has the power to change our society for the better, and we deserve to discover how.

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As an Ann Arbor photographer, I have the perfect opportunity every year to interact with a few thousand of the lives marijuana has improved. Some of the images below are from Hash Bash 2017, an event that occurs annually on the first Saturday of April. People flock to Ann Arbor from all over the country to smoke and mingle with fellow cannabis users out in public, and to show the world what real medicine can do.