Like many people, Daniel Asbury had drugs in his medicine cabinet that a doctor told him to take. However, unlike other people that go to their medicine cabinet, he grew his green, leafy medicine in a pot of dirt. Predictably, Oregon, Ohio Police did not approve and arrested Asbury for marijuana cultivation. He managed to stay out of jail after a long and public fight.This experience helped inspire Asbury, as well as groups in favor of changing marijuana laws, to organize the “Journey for Justice,” according to a statement. Asbury, and three other wheelchair-bound and disabled Ohioans, are traveling across the back roads of Ohio to protest the state’s marijuana laws which forbid Ohioans from smoking marijuana to treat disease. On Monday, Asbury along with Daniel Flynt, a paraplegic, John Precup, who has multiple sclerosis, and Kay Lee, who suffers from arthritis and other ailments, began traveling from Oregon, Ohio to the Statehouse in Columbus where the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws will hold a rally on Saturday, said Tomas Salazar, Sandusky County NORML president.The protest group of disabled and ill Ohioans has grown to 12 people, said Jeff Nyhan, a volunteer with For A Better Ohio. “Some are walking who have the ability to walk. We have a support van in case they need anything because their safety is our number one priority,” Nyhan said. They are traveling to protest Gov. George Voinovich’s signing of Senate Bill 2. Sponsored by Sen. Louis Blessing, (R-Cincinnati), Senate Bill 2 eliminated the “medical necessity” defense to those arrested for possession of marijuana, Salazar said. Juries would have been able to consider the fact that someone used marijuana for medical purposes, said Rep. Frank Sawyer, (D-Butler), who supported the “medical necessity” defense law.Those who voted against the bill could not be reached for comment, but Susan Strack, a spokesman for Rep. Jim Mason, (R-Columbus), said Mason and others voted to repeal the “medical necessity” law because they are convinced smokable marijuana is an unnecessary, dangerous drug that should not be used as medicine. Testimony by police and medical organizations also helped convince Mason, Strack said.However, Nyhan said smokable marijuana is safer than pharmaceutical alternatives such as marinol, which is marijuana in pill form.”People like to say (smokable) marijuana has more serious side effects, but the side effects from pharmaceutical drugs are actually worse,” Nyhan said. “These drugs are expensive and often toxic,” he said.Asbury, the quadriplegic who grew his own marijuana, dislikes state and federal marijuana laws in general, he said.”Sick, dying, and disabled Americans are being held hostage and are being used as pawns in the so-called ‘war on drugs,’ which in reality is a misguided attempt to save us from ourselves,” Asbury said.