PANAMA CITY — Ken Locke was nearly killed in November 2001 when a tree fell on him and caved in his skull, but it was nothing 12 screws and six metal plates couldn’t fix.
Well, 12 screws, six plates and a few puffs of marijuana smoke every day.
Locke, 49, of North Carolina, was not completely healed after the life-saving surgeries; he was plagued by grand mal seizures that can result from a traumatic brain injury.
“I’ve been through over 60 grand mal seizures, and since I’ve been using cannabis they’ve stopped,” Locke said.
Locke said he lost more than 50 pounds after about a year taking a battery of pills, so he all but ditched pharmaceuticals entirely in 2006 and decided to rely on cannabis. Around the same time, he embarked on a cross-country bicycle trek to San Francisco to raise awareness of the benefits of medical marijuana.
He rode something like 4,600 miles on that trip. He said he got a lot of attention from police in Kansas until he reached the border with Colorado, where medical marijuana was legalized in 2000, and where a stranger greeted him with a half-ounce bag of grass.
He made a lot of friends on that trip. It was not unusual, he said, for people who met him to give him a joint when he passed through town.
Now he’s doing it again, this time cycling through the state of Florida, from Tallahassee to the Keys and back in time for a libertarian rally in Tallahassee on Feb. 10, this time with wife Shirley and 12-year-old son Dakota.
On Monday, the family pulled off the road for a few minutes to discuss their trip, which began Jan. 3. Shirley was nursing an injured wrist after a spill earlier that morning.
Ken wore sweat pants and a T-shirt bearing the logo of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He’s a daily user of cannabis, but he didn’t seem intoxicated.
He wouldn’t say if he was holding any pot since he could’ve been talking to a cop posing as a reporter, he said. He knows he risks arrest when he occasionally ducks into the woods for a few puffs, and he didn’t want to invite an arrest, he said. But, if he doesn’t smoke marijuana, he risks painful seizures; it’s a catch-22.
It’s illegal to use marijuana in Florida, except for medical use in very limited circumstances. The Legislature passed a law allowing the use of a strain of marijuana that doesn’t get users high, but the law is now mired in bureaucracy and the timetable for its implementation is uncertain.
Road companion: Locke and his family are accompanied by Becky Keith, who is driving a van filled with supplies they will need during the 1,500-mile trek. Keith suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, she said, and takes medications with undesirable side effects as a result. She doesn’t use cannabis, but if the laws changed and it became legal to do so in North Carolina, she might, she said.
“I can’t go to jail,” she said. “Who would take care of all my kids?”
Keith said she would prefer to use a medication that doesn’t get her high, but euphoria is not an undesirable side effect to Locke, who used marijuana recreationally before his injury. Except for children and certain adult patients, he said, there’s no reason to mess with the chemistry of pot.
“The plant is already perfect,” he said.
Locke is an Army veteran, which might be the only thing about him that doesn’t scream “hippie.” (He said he’s a hippie at heart.) But he describes himself and his family as normal people; his children are on the honor roll.
“I’m not harming” the kids, he said. “If I’m harming anyone, it would be myself.”
Locke hopes Florida will change its stance on the intoxicating plant, as more than a dozen other states have legalized medical marijuana and a few have legalized recreational use. Politicians should not get in between doctors and their patients, and legalization would open the door for further research on cannabis’s medicinal qualities, he said.
He pointed out that while a constitutional amendment that would have legalized medical marijuana ultimately failed to gain 60 percent of the votes cast in November, it was still supported by a majority of voters.
“That’s the people’s voice,” he said.