cannabisnews.com: Politics and Pot!





Politics and Pot!
Posted by FoM on March 18, 1999 at 17:51:20 PT

WASHINGTON Almost 22 years ago President Jimmy Carter ordered a study of whether the use of marijuana for medical purposes should be authorized. Carter was long gone before the study was completed, and nothing ever came of it. 
The same has been true of several more studies of the same question in one administration after another. The experts find that marijuana could help in some cases, but any government action is foreclosed by politics. No one with the authority to make it happen wants to be on record in favor of more marijuana. Now we have still another study, this one perhaps the most ambitious ever conducted, that found that marijuana can be useful in helping some AIDS patients deal with pain, nausea and weight loss. The experts who signed this report also asserted that there is no evidence the medical use of marijuana would lead patients to move on to harder drugs like heroin and cocaine. Nor, they found, does the medical use of marijuana lead to more widespread use of the drug in the general population. In short, it seems like we may have reached the point at which it is time to act rather than doing still more studies. So the operative question now is whether the Clinton administration or Congress, either or both, is willing to take the political risks in taking the next logical step. Don't bet on it. What is more likely is a lot more hemming and hawing and the erection of the same kind of straw man obstacles that have always prevented the use of marijuana for nausea and heroin for intractable pain in cancer patients long before AIDS was a recognized syndrome. The first problem surfaced right away in the response of Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy who initiated the study and who has been an implacable opponent of medical use of the controlled drugs. He told the New York Times the study showed "there is little future in smoked marijuana." The experts made the same point, arguing that smoking marijuana could be even more damaging to the lungs than smoking cigarettes -- although it is hard to imagine a medical dosage that would involve as much smoking as has been common in the case of cigarettes. The significant difference, however, is that the experts said the next step should be finding ways to use the active ingredients that don't involve smoking, -- such things as inhalers or patches or even pills. While such techniques are developed, the experts said the patients who cannot find a substitute should be allowed to smoke marijuana in the interim. This group would be made up largely of those who are terminally ill or those with severe symptoms that cannot otherwise be alleviated. McCaffrey, however, told the Times that there is "enormous confusion in law enforcement" about the use of the drugs. That is a world-class understatement. What there is in the law enforcement community is pervasive hostility to any steps to widen the legal availability of marijuana. This has led to some ludicrous situations. There is considerable evidence from Europe, for example, that heroin can be valuable in helping ease the agony of patients who suffer from particularly painful forms of cancer. For more than two decades, there have been activists trying to win approval for controlled experiments to see if the experience in Great Britain would be duplicated here. But the police and the politicians have been rigidly opposed. So you have people who are only weeks or days from death, suffering intractable pain but denied relief apparently out of some bizarre fear that they will become addicted on their deathbeds. There are, inevitably, pressure groups that have been formed on both sides. There are AIDS patients demanding the drugs and, on the other side, a group made of people who claim to be parents who fear their children will get a mixed message if the government says marijuana can be useful for some purposes. Not to worry, parents. The only message they will get is that politicians won't touch drugs with a 10-foot pole. 1999 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC. 
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Post Comment


Name: Optional Password: 
E-Mail: 
Subject: 
Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message]
Link URL: 
Link Title: