cannabisnews.com: Gore Is Pandering Away the Presidency 





Gore Is Pandering Away the Presidency 
Posted by FoM on May 17, 2000 at 07:14:43 PT
By Judy Mann
Source: Washington Post
When future historians chart the downward course of Vice President Gore's presidential campaign, they will probably start with Elian Gonzalez. Gore's collapse in the face of Miami's professional anti-Castro claque captured everything that is wrong with the campaign and everything that is wrong with the candidate.
While the Clinton administration took the sensible position that the child should be reunited with his father and returned to Cuba, Gore took the position that Elian's fate should be resolved in family court, probably the most no-win idea advanced in the whole controversy. To suggest that the dispute between Elian's father and his Miami relatives should be treated as a custody dispute flies in the face of the law and everything we know about child welfare.The Miami relatives have no standing in any court except the court of Cuban emigre opinion. The majority of Americans rightly believed the child should be returned to his father and supported the administration's actions to return the child to his father.As we recover from this psychotic episode, many Americans who haven't given a thought to Cuba in years are suddenly aware that a small, noisy cabal in Miami is dictating U.S. foreign policy. That bubble will burst, just as the nationalist China lobby did, and Gore will be remembered for shamelessly pandering to the Cuban emigre community in an effort to win the nation's fourth most populous state. Talk to former Gore supporters and you hear something along the lines of, "But he really lost me with the Elian Gonzalez business." Now he has weighed in against the medical use of marijuana. Speaking last Thursday to students at the Elizabeth Learning Center in Cudahy, Calif., he said: "I believe that the question of medical marijuana ought to be based strictly on science. . . . I want you to know that right now, it is my belief and understanding that there is no reliable evidence that it is a superior, effective treatment for pain in any situation where there is not a better alternative today."Last December, in New Hampshire, he had a somewhat different view: "I think where you have doctors who have documented that there is a specific case with symptoms where this is definitely going to alleviate pain, I think that's something else again." He said that he was not in favor of legalizing marijuana, but that "where you have sufficient controls, I think that doctors ought to have that option." Later, he backpedaled, saying the question should be decided on the basis of scientific research, and adding: "The prevailing opinion by the majority of physicians today--as I understand it, and I'm no expert--is that it is not ever preferable to have a smoke-carried agent for relief of nausea or pain."Someone should send him a copy of "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Fact," a review of the research written by professors Lynn Zimmer and John P. Morgan and published by the Lindesmith Center, which advocates reforms in drug policy. "Marijuana's therapeutic uses are well documented in the modern scientific literature," they write. "Using either smoked marijuana or oral preparations of delta-9-THC (marijuana's main active ingredient), researchers have conducted controlled studies. These studies demonstrate marijuana's usefulness in reducing nausea and vomiting, stimulating appetite, promoting weight gain, and diminishing intraocular pressure from glaucoma. There is also evidence that smoked marijuana and/or THC reduce muscle spasticity from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis and diminish tremors in multiple sclerosis patients. Other therapeutic uses for marijuana have not been widely studied. However, patients and physicians have reported that smoked marijuana provides relief from migraine headaches, depression, seizures, insomnia and chronic pain."One of marijuana's other ingredients "appears to be useful as an anticonvulsant," they write. For people suffering from nausea and vomiting from AIDS or chemotherapy, smoking provides more rapid relief than swallowing a synthetic version of THC.What is useful to remember is that many drugs used in the treatment of AIDS and cancer are enormously toxic. Chemotherapy agents can cause everything from heart damage to liver failure. Anti-nausea medications can cause headaches, constipation or diarrhea. There has been no federally funded research into the medical uses of marijuana in more than a decade. What is known is that most patients who use it have to buy it on the black market, where dosage and purity are a gamble, a significant problem for AIDS and chemotherapy patients whose immune systems are badly compromised. Medical use of marijuana has been endorsed by numerous medical associations.But here again, Gore is pandering, this time to the anti-drug lobby, and it is particularly obnoxious coming from someone who apparently enjoyed easy access to marijuana to treat the joys and sorrows of an early journalistic career at the Nashville Tennessean.Gore is trailing badly among white male voters as well as the under-30 crowd, and he is losing support among women. What is wrong with this campaign? Why is someone who suffers from syntactical aphasia leading him in the polls? It's not the perceived lack of warmth he and his handlers have been struggling with. It's a lack of commitment to a set of principles that voters can count on. Voters are looking for someone they believe will be his own man. They are not looking for someone who will pander to hysterical interest groups to be elected. The presidency, above anything else, is about leadership and so far, Gore seems to be following. Wednesday, May 17, 2000 ; C15 © 2000 The Washington Post Company Related Articles & Web Site:Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Factshttp://www.marijuanafacts.org/index.htmlThe Evolution Of A Positionhttp://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread5761.shtmlGore Reverses Stance on Medical Marijuana http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread5703.shtmlGore Questions Medical Marijuanahttp://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread5699.shtmlGore Supports 'Flexibility' on Medical Marijuana http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4009.shtml 
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on May 17, 2000 at 08:53:50 PT
You're Right!
fivepounder you said it all and oh my what will happen if Bush gets elected! I just don't know but God help us!
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Comment #1 posted by fivepounder on May 17, 2000 at 08:35:16 PT
the stiff
This article is right. Gore is going to lose just for these reasons. God help us if bush wins.
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