cannabisnews.com: The Sick Shouldn't Be Victims of The Drug War The Sick Shouldn't Be Victims of The Drug War Posted by CN Staff on July 21, 2003 at 11:54:28 PT By Richard Brookhiser, Special To The News Source: Buffalo News Earlier this year, the New York State Association of County Health Officials - as cautious a bunch as you will find in the medical community - urged New York lawmakers to pass legislation to legalize the medical use of marijuana. Unfortunately, the legislative clock ran out on the measure this year, despite three overwhelmingly positive committee votes. That must not happen again next year. It is past time to remove patients fighting cancer, AIDS and other scourges from the battlefield of the war on drugs. "The legalization of medical marijuana would be a step forward for the health of all New Yorkers," the association declared. "Marijuana has proven to be effective in the treatment of people with HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, cancer and those suffering from severe pain or nausea." I knew that already. I discovered marijuana's benefits while receiving chemotherapy for testicular cancer in 1992. Part way through my treatment, the conventional anti-nausea drugs prescribed by my doctors stopped working. Marijuana was the only thing that kept my head out of the toilet. I was lucky. As a member of the media elite, I probably wasn't at huge risk for a drug bust. Living in Manhattan, I was able to obtain my illicit herbs under the relative cover of urban anonymity. But people fighting for their lives shouldn't have to depend on professional status or the luck of geography. Putting such patients in jail for the "crime" of trying to relieve some of the misery caused by their illnesses is pointless and cruel. The consensus regarding marijuana's medical value grows every day. Just this May, the journal Lancet Neurology noted that marijuana's active components are effective against pain in virtually every lab test scientists have devised to measure pain relief, and even speculated that marijuana could become "the aspirin of the twenty-first century." The governments of Canada and the Netherlands have sanctioned marijuana's medical use. Marijuana does have risks, but so do all drugs. The biggest health concern - potential irritation to the lungs and airways caused by smoking - has been largely solved: Recent research has documented that relatively simple devices called vaporizers can allow marijuana users to inhale the active ingredients - thus getting the instantaneous relief they need - with almost none of the irritants in smoke. Eight states now have laws allowing medical use of marijuana with a physician's recommendation, and those laws have been successful. Last year, the General Accounting Office - the investigative arm of Congress - interviewed 37 law enforcement agencies in four of those states, reporting that the majority of those interviewed "indicated that medical marijuana laws had had little impact on their law enforcement activities." Some feared that medical marijuana laws would increase teen use of the drug. But the experience of California, whose medical marijuana law has been in place since 1996, has shown such fears to be unfounded. According to the official California Student Survey, teenage marijuana use, after rising steadily through the first half of the '90s, has dropped sharply since medical marijuana became legal. An independent study commissioned by the state to investigate the law's effect on young people found no evidence that it had encouraged or increased adolescent marijuana use. As a conservative - a truer one, evidently, than the New York Conservative Party, which opposed the medical marijuana bill - I'm not surprised that common sense is bubbling up from the state level, while federal marijuana law remains stuck in the 1930s. Federal law will change eventually, because science, common sense and human decency require it. In the meantime, New York should do what it can under state law to make sure that the sick are no longer collateral damage of the war on drugs. Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor at the National Review.Source: Buffalo News (NY)Author: Richard Brookhiser, Special To The NewsPublished: July 20, 2003Copyright: 2003 The Buffalo NewsContact: lettertoeditor buffnews.comWebsite: http://www.buffalonews.com/ CannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #2 posted by afterburner on July 21, 2003 at 17:26:37 PT: Richard Cowan's Latest July 21, 2003 Embarrassing Questions: If It Was Wrong to Lie to Justify the War on Saddam, Why Isn’t It Wrong to Lie to Justify the War on Cannabis Users? Analysis by Richard Cowan Posted by Richard Cowan on 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Source: "If they have lied to us about Iraq, why should we believe what they say about cannabis? We should ask the critics of Bush and Blair why knowing the truth about Saddam is more important than the truth about cannabis users, especially the medical users whom they are attacking so viciously?We cannot go around the world and expect to be taken seriously as bringers of peace and freedom when our government brings neither at home. Read Full Story... http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=702 " "Between 1940 and 1980, the incarceration rate hovered in a range between 160 and 200 [inmates per 100,000 US population]. Then it took off, reaching 319 by 1985, 473 by 1990 and 519 in 1993. These are levels normally associated with police states." - Newsday, September 1994 -ego transcendence follows ego destruction, united we stand, divided we fall, don't tread on me. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by afterburner on July 21, 2003 at 13:05:08 PT: It's About Time! The La Guardia Committee Report: The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York: Mayor's Committee on Marihuana, by the New York Academy of Medicine: City of New York , 1944. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm [ Post Comment ] Post Comment