Cannabis Pioneer: Ken Wolski
New Jersey’s recent cannabis legalization provides the perfect opportunity to feature Ken Wolski for this issue’s Cannabis Pioneer. A long-term activist, Wolski was an opponent of the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s establishing himself as a proponent of free speech, academic freedom, women’s rights, civil rights, sexual freedom, and drug policy reform. Today, at seventy-three, Wolski is the executive director of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana – New Jersey but his career began in nursing after obtaining both bachelor’s and master’s degrees and quickly determined he would be involved in public health as an extension of his passion for social justice.
After trial by fire in his first nursing job with the state-run Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, he moved on to nursing jobs at Carrier Clinic, Mercer Medical Center, the city of Trenton, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia before settling into a 22-year career with the state Department of Corrections. After NJ Governor Christie Whitman privatized health care in correctional centers, his continued service to the state included developing a statewide telemedicine program for inmates that was so successful, he received a Governor’s Certificate of Appreciation Award in 2005. He retired from the state the following year.
Over the years, Wolski has also tried his hand at politics, including a Green Party senate campaign in 2012, which ended with him finishing 4th out of 11 candidates in the running.
The bearded 73-year-old nurse exudes reassurance and empathy, in every scenario he’s a part of in public or leading a meeting of the coalition, which he founded in 2002 with Jim Miller, an activist who fought to pass a medical cannabis law so it could help his wife Cheryl, cope with multiple sclerosis. “It is very difficult to get the truth out about medical marijuana due to the campaign of misinformation currently being waged by the federal government,” Wolski said. “An all-volunteer organization like CMMNJ, which depends for its survival on public donations, faces daunting odds. Moreover, our strongest supporters are often very ill, often impoverished by their illness, and often afraid to speak out about their use of an illegal substance.”
State Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, sponsor of the medical marijuana and adult use legislation, credits Wolski for helping chip away at the drug’s stigma when marijuana “was looked at very skeptically…like a hippie thing.”
As a member of NORML since its start in 1970, Wolski traveled to Amsterdam in 1993 for a medical marijuana conference and met American expatriate James Burton. The former farmer from Kentucky described how he had served a year in a maximum-security prison after he was convicted of growing cannabis to treat his glaucoma.
“In 1993, I was Supervisor of Nurses at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton…so I was well aware of the kind of humiliations and degradations that inmates in maximum security prisons endured every day,” Wolski said. “It was a hard time, and it was totally inappropriate for the non-violent crime he committed.”
“This was one of the worst cases of social injustice I have ever encountered,” Wolski said. “I vowed I would try to stop this injustice from happening to other patients.”
Wolski’s advocacy efforts include numerous anecdotes, but to put into perspective how involved he has been during the road to legalization in NJ, note that in 2002, he wrote a resolution in support of medical marijuana that the New Jersey State Nurses Association adopted. In 2016, Governor Christie signed into law the addition of post-traumatic stress disorder as a qualifying condition for the medical marijuana program at the urging of Wolski and coalition members for two years. Wolski helped write the petition that added chronic pain of musculoskeletal origin to the qualifying list of conditions in 2018.
He is a registered patient himself and uses cannabis for pain associated with his osteoarthritis, and although “retired” from his nursing career, Wolski does not consider himself retired advocacy. He lectures on medical marijuana to community groups and nursing and medical professionals as part of their continuing education programs. He provides expert witness testimony in court cases and volunteers as the coalition’s executive director.