Marine Combat Vet Kicked Out of Senate Meeting for Speaking Too Much Truth [Video]

Lansing, MI — After returning from Iraq, Dakota Serna found himself battling PTSD and taking prescription pills for roughly three years after leaving the service. Due to a botched hernia operation, doctors began prescribing painkillers along with his antidepressants, leading to ulcers in his stomach and intestines.

With the prescription pills taking their toll on his body and mind, Serna abandoned the FDA-approved medications after a friend shared a joint with him. No longer suffering from incessant nightmares and insomnia, Serna found that his anxiety had decreased, and his patience had returned. Instead of making him more hostile, cannabis offered Serna a peace of mind that the nauseating combination of pills never gave him.

During a Senate Committee meeting last week in Lansing, Michigan, Serna spoke before the members to discuss HB 4209 and how it affects medical marijuana patients. According to Michigan state law, patients suffering from a number of illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, HIV, seizures, and PTSD, qualify for medical marijuana. Before his microphone was suddenly cut off, Serna had been attempting to explain how HB 4209 places a greater tax burden on people who barely survive on fixed incomes.

“I am a veteran,” Serna addressed the panel. “A Marine. Served my country. Fought in Iraq. And I’ve received, and battle with PTSD to this very day. Now, I didn’t just get my post-traumatic stress from rolling down the street and seeing car bombs or having mortars falling out of the sky and hurt a few people. No. I kicked in doors, and I killed people from distances less than we are from each other.”

“I’ve seen children skewered from rebar from collapsed buildings. Skewered! I’ve seen human remains. I’ve watched my friends die at my feet. And that’s just my struggle. And medical marijuana is the thing that saved my life.”

While asking the Committee to vote “no” on HB 4209, Serna explained that many people on disability cannot afford the tax hike in the bill. Upset that many patients would no longer be able to afford both their food and medicine, Serna explained, “This bill not only takes more money from them, it taxes their medicine – you’re going to give some of that medicine to the sheriff’s department, the jackboots, the thugs that come into people’s homes and kick in the door.”

At that point, State Senator Rick Jones had Serna’s mic cut off and ordered him out of the building. After being unable to finish his testimony before the hearing, Serna recently spoke with the Free Thought Project to discuss his political actions and his experience with marijuana. Unlike the Michigan legislator, we did not interrupt him.

DS: The point I was making to senator Jones is that lawmakers and current laws allow for drug task forces to kick in doors and ruin American citizen’s lives over a plant. The sheriff’s departments make up a significant portion of these task forces. I used the term thugs because that’s how I viewed my own self sometimes when I was kicking in doors in Iraq. I had no idea he would react in such a manner.….        source