Voice for the voiceless: Why a Hilton Head elite wants legal medical marijuana in SC

Margaret Richardson of Hilton Head Island appears designed to be a debutante, maybe a Junior Leaguer, not an activist for legal marijuana.

She is a daughter of John D. Carswell, a Savannah insurance legend who brought the lucrative trade to Hilton Head in 1960 as Carswell of Carolina.

She is the wife of Scott Richardson, who served as a Republican state representative and state senator from the island, and was appointed by Gov. Mark Sanford to be director of the state Department of Insurance. He sits on the Heritage Classic Foundation board.

Margaret Richardson identifies as a Christian conservative, and her life backs that up.

Yet in a prim red jacket, a string of pearls, and a purse full of facts about pot, she is shouting from the rooftops that South Carolinians in pain need medical marijuana — and they deserve it.

“There are people — children, grandmothers, mothers, sons, cancer patients — suffering needlessly when a safe alternative to pain-killers and opioids exists,” she says.

The key word is “needlessly.”

That is her top reason for being a vocal advocate for the Compassionate Care Act (S. 150) that has been debated over the past week in the state Senate.

State Sen. Tom Davis, a libertarian-leaning Beaufort Republican, has been pushing it for seven years. He at last got to argue for it on the Senate floor Wednesday and Thursday. The bill would legalize under strict circumstances the use of some forms of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Thirty-six other states have seen fit to do that.

Richardson recognizes her position of privilege in life, and says it comes with a duty.

She has testified before a state Senate committee, spoken at a news conference in the Statehouse lobby, written op-eds, videotaped a personal message to legislators, called legislators, and spoken out in the media.

“I don’t want to be critical,” she said, “and that’s why my op-ed said ‘thank you’ because I know it’s been hard for people who come from my era who think of the stereotypical Woodstock hippie.

“I understand that, but I’m so grateful for ones who have opened their minds and gotten the facts. But it is their job to stand up for the people who don’t have a voice. It’s not fair, and that’s how I feel.”

HORROR OF OPIOIDS

Years of crushing pain in her skull drove Margaret Richardson to a vape pen filled with cannabis.

“It feels like a Bunsen burner has been turned on inside of your head,” she said of the rare disorder it took many years and nine doctors to diagnose.

She has trigeminal neuralgia.

When it flares in nerves wrapped around the face and skull, it can send you to the floor screaming.

Or as Johns Hopkins puts it: “Although the condition is not life-threatening the intensity of the pain can be debilitating.”

Richardson has had three neurosurgeries, Botox injections and wires wrapped inside her body to battle the pain.

“There are three branches of those nerves in your face,” she said, “and one of them comes what feels like out of your back top teeth. So you go to your dentist and beg them to pull your teeth because that’s what if feels like. And I have a brilliant dentist who wouldn’t do it, but a lot of people have gotten every tooth pulled out of their head.”

No matter the regimen to control the pain, it doesn’t always work, she said.

Opioids, the drug of choice in South Carolina, was disastrous for her.

“I only took them for four months because they wrecked my stomach so badly that I got down to 113 pounds,” she said. “I couldn’t get out of bed. I had blue rings under my eyes. I turned yellow. I had Scott feeding me every meal because just walking to the kitchen was too much. I couldn’t do it.”

‘NOT JUST FOR ME’

Richardson clearly remembers her first true relief. It was vaporized cannabis.

“I was at the (family’s Lowcountry) farm one Thanksgiving and I thought, I don’t think I can endure this kind of pain. I was at the end of my rope, and I’d been open about what I was going through, and my friends knew, and someone had given me a medical cannabis vape pen, and I didn’t want to use it but I was so desperate that that night, I used it and I slept for 13 hours, and it stopped the pain.”

Thereafter, she said, she would only take medical cannabis when she couldn’t stand the pain because it was either that or the opioids.

She told legislators in a video:

“I’ve always considered myself a law-abiding citizen. It’s hard enough to never know when the flares are going to hit and when you are going to scream out loud and hope you are in the presence of someone who can understand, because it is very embarrassing as well as painful.

“But I creep around like a CRIMINAL because it’s the only way I am assured to have relief in my possession. Yet if I’m arrested on a plane flight, I have to fear that that’s a possibility. If I’m driving around and I have a small bit in my purse just in case, that’s not fair. It really isn’t.”

Her situation is, at the moment, under control in part due to injections she gets quarterly in North Carolina.

But, she said, “You never know when it’s going to blow.”

Under the proposed law, professionals could give her cannabis in forms other than raw, smokable pot. She would know what she was getting and how and when to use it. Today, she calls herself a human “guinea pig” as an unfamiliar traveler in the world of illegal marijuana.

Many others have told gruesome personal stories of pain and suffering to hesitant legislators.

Richardson knows that many hurting South Carolinians don’t have insurance, a husband and loving family like she does.

“There are people who have lost their jobs, there are providers for families who cannot go to work, there are people who want to go to work and be part of their children’s lives who have become caregivers,” she said.

She knows what it is like for a legislator to put a hand on the Bible and swear to defend and protect the state’s citizens.

“If it’s within your power to be a voice for those who have no voice, use that sacred trust to serve people in dire need and be brave and step out.”

Choking up, she adds, “I’m tired of being the grandmother in the red jacket and the pearl necklace begging, because it’s not just for me.”

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.