Medical Cannabis Patient runs for City Council

<H3 class="post-title entry-title">Introducing Victoria Zavala for Lancaster City Council

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Introducing Victoria Zavala for Lancaster City Council


You may not have heard about Victoria Zavala yet but you will. If she is elected on April 13, 2010 – she will not only be the first Latina on the council in Lancaster but also the first medical cannabis patient to serve on that council.

Victoria has been tirelessly working on safe access for medical cannabis patients in the Antelope Valley (which is about 2 hours north of LA).She is the director of a non-profit delivery service.

She has been desperately trying to convince the city to allow her to have a storefront location, so that she could help more patients. They have put a moratorium on all storefront locations in her city in the Antelope Valley Zavala is a single mother who struggles with her own auto-immune condition.

I first met Victoria while planning the first Charles C. Lynch protest. Victoria and her crew (Andrew and Andy, etc) jumped right in to the planning process. They donated a lot of poster boards, paints, and paint brushes to help us make protest signs. And they even helped plan the second protest as well.

Zavala and her small delivery collective are making major medical marijuana improvements in the Antelope Valley of Southern California. Zavala has been in the medical industry for over 15 years. And Community involvement is nothing new for Zavala and the small group of patients who help her.

She has been advocating and educating about Medical Cannabis in her surrounding area, her collective has had booths at community events, has given to charities like Grace Resources (homeless shelter), the LGBT domestic abuse shelter, Tarzana Substance Abuse Center, and Mental Health Centers at least once a month.



She dresses professionally to go into medical centers and hospital cafeterias to leave Medical Cannabis publications (West Coast Cannabis, West Coast Leaf, LA JEMM, etc) at these locations. She talks to doctors at the local Dialysis centers, Cancer Centers, Pain management Centers.

She even goes to all city council meetings, to some crime watch meetings, and City Planning meetings. She has met with her City Manager & City Attorney. She has met with the Sheriff and Detectives from various law enforcement agencies in the area.

And she has partnered with smoke shops to do vaporizing demonstrations, to teach patients the benefits of vaporizing which heats the herb – releasing the medicinal compounds – without burning it. This helps patients learn healthier ways to consume their cannabis and helps them find locations where they can get these products. She even created a poster that explains the benefits of vaporizing medical cannabis to share with patients.

Victoria needs to raise funds for her campaign to get the word out about what she’s doing. If you can help, please do. Keep an eye out, I’ll be posting more information soon. Please share this and tell others. We need more medical cannabis elected officials to make good laws for patients.



I’ve talked about Victoria Zavala in other blog posts:
http://waronme.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-are-most-influential-women-in.html
http://waronme.blogspot.com/2010/02/hempcon-2010-medical-marijuana-medias.html

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Here's a facebook video of Victoria Zavala speaking at HempCon. Victoria is running for City Council in Lancaster:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/video/video.php?v=366415282628&ref=mf

I'm trying to get a youtube link but it's not uploaded on youtube yet.

Here are 3 more short videos of an interview with Victoria Zavala who is running for Lancaster City Council:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=263946254882&ref=mf&v=info#!/video/video.php?v=367393947628&ref=mf

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=367393947628&ref=mf#!/video/video.php?v=367662417628&ref=mf

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=367393947628&ref=mf#!/video/video.php?v=367836067628&ref=mf

Victoria Zavala is a Medical Marijuana Media Maven


Victoria Zavala is a Medical Marijuana Media Maven


Medical Marijuana Media would like to honor Victoria Zavala with its first ever Medical Marijuana Media Maven award. This award will be given out to people who utilize media to get positive attention for medical cannabis issues. Victoria is receiving this award because she maximizes media to its full potential.

I guess I should start out by defining media. Media is plural for medium. And media is a combination of materials and technologies used to communicate between 2 or more people who are not face-to-face. A lot of times when we talk about “The Media”, we are referring to mainstream corporate media outlets such as CNN news, New York Times, Time Magazine, NPR, etc. Those are each different mediums (or media).

However, media is also things like the telephone, skype, facebook, newsletters, text messaging, paintings, photography, video, books, business cards, flyers, brochures, logoed items, t-shirts, labels, emails, etc.

Victoria does 2 really cool things with media; she created her own and she distributes other people’s media.

Victoria and her crew create a 1-page 2-sided newsletter called the AV SATIVA which stands for Antelope Valley Safe Access Through Individuals, Volunteers and Advocates. Now, you maybe think a sheet of paper isn’t worth being nominated for a media maven award.

It’s what Victoria adds to this one-page newsletter and how she distributes it that earns her this award. She needed a way to share information with her patients and community and so she decided to create this newsletter.

In the newsletter, she includes a calendar with upcoming events, informative websites, and little new blurbs about city, state and federal things related to medical cannabis. She fits a lot of info into those 2-sides of that paper. And she does one every month. And she is talking about making it bigger with more information.

She provides these newsletters to the patients she sees, to members of the public at events where she has a booth, and she provides them in here Community Cannabis Center. Victoria has a small space in the Lancaster International Mall where she provides literature and plenty of information about getting legal and finding a trust-worthy physician for recommendations.

Victoria also utilizes cannabis media to help educate others. Whenever she’s in LA, she will pick up stacks of West Coast Cannabis, West Coast Leaf, LA JEMM, etc and she will bring them back to her area and not only give them to her patients but also leave them a medical clinics and hospitals in the area. She’ll go into doctors’ offices and tell them about her service.

To me, Victoria Zavala is a true medical marijuana media maven for all she does to promote safe access to medical cannabis.

Posted by Herbalicious at 7:00 AM