cannabisnews.com: Mr. Attorney General, Listen To The Doctors 





Mr. Attorney General, Listen To The Doctors 
Posted by CN Staff on February 16, 2003 at 11:31:19 PT
By Kate Scannell
Source: San Francisco Chronicle 
John Ashcroft, meet a cancer victim. I want John Ashcroft to leave his desk, come into the chemotherapy suite and participate in the real consequences of his choices. I want him to meet the bald, frail woman lying in the hospital bed next to mine in the chemotherapy suite. I want this 70-year-old woman to ask him the same medical question she asked me.
Because I was a cancer patient receiving chemotherapy at the same hospital where I worked, the women with whom I shared the suite quickly surmised that I was also a doctor. The clues were obvious: the colleagues dropping by, the "doctor" salutations from co-workers and the odd coincidence that one of my suite mates was also one of my patients. I braced myself for this woman's question, both wanting to make myself available to her but also wishing that the world could forget that I was a doctor for the moment. After receiving my cancer diagnosis, dealing with surgery and chemotherapy and grappling with insistent reminders of my mortality, I had no desire to think about medicine or to experience myself as a physician in that oncology suite. And besides, the chemotherapy, anti- nauseants, sleep medications and prednisone were hampering my ability to think clearly. So, after a gentle disclaimer about my clinical capabilities, I said I'd do my best to answer her question. She shoved her IV line out of the way and, with great effort and discomfort, rolled on her side to face me. Her belly was a pendulous sack bloated with ovarian cancer cells, and her eyes were vacant of any light. She became short of breath from the task of turning toward me. "Tell me," she managed, "Do you think marijuana could help me? I feel so sick." I winced. I knew about her wretched pain, her constant nausea and all the prescription drugs that had failed her - some of which also made her more constipated, less alert and even more nauseous. I knew about the internal derangements of chemotherapy, the terrible feeling that a toxic swill is invading your bones, destroying your gut and softening your brain. I knew this woman was dying a prolonged and miserable death. And, from years of clinical experience, I - like many other doctors - also knew that marijuana could actually help her. From working with AIDS and cancer patients, I repeatedly saw how marijuana could ameliorate a patient's debilitating fatigue, restore appetite, diminish pain, remedy nausea, cure vomiting and curtail down-to-the-bone weight loss. I could firmly attest to its benefits and wager the likelihood that it would decrease her suffering. Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/mcv.htm Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)Author: Kate ScannellPublished: Sunday, February 16, 2003 Copyright: 2003 San Francisco Chronicle -  Page D - 3 Contact: letters sfchronicle.comWebsite: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/Related Articles & Web Site:Medical Marijuana Information Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htmA Vindictive Drug Warhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15485.shtmlAshcroft's Agenda - Baltimore Sunhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15484.shtmlTrust-Buster -- Ashcroft Kicks The Dog Once Again http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15461.shtml 
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Comment #11 posted by malleus2 on February 18, 2003 at 18:38:44 PT
The problem with this doctor's plea
is that AshKKKroft has demonstrated that he lacks of conscience...which you need for possessing empathy...which he also demonstrably lacks.AshKKKroft and ol' John 'Pee' want only one thing: all cannabists out of the picture. Anyway they can manage it. If it's death by disease which cannabis could treat sensibly or at least make the remaining days left more tolerable, then his religion demands it.Because 'suffering is good for the soul'. These neoconservative creeps think themselves Christ-like for suffering the 'slings and arrows' received while performing 'public service' from outraged 'liberal' sensibilities - which include medicinal cannabis. Like Abraham willing to sacrifice his son, these monsters are quite willing to destroy anyone they believe they must to achieve their twisted version of a Fundamentalist utopia. They believe that they have a 'calling' to do so...needless to say, you must ask the question if those voices they hear 'calling' are more products of derangement rather than divine inspiration.This is why the courts may be the only way to stop them...for they always hide behind legality to rationalize their evil. They can't use compassion; they tend to equate compassion with moral weakness in not 'standing tough' when it would be easy to accede to the growing(!) demands of the public for medicinal cannabis. They are shepherds - in their own minds - and sometimes you have to use a cattle prod to move the sheep the way you want them to go. That's how these people think. 'Compassion' is a dirty word to them.
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Comment #10 posted by Ethan Russo MD on February 17, 2003 at 11:33:12 PT:
CBD
For more on CBD, see:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12412831&dopt=Abstractand slide presentations at:www.gwpharm.com
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Comment #9 posted by charmed quark on February 17, 2003 at 11:29:10 PT
CBD
We should all try raising ths issue to ur congressmen to illustrate the insanity of the DEA classifitions. Remember, CBD has no pyschoactive properties, but it's mere assoication with cannabs gets it labeled Scheule 1 - Highly abusable and with no medical utility.Somebody will have to explain to me how one abuses such a drug.
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Comment #8 posted by FoM on February 16, 2003 at 15:52:24 PT
News Brief from KPIX-TV - Channel 5
Medical Pot Activists Urge SF to Get Into the BusinessSue McGuire for KCBS-740 AMhttp://beta.kpix.com/(KCBS)--The fight for California to implement its medical marijuana law will be front and center this week because activists have proclaimed the coming days, Medical Marijuana Week. KCBS reporter Jane McMillan says the activists want city leaders to take action on Proposition "S" the voter approved measure that confronts the federal government regulation of marijuana and has the city get into the business of growing medical marijuana. Ed Rosenthal, the Oakland activist whose own pot growing conviction is on appeal, is joining the effort to get things moving in San Francisco. "What we are trying to do is get the supervisors of San Francisco to start working on that and implementing it, to nudge them along," he said. Proposition "S" was approved in November but Rosenthal says so far not much has been done about it. "The city has cooperated with the many medical marijuana facilities in San Francisco and has supported them in many different ways, but the City of Oakland is further along in that direction," added Rosenthal. Activists say they will spend the coming week fighting for state's rights and the needs of patients in the spotlight. 02-16-2003   
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Comment #7 posted by p4me on February 16, 2003 at 15:49:53 PT
Cannabis medicines will help everyone
If you add the 33% of people that will get cancer and the bowel diseases characterixed by inflammation, and the percentage of people with migraines and arthritis, then 122% of the population will be helped considering all these diseases alone. Add the 80% with a pissedon-pissedoff syndrome caused by prohibition itself and that puts it up to 212%. Do they have some of that 1200% THC cannabis with 1200% CBDs too? We sure could use some.
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Comment #6 posted by p4me on February 16, 2003 at 15:32:19 PT
Dr. Russo and anyone else, What about CBD?
There is a program on PBS Channel 42 that comes on Sunday called "Health Weekly" that has a panel of 3 doctors today discussing intestinal disease. It said 20% of everyone has Irratible Bowel Disease. Then there is Chrohn's disease and ulcerative colitis disease and others that really runs up the percentage of the population suffering from inflamation problems of the colon. GCW says that CBDs might well help things involving inflammation happens with most bowel diseases. Is there a pill that is synthetic CBD and what is it prescribed for? CBD must really be dangerous to be a Schedule One Substance. Hell, it might keep you from bleeding to death.The link for the Chrohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) is http://www.ccfa.org/ They do barely address the question of cannabis in the Q&A section.Isn't it sad when the government puts social and financial interest ahead of life and liberty which has a way of ruining any pursuit of happiness?
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on February 16, 2003 at 13:52:10 PT
Just a Comment and a Note
Hi Everyone,We are having a big snow storm. It is really pretty. I'm glad we don't have to go away in this though. I wanted to mention that I don't post all the news on the front page of CNews but this link below will bring up all the news posted. 
All Current News Posted on CNews
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Comment #4 posted by observer on February 16, 2003 at 13:18:53 PT
Doctors and Cannabis
I knew a doctor once who got brain cancer and was glad to have cannabis to help her some through chemotherapy. This was after all the "latest and best" (patent) medicines were tried and failed. (Generic thus unpatentable) cannabis worked where the expensive meds failed. No wonder big pharma companies bribe and pay off politicians to keep jailing cannabis users. (All for the children, of course.)Breaking Medical Cannabis news at the speed of Bot!
http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/topic/medical_cannabis.htm
latest, breaking drug-related news http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/
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Comment #3 posted by Ethan Russo MD on February 16, 2003 at 12:41:41 PT:
Figure This
1 in 3 Americans will be facing some kind of cancer in their lifetime. Statistically, no family is immune, but statistics mean nothing to some people until that gut-wrenching moment when the doctor announces that you or your loved one has cancer. Call it a disease of civilization, or whatever. Maybe it's from cigarettes or pollution. Maybe it's from a bad diet. Maybe it's from bad genes. None of that matters when the news comes. People are desperate for a cure, and for relief of the suffering of the disease itself, or the ravages of the supposed cures.Cannabis can help, or even be life-saving. If the role of government is to keep people from their chosen treatment, then it is cruel and unusual, indeed.
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Comment #2 posted by Truth on February 16, 2003 at 12:32:44 PT
John
Ashcroft, I think, prefers to cause pain rather then relieving it, probably makes him feel powerful.
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Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo MD on February 16, 2003 at 12:23:02 PT:
The Rest---
Still, federal law has forbidden doctors to recommend or prescribe marijuana to patients. In fact, in 1988 the Drug Enforcement Agency even rejected one of its own administrative law judge's conclusions supporting medicinal marijuana, after two full years of hearings on the issue. Judge Francis Young recommended the change on grounds that "marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man," and that it offered a "currently accepted medical use in treatment." Doctors see all sorts of social injustices that are written on the human body, one person at a time. We see poverty manifest as a young father who suffered a stroke because he could not afford cholesterol-lowering medications. We see racism and sexism evident in the dearth of research that could specify whether our hypertensive patient might respond differently to standard treatments based on white male norms. We see the desperate and damaged homeless arrive in emergency rooms to receive health care on a crisis-to- crisis basis that rarely ever offers cure. These social injustices are gargantuan problems that cannot be fixed in the clinic, and their remedies can only come from broad public reform. But this one - the rote denial of a palliative care drug like marijuana to people with serious illness - smacks of pure cruelty precisely because it is so easily remediable, precisely because it prioritizes service to a cold political agenda over the distressed lives and deaths of real human beings. The federal obsession with a political agenda that keeps marijuana out of the hands of sick and dying people is appalling and irrational. Washington bureaucrats - far removed from the troubled bedsides of sick and dying patients - are ignoring what patients and doctors and health care workers are telling them about real world suffering. The federal refusal to honor public referendums like California's voter-approved Medical Marijuana Initiative is as bewildering as it is ominous. Its refusal to listen to doctors groups like the California Medical Association that support compassionate use of medical marijuana is chilling. In a society that has witnessed extensive positive experiences with medicinal marijuana, as long as it is safe and not proven to be ineffective, why -shouldn't seriously ill patients have access to it? Why should an old woman be made to die a horrible death for a hollow political symbol? I want Attorney General Aschroft to wipe the vomit off this woman's chest, help lift her belly so she -doesn't hurt as much when she rolls onto her back, and explain straight to her grimacing face why she -can't try marijuana. I want him to tell me why it does not matter to him that almost every sick and dying patient I've ever known who's tried medical marijuana experienced a kinder death. Face to face, I want him to explain all these things to her and to me and to the heartbroken family who is standing by. Kate Scannell is a doctor in Oakland who is co-director of the Northern California Ethics Department of Kaiser-Permanente.
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