cannabisnews.com: Medical Marijuana





Medical Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on January 02, 2005 at 08:06:04 PT
Editorial
Source: Winston-Salem Journal
The baby-boom generation, which brought marijuana use into public view in the 1960s, still thinks that smoking weed is OK - at least for medicinal purposes. They're right.A survey conducted for the AARP found that almost three-fourths of older Americans think that marijuana should be a legal medical therapy.
Advocates of legalized medical marijuana use say that it can relieve nausea and vomiting related to AIDS and cancer therapies, and that it is a useful therapy against anorexia, arthritis, chronic pain, epilepsy, glaucoma, migraines and multiple sclerosis. There is no scientific evidence to prove these claims, however.That lack of scientific evidence stems directly from the federal government's unwillingness to allow scientists to study medicinal marijuana. There is anecdotal evidence that THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, achieves these medicinal goals. The Canadian health service has just begun a study to gather scientific evidence on the question. Medical marijuana use is legal, but controlled, in Canada.The U.S. government's determination to stop medicinal marijuana use borders on the obsessive and illogical. The Bush administration is fighting 11 states that have approved, in many cases by referendum, the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Among those states are Arizona, Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and Montana, all Western states known for their dislike of government intervention in private lives and for their conservative politics.The states will tell the U.S. Supreme Court that the feds have no authority to interfere with state-approved medicinal marijuana use. This is the correct constitutional stand. This is an issue of states' rights, not national drug control or interstate commerce. If a state approves medicinal marijuana, the federal government should stay out. If a state's program allows recreational use of the drug, or sends it into interstate commerce, a federal role is justified.It is clear that politics, not medical logic, drives the federal crusade against medicinal marijuana. If made a prescription drug, it could be controlled just like any other. Nothing about marijuana makes it more dangerous as a prescription therapy than other drugs.The Supreme Court won't rule on the effectiveness of marijuana as a drug. It will have to rely on the Constitution to settle this issue. If the court reads that document correctly, a great many Americans will have a new, and possibly very effective, pain remedy.Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)Published: Sunday, January 2, 2005Copyright: 2005 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.Contact: letters wsjournal.comWebsite: http://www.journalnow.com/Related Articles & Web Site:AARP Magazinehttp://www.aarpmagazine.org/From Pot To Porn To AARP http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread20072.shtmlPoll Examines Medical Marijuana Supporthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread20041.shtmlStudy To Probe Safety of Using Pot for Painhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread20002.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on January 04, 2005 at 08:26:31 PT
Editorial from OpinionEditorials.com
The Governments Case for Medical Marijuana Jeff Scott January 04, 2005Someone once said “You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.” and Greg Lewis’ recent OpEd on Medical Marijuana spends a great deal of time proving just how accurate that phrase really is. Rather then beat my chest or shout some new thought-terminating-cliché I’ll let the facts speak for themselves.In 1988, DEA Administrative Law Judge ruled after a lengthy hearing into the rescheduling of Marijuana that it was “One of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man” and that “It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious [for the DEA] to find otherwise.” The result? The DEA rejected there own findings, lost at appeal a few times but eventually won and kept marijuana a schedule 1 drug. While the hearings, appeals and zero tolerance policies were in full swing at the DEA the US government was quietly supplying medical cannabis to a handful of patients in its Investigational New Drug program. These patients receive a large tin filled with hundreds of machine rolled joints grown and processed at NIDA’s pot farm at the University of Mississippi every month. Each patient receives over 6 pounds of cannabis a year for free and this program is over thirty years old. Each patient also carries a government ID card that protects them from local and federal arrest in the US – even aboard aircraft after September 11th. These patients are ostensibly in a federal research program but no government research has been done on them to discern either the harmful effects of long term smoking or the beneficial effects of cannabis on their various conditions. Private research done by Dr Ethan Russo available at: http://www.maps.org/mmj/russo2002.pdf into the health of these individuals has shown them to be remarkably well. Most lead productive lives despite their disabilities and one is even a successful stock broker- the antithesis of the couch bound stoner we so often see parodied and propagandized. There is more to Cannabis then THC – the “active” psychotropic ingredient banned and demonized by bureaucrats and demagogues alike. The Jerusalem Post reports that an acid derived from Cannabidiol “code named HU-320, is a potent anti-inflammatory agent. HU-320 is comparable to the known drug indomethacin, but without the known and considerable gastrointestinal side effects caused by that drug.” The Israeli Defense Force has begun experimenting with cannabis as a treatment for soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PharmosCorp, also located in Israel, has begun marketing Dexanabinol for treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury – just in time to fill the void after steroids (until recently used to treat TBI’s) were found to increase the death rate in TBI patients by 20%.Vioxx, Celebrex, Naprosyn, Ibuprofen and Bextra are all anti-inflammatory drugs that have been used for years and which have all either been pulled off the market by the FDA or issued strident new warnings about side effects as serious as a heart attack. This compares to Cannabis which has no known toxicity level, is slightly less addictive then caffeine and has yet to kill anyone. But don’t take my word for it; check out the actual addiction studies by Dr. Jack E. Henningfield of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Dr. Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California at San Francisco. Read DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young’s report online and look at the research other countries are doing before making an informed decision on the topic.Note: I am a Husband, Father, Business Owner, Honorably Discharged Naval Hospital Corpsman and decorated Desert Storm VeteranCopyright: 2004 Frontiers of Freedom http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/jscott_20050104.html
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Comment #4 posted by afterburner on January 03, 2005 at 07:24:08 PT
Guilt by Association
This guy, Greg Lewis, in comment # 1 purports to be talking about "medical" marijuana [sic] (his quotes, his racial slur), but then in his case he mentions "croakers" and heroin as if all *drugs* are the same and all "stoners" or "potheads" (his prejudicial slurs) are no better than obsessive Beats. What a crock!As far as the cost to society of medical cannabis patients suing the government for their medical rights under the Constitution: we are fighting a *defensive* battle against irrational and vindictive superstition masquerading as law 'n' order. Has he ever considered the massive costs, to society and to families, of the obsessive enforcement of unscientific laws?
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Comment #3 posted by observer on January 03, 2005 at 01:38:14 PT
An ''Editorial'' from the Land of the ''Free''
[1]
There are two fairly well-defined positions that have emerged regarding the issue, under consideration by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, of whether the use of marijuana should be legalized for the treatment of certain medical conditions.
(Sentence 1) re: "America" - The survival of society is assured, -- says the propaganda of prohibition -- as long as drug users are punished (jailed). (Survival of Society (propaganda theme 3) http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/pg/propaganda/theme3.htm#3 ) 
 
 
[11]
All of this is to say that, where the use of marijuana is concerned, the currently-enumerated "medical" conditions are designed to protect a sub-class of American citizens from coping with their lives in traditionally accepted (read "pharmacologically unmediated") ways.
(Sentence 11) re: "American" - Prohibitionists assert that the survival of the community, society, the nation, the world, etc. are at stake. Only continued and increased punishments for drug users can be contemplated, because, say prohibitionists, society will otherwise fall apart. (Survival of Society (propaganda theme 3) http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/pg/propaganda/theme3.htm#3 ) 
 
 
[16]
Psychotropic substances are all potentially addictive, and marijuana is most assuredly a psychotropic substance.
(Sentence 16) re: "addictive" - Drugs, the prohibitionist explains, are a wicked bane on modern man. Why if not for the noble drug war (i.e. jailing drug users), exclaims the propagandist, then people will run amok, and violence, death, psychosis, and plague shall cover the land. (Madness,Crime,Violence,Illness (propaganda theme 2) http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/pg/propaganda/theme2.htm#2 ) 
 
 Notice also ... the good editors of the Winston-Salem Journal there, deep in Jesusland, just happened to forget to mention that itty bitty detail about JAILING mom & pop and granny and gramps because they grew a pot plant for medical relief. Why don't these guys want to talk about the JAIL part? You know, the jail the prosecutor threatens us with, the jail cells they promise to fill with a rapist to rape daddy with, if he won't plead out? (see http://www.spr.org ) Lemme guess ... That isn't how they want to frame the matter, at all? 
the latest breaking drug news - the drug sense news bot
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Comment #2 posted by ekim on January 02, 2005 at 21:34:05 PT
sub-class of American citizens -sticks and stones
yes Greg and i take full responsponability for my actions.what are you ingesting that makes you loose all compassion and felling of Liberty and Freedom?
http://www.leap.cc/events
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on January 02, 2005 at 21:11:14 PT
Editorial from OpinionEditorials.com
The Case Against Medical Marijuana Greg Lewis January 03, 2005There are two fairly well-defined positions that have emerged regarding the issue, under consideration by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, of whether the use of marijuana should be legalized for the treatment of certain medical conditions.The first of these sees marijuana's limited legalization as, in almost all cases, the effort of so-called "stoners" (in contemporary parlance people who pretty much can't live without getting high on marijuana on a daily basis) to find a way to circumvent existing laws that criminalize the use of wacky weed so that they (the stoners), with the consent of their croakers (q.v., below), can stay high all the time with impunity. Those who oppose passing laws which legalize the use of marijuana in "medically" sanctioned cases are seen by those who favor such laws' passage as inflexible obstructionists (scare quotes intended to emphasize the rather cynical view taken by opponents of legalization to the validity of the term "medical").The term "croaker" is Beat-Generation slang for "doctor." I first encountered it in the writings of William S. Burroughs. Its meaning has since the 1950s been narrowed somewhat to denote a physician who stretches prescription medication guidelines to insure that his or her patients do not have to endure existential pain beyond what contemporary drug mediation can guarantee is acceptable. Under the proposed new laws, I can't imagine marijuana becoming anything — at least in California — but a substance any croaker would readily prescribe for patients with the same sort of substance cravings Burroughs and his cronies flaunted 50 years ago, and for which their croakers provided relief by prescribing opiates when heroin (Burroughs' drug of choice) was in short supply.On the other side of this issue are those who favor the blanket legalization of medical marijuana. The "medical" umbrella seems to be providing, for people who would ultimately remove any restrictions whatsoever on smoking grass, something of an entry-level platform from which they might leverage across-the-board approval of the use of boo to ameliorate pretty much any condition that might create stress in any human who tends to respond to "stressful" situations by freaking out. All of this is to say that, where the use of marijuana is concerned, the currently-enumerated "medical" conditions are designed to protect a sub-class of American citizens from coping with their lives in traditionally accepted (read "pharmacologically unmediated") ways.In fact, if such legislation is allowed by the Supreme Court to stand, it will become not much more than an excuse for a bunch of pot-smokers of every ilk to do what abusers of the Americans With Disabilities Act and their attorneys have done: find ways to twist and subvert and otherwise undermine legislation designed to provide succor to a class of American citizens who are legitimately entitled to government-sanctioned relief from their afflictions so that the legislation in question becomes the instrument, in this case, for a bunch of stoners "getting over" at the expense of American taxpayers, who will minimally be presented with the bill for legal fees in the lawsuits that result from potheads' bringing actions against the state if they are denied, for any reason whatsoever, funded access to the drug which has been the foundation of their lifestyles for, in many cases, the past several decades.But these arguments beg the real question, which has to focus on the consequences for human brain chemistry and, subsequently, human behavior, of the overuse of psychotropic substances. A psychotropic substance is one which, when ingested and absorbed into the bloodstream, interacts directly with brain chemistry to alter moods and behavior. Psychotropic substances can dramatically change the way we feel and the way we respond to our environments. Psychotropic substances are all potentially addictive, and marijuana is most assuredly a psychotropic substance.Complete Article: http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/glewis_20050103.html
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