cannabisnews.com: Support For Medical Marijuana Support For Medical Marijuana Posted by FoM on October 04, 1999 at 06:56:25 PT Letters To The Editor Source: Journal Online The article, ``Some doctors and patients swear by marijuana," The Prince George's Journal, Sept. 27, ends with, ``Legal or not, medicinal marijuana users say the drug is easy to get in Maryland. (Pete) Piringer (a Maryland State Police spokesman) confirmed its popularity, noting that police make more arrests for marijuana than for any other drug." Is it any wonder that the police don't want to give up marijuana's prohibition, with its safe and easy arrests plus the illusion that they are maintaining law and order? GERALD M. SUTLIFF Emeryville, Calif. Cannabis has no lethal dose and its pharmacological effects have never caused a single death in more than 5,000 years of recorded history. The (unseen) driving force against medical (or unrestricted adult) legalization of cannabis is the fact that cannabis can't be patented. This precludes the need for big business to be involved and that fact makes cannabis commercially unattractive, pharmaceutically speaking. It seems that if it can't be profitized successfully the government can't justify legalization even for the sick and dying. Unfortunately, a change in current policy would necessitate that the alternative reap more profits (seen and unseen) than our present policy does. Maybe the politicians are required to adhere to the party line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the politicians themselves et al can't live without the budget justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery, corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them. The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. MYRON VON HOLLINGSWORTH Fort Worth, Texas Just want to correct one point [mentioned in ``Some doctors and patients swear by marijuana."] Medical marijuana use was legal under the Marijuana Tax Act until the law was declared unconstitutional in 1969. Marijuana was removed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia in 1942 because of political pressure, not for medical or scientific reasons. Drug crusaders pretend that some cosmic change in the nature of the cannabis plant or the human body occurred destroying cannabis's ability to relieve a wide variety of ailments just before they passed the Controlled Substances Act prohibiting hemp and medical marijuana altogether. The recent Institute of Medicine report puts the lie to every Reefer Madness excuse for outlawing marijuana for any use, so why do idiot legislators still pretend to know better than the finest doctors and scientists in the world? Don't these lunatic legislators have anything better to do than persecuting the sick and dying? REDFORD GIVENS San Francisco, Calif. Marijuana Policy Project's Web Sitehttp://www.mpp.org/ACT UP Washington DChttp://www.actupdc.org/Support For Medical Marijuana - 10/04/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3130.shtmlSome Doctors and Patients Swear by Marijuana - 9/27/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3038.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #3 posted by observer on October 04, 1999 at 16:56:11 PT police and prison guards and their unions ... Some more comments on this insight:"Is it any wonder that the police don't want to give up marijuana's prohibition, with its safe and easy arrests plusthe illusion that they are maintaining law and order?"Of course, when asked, most police simply restate the blatant untruth, "we don't make the laws we just enforce them."But we can see that's a lie, too."... police groups ... strongly oppose gathering racial data as demanded by the civil rights leaders ... Fraternal Order of Fraternal Order of Police"http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n618/a07.html"But with the support of groups such as the 270,000-member Fraternal Order of Police, Justice has found some members who will support its efforts to weaken the Hyde bill."http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n661/a07.html"Police, School Officials, Politicians Urge More Money"http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n228/a08.html"MEDICAL MARIJUANA ON 7 U.S. BALLOTS""Those who would surrender the war on drugs surrender our children to addiction," says Gilbert Gallegos, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n996/a06.htmlhttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n200/a09.html"Opponents included the Hawaii County and Honolulu police departments, ...""Marijuana Should Not Be Used As Medicine""The issue of medical use of marijuana is currently being used by proponents in their never-ending attempt to legalize all drugs. ... Soros has contributed millions of dollars to many pro-drug organizations, including NORML ..."Andrew Zostant, Office of the Chief of Police Town of Colonie http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n1085/a05.html---"The cabal is composed of police and prison guards, their unions, the construction firms that build prisons, the private firms that run the growing number of private prisons, the food and other commodity firms that supply prisons, and the politicians whose campaign coffers are filled by all those who benefit from the current system." -- John Sperling, the founder of the University of Phoenixhttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n983/a04.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by Richard Lake on October 04, 1999 at 09:27:05 PT: Way To Go MAP LTE Writers!!! All three of these letters are a result of the letter writing efforts of long time MAP supporters! Way To Go, Gang! This is what it is all about! The Media Awareness Project of DrugSense [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by observer on October 04, 1999 at 07:22:49 PT hit the nail on the head "Is it any wonder that the police don't want to give up marijuana's prohibition, with its safe and easy arrests plus the illusion that they are maintaining law and order?"Exactly! Just as Nazis used the Jewish people as scapegoats, "Freedom and Liberty loving" (?) Americans need "dopers" as scapegoats to hate, to divert attention from real problems. Scapegoating. An official policy, alive and well and the United police States of America.excerpt from Richard L Miller, Drug Warriors and their Prey,:----We have seen how drug war rhetoric transforms drugs users into scapegoats. Voters in my county passed a sales tax increase devoted exclusively to the drug war; those funds have hired a staff person for my neighborhood association. Even peeling paint and unkempt lawns are now the fault of drug users. In 1941, instead of annihilating the red Army which refused to be annilihated and continued fighting, one could kill helpless Jews. . . . Instead of driving away the Anglo-American fliers, one could again kill Jews: after the first RAF bombardment of Cologne, 258 Jews in Berlin were lined up in the Gross-Lichterfield barracks and shot "in reprisal." In other words, while the actual fighting foes were out of reach, Germany could kill, as savages do, the images of foes, the Jews. But in this case the images, too, were people of flesh and blood.3 For authoritarians a crucial benefit of scapegoating is that directing public anger toward scapegoats assures continuance of public anger, because problems creating fear and anger thereby remain unaddressed and will continue. In contrast to a confident and contented citizenry, a fearful and angry citizenry is more susceptible to authoritarian demands. Scapegoats are crucial for maintaining social turmoil by authoritarians. It was the Jews who helped hold Hitler's system together -- on the practical as well as ideological level. The Jew allowed Hitler to ignore the long list of economic and social promises he had made to the SA, the lower party apparatus, and the lower middle classes. By steering the attention of these groups away from their more genuine grievances and toward the Jew, Hitler succeeded in blunting the edge of their revolutionary wrath, leaving him freer to persue his own nonideological goals of power in cooperation with groups whose influence he had once promised to weaken or even destroy. An ideological retreat on the Jewish issue in these circumstances was impossible. . . . The continued search for a solution to the Jewish problem allowed Hitler to maintain ideological contact with elements of his movement for whom National Socialism had done very little.4 (Richard L Miller, Drug Warriors and their Prey, 1996, pg.191-192) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275950425--- [ Post Comment ] Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: