cannabisnews.com: Ann Arbor Proposal Lights Up E.L. Debate Ann Arbor Proposal Lights Up E.L. Debate Posted by CN Staff on November 07, 2004 at 21:23:24 PT By Shawn Smith, The State News Source: State News Opposing state and federal law, Ann Arbor residents overwhelmingly passed a proposal last week to protect patients who use marijuana for medical purposes. The proposal waives fines for people using marijuana as prescribed by a medical doctor and has sparked debate statewide, including in another college town - East Lansing. East Lansing's city code already exempts marijuana offenders if they can produce a valid prescription from a doctor. But the law is ineffective until state and federal mandates legalize the drug, said Tom Yeadon, an assistant city attorney.City officials are unable to guarantee the protection of medical marijuana users, but some said if the drug can help patients, it should be used."I would be supportive of any drug that would help alleviate the nausea associated with chemotherapy," East Lansing Mayor Mark Meadows said. "It's not like being sick after you drink too much the night before."I'm a believer in people not having to suffer during these illnesses any more than is absolutely necessary."Psychology junior Eric King said he supports medical marijuana, but not full legalization of the drug."It's for medicine - I'm for it. But not for recreational use," he said. "There's so many side effects for marijuana, like killed brain cells."Because marijuana originated as a recreational drug, people are slow to accept its medical benefits, said Becky Allen, a health educator at Olin Health Center who specializes in drugs and alcohol. "If you look at the history of most drugs, including alcohol, because alcohol is a drug, it is traditionally used to treat disease," she said. "Marijuana doesn't have that."But Allen, who said her views do not reflect those of Olin Health Center or MSU, said marijuana could play a valuable role in the health-care system."There's enough evidence that shows that marijuana has a place in the medical treatment and medical management of some diseases," she said. "In this day and age, anything we can do to improve a person's health...should be an option available."The drug's medicinal properties can help alleviate eye pressure caused by glaucoma and can promote appetite that often is lessened in cancer and HIV patients, Allen added."It gives us another potential tool in the arsenal," she said.Fisheries and wildlife graduate student Rebecca Christoffel said the passing of the Ann Arbor proposal is a step in the right direction."I don't see any harm in it," she said. "It might be more readily available or cheaper or safer now."But federal and state officials said they disagree that pharmacies should be stocking the drug.In September, Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter to the City of Ann Arbor to express her displeasure with the city's medicinal marijuana proposal, which contradicts state legislation. "Local charter amendments cannot trump state law," said Liz Boyd, spokeswoman for Granholm.Similar legislation passed in Detroit in August, making Michigan the 11th state to approve legislation that protects patients using medical marijuana.Long-time marijuana opponent Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, said the Ann Arbor proposal would most likely be stuck down. "I don't think medically you have to do this at all," Rogers said, adding that the drug's active ingredient, THC, is also available in pill form. Rogers is currently spearheading congressional legislation that would fund further research on pain management, one of the main benefits associated with medical marijuana."Right now, you'd have to find an illegal way to obtain a drug that is illegal," he said. "You are setting people up for disaster when you do that."Rogers also said the proposal is also contradictory to years of health and anti-smoking advocacy. "What a horrible mixed message to kids," he said. "This is a dangerous place for us to go. An unnecessary place for us to go."Staff writer David Salisbury contributed to this report.Source: State News, The (MI State U, MI Edu)Author: Shawn Smith, The State NewsPublished: Monday, November 8, 2004Copyright: 2004 The State NewsContact: opinion statenews.comWebsite: http://www.statenews.comRelated Articles & Web Sites:Ann Arbor MMJ Initiativehttp://www.aammi.org/Medical Marijuana Information Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htmMedical Marijuana Vote Called Invalidhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19771.shtmlA2 Voters Pass Initiative To Legalize MMJ http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19766.shtmlMedical Marijuana Gets 74% Approvalhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19760.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #8 posted by john wayne on November 08, 2004 at 20:30:21 PT "overwhelming " That's a word that I like to see when reading a description of voter approval of medpot. If the Ann Arbor cops had any sense, they would've kept quiet about this until some of the exitement had died down. But now, cops saying that they are going again the "overwhelming" will of the people the day after the election shows just how numb thier skulls are. [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by runruff on November 08, 2004 at 09:07:42 PT: Oh............. .....and the kid card. When all other arguments show their transperentcy they always pull the kid card.The wrong message is that booze is for recreation and cannabis is not a medicine. But that is just the beguining of that debate. [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by runruff on November 08, 2004 at 08:28:18 PT: Bah humbug! Cannabis was found in about 50% of all medicines in the US prior to 1937. It has been used around the world for medicine for at least 10,000 years.Why do they never cite alternitive ways of imbibing cannabis. Smokeless inhalers, cooking in food, making tea?Rodgers is setting sick people up for disaster by withholding the best medicine god ever made. This mentality is really twisted. [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by siege on November 08, 2004 at 05:59:05 PT GCW for this officer he was doing his job, he has PSDT and not out the BARS drinking like a fish felling bad the next day so they fire the poor basterd for using a little MMJ and he most likely had better temperament then the other officer's in his unit, and if he did not have the Hammer Down on someone all the time, that made him look bad in the eye's of Chief White. because White's strong, accountable management the department requires, had flown out the window with reality. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by The GCW on November 08, 2004 at 05:04:12 PT Cops don't like cannabis prohibition either... (marijuana: killed brain cells?!more like creates brain cells.)ALSOThis is very good:US KY: Editorial: Louisville's Pot Policehttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1590/a03.html?397Many of the murders Louisville has suffered this year have been related to drugs, so we can't imagine that reasonable people would think that Metro Police Chief Robert White's decision to fire a pot-smoking police officer is too harsh. But the Louisville Metro Police Merit Board thinks so. And because of that absurdity, Chief White has been forced to ask a Jefferson Circuit Court judge to uphold his firing of Michael J. Thompson, who admitted to possessing and using marijuana last spring. Instead of supporting Chief White's defense of the department's zero tolerance policy and his determination to protect the integrity of drug prosecutions and of the department, the merit board tagged Chief White as too hard-hearted. cont.Webpage: http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/editorials/2004/11/07/opin-mid1107-2823.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by WolfgangWylde on November 08, 2004 at 04:08:59 PT Not for nothing... ...But has anyone seen the new issue of High Times. The Buds Are Back! High Times [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by afterburner on November 08, 2004 at 04:07:41 PT So Much Ignorance&Misinformation in a College Town But at least they are talking. That's an improvement over suppression of dissent regarding medical cannabis or cannabis in general. Study this:"There's so many side effects for marijuana, like killed brain cells." [Psychology junior Eric King said] That's alcohol, sonny."If you look at the history of most drugs, including alcohol, because alcohol is a drug, it is traditionally used to treat disease," [Becky Allen, a health educator at Olin Health Center] said. "Marijuana doesn't have that."The history of medical cannabis is millennia old. Only in the last century was cannabis removed from the pharmacopoeia. And as her further comments attest, much more has been recently discovered about additional medical conditions that cannabis can help. "Cannabis can help," I like the sound of that."I don't think medically you have to do this at all," [Long-time marijuana opponent Rep. Mike] Rogers[, R-Brighton,] said, adding that the drug's active ingredient, THC, is also available in pill form. Please hang out here at Cannabis News and many other fine cannabis and medical cannabis informational websites, so that you can read more studies and testimonials that challenge the party line of Marinol. Marinol, the synthetic pill form, is useless to patients suffering from the nausea of cancer chemotherapy or AIDS wasting disease. They can't hold a pill down."Local charter amendments cannot trump state law," said Liz Boyd, spokeswoman for [Gov. Jennifer] Granholm.Maybe, maybe not. How is it that Ann Arbor's decriminalization act with "parking ticket-like" fines has held up for 33 years? And even if your assertion were true, at the very least these charter amendments are evidence of the will of the people of the great State of Michigan. Do you remember Michigan the state you swore to serve and represent?More on the history of medical cannabis:"For thousands of years, the drug marijuana has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments.... Between 1840 and 1900, European and American medical journals published more than 100 papers on the therapeutic use of the drug known then as Cannabis Indica (or Indian hemp) and now as marijuana. It was recommended from such things as an appetite stimulant to a muscle relaxant.... "There is a 5,000-year medical history of marijuana. This history has almost been forgotten. The use of medical marijuana declined in the early 20th century partly because alternatives became available. Injectable opiates and later on synthetic drugs such as aspirin and barbiturates were just some of the few. The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was the final blow for the decline of medical use. It was specifically designed to prevent non-medical use of marijuana. This law made cannabis so difficult to obtain for medical purposes that it was removed from the pharmacopoeia." --Argumentative Persuasive Essays - Medicinal Marijuana: Should it be legalized? http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=13102"2.5 Cannabis was reintroduced into British medicine in 1842 by Dr W O'Shaughnessy, an army surgeon who had served in India. In Victorian times it was widely used for a variety of ailments, including muscle spasms, menstrual cramps, rheumatism, and the convulsions of tetanus, rabies and epilepsy; it was also used to promote uterine contractions in childbirth, and as a sedative to induce sleep. It is said to have been used by Queen Victoria against period pains: there is no actual proof of this at all, but Sir Robert Russell, for many years her personal physician, wrote extensively on cannabis, recommending it for use in dysmenorrhoea. It was administered by mouth, not by smoking, but usually in the form of a tincture (an extract in alcohol). Cannabis extracts were also incorporated in many different proprietary medicines. "2.6 'People were well aware at that stage that [cannabis] was an unpredictable drug' (Edwards Q 26). The advent of a host of new and better synthetic drugs [sic] led to the abandonment of many ancient herbal remedies, including cannabis. Thus in the British Pharmacopoeia of 1932 no fewer than 400 herbal remedies were omitted, among them cannabis, extract of cannabis and tincture of cannabis—though all three remained in the British Pharmaceutical Codex of 1949[4]." --Erowid Cannabis Vault : House of Lords Report http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/uk_lords_report/History.shtml"WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT- "1. Restoring cannabis to the formulary: Prior to the passage of the 1937 "Marihuana Tax Act the federal proponents promised the retention of cannabis for general prescriptive availability. However they reneged and in 1941 cannabis was dropped from the National Formulary and Pharmacopoeia. Cannabis was declared to have no medicinal redeeming importance by the chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics."The principal rationalization for withholding cannabinoids from general availability by prescription is that they are allegedly new drugs. As a 'new drug' cannabis needs extensive clinical and pre-clinical testing before it can be made widely available, even though cannabis appeared in medical texts and pharmacopeias some fifty years before aspirin was synthesized. Cannabis continues to be listed with its actions and properties in authoritative texts and references. "It is vital that the word restore be used when referring to reclassification, as 'restore' directly counteracts 'new drug' cannabis arguments and interdicts federal efforts to rewrite history."2. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970: This flawed legislation from the Nixon/Mitchell Department of Justice is the framework for federal and state anti-drug social policy. The Department’s own handpicked scientific advisory committee quit en masse in outrage over the irrational classification scheme that was set up."This Act and 'uniform' state laws are utterly irrational and devoid of any medical or scientific legitimacy. The resultant rapidly growing multi-billion dollar drug abuse industry complex is not just ineffectual in suppressing trafficking and use, but actually creates many of the problems whose genesis may be traced to the laws criminalizing drugs. "Humanists should press for hearings to investigate the genesis and effects of these laws with an eye to reform. "3. Federal cover-up in the scientific establishment: Private consultants and institutions act in advisory roles to influence public policy; they are paid by tax monies but the knowledge gained from research is withheld from the public."One of the specific instances is the work at the Edgewood Arsenal Chemical Biological Warfare Unit in Maryland from 1954 to 1959, where Loewe’s cannabis homologs were studied as a potential incapacitating agent. The project was finally declassified in 1971 after pressure from some of the scientists working on the project to publicize the possible therapeutic uses of the cannabinoids. "At the other end of the spectrum we have the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Supporting one of the most virulent anti-cannabis proponents, Gabriel Nahas, whose alleged new findings of adverse effects served as the basis for articles in Science, The Readers Digest and other outlets. "Humanists should press for an investigation into the relationships between government agencies and anti-cannabis law reform activists like Nahas."4. Confronting the judiciary on 'wrong drug' laws: With a few notable exceptions the judiciary has consistently refused to hear any cases that attempted to raise constitutional issues other than illegal search and seizure. Freedom of Speech, equal protection or other personal rights allegedly protected by the US Constitution fall by the wayside. "Humanists must repeatedly confront representatives of the judiciary on the refusal of the courts to hear constitutional arguments concerning the legitimacy of the 'wrong drug' laws. "Also: so far nobody ahs [sic -- has] raised the question of the ethics or legality of withholding cannabis treatment in response to the 'we can’t be too cautious' evasions."5. Intrusion of the police into the medical consultation room: We now have police and lawyers writing the drug laws as well as dictating their implementation. "A contemporary example is the California research Advisory Panel’s (CRAP) attempt to dispense cannabinoids for the treatment of side effects of nausea from cancer chemotherapy. Edward P. O’Brien, assistant attorney general for the State Attorney General’s office, the chairman of CRAP, has successfully exerted his influence to be the most restrictive in making cannabis available to cancer victims. Despite his valiant efforts the federal bureaucratic obstruction and budget cuts subvert the original intent of the law to permit cancer victims compassionate access to cannabinioids. There are normal medical channels. We do no need another state office."Putting attorneys and police in charge of medical programs is malpractice. "Humanists should confront the California state administration for not putting this program under the health department where it belongs, if the state should be involved at all." --The Significance of Cannabis in the History of Medicine http://www.mikuriya.com/cansig.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by mayan on November 08, 2004 at 03:05:50 PT It's A Plant Because marijuana originated as a recreational drug, people are slow to accept its medical benefits, said Becky Allen, a health educator at Olin Health Center who specializes in drugs and alcohol.A Drug? I think not. Cannabis originated as a plant which grew from the earth. People are slow to accept it's medical benefits? Is that why 80% of Americans support medical cannabis?Look out, it's getting real bad...Iraq Declares Martial Law, 23 Police Killed: http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6735903Revealed: motion that could spell Blair's end: http://tinyurl.com/68qwzGold Hits 16-Year High on Weak Dollar: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041105/bs_nm/markets_usa_commodities_dc_1 [ Post Comment ] Post Comment