Readers' Views On Medical Marijuana

[Herb Fellow]

I’m responding to the outstanding letter from K. K. Forss, “A patient’s view of medical marijuana,” May 2. I’d like to add that one of the medications prescribed by my personal physician for my arthritis pain and inflammation has the rare potential side effect of death. In other words, if I take this medication as prescribed, I can die as a result. On the other hand, marijuana has never been documented to kill a single person in the 5,000-year history of its use. For me, marijuana is the more effective medication.

Right now, if adult citizens opt for the safer and more effective medication, they are subject to arrest and being sent to jail with violent criminals. Is something wrong with this situation? I think so. Shouldn’t adult citizens of a so-called free country be able to decide for themselves what natural herbs to use in the privacy of their own homes?

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

No justification for war against pot

Whenever I read an anti-marijuana opinion, especially about medical use, my blood pressure goes up. So when I read the piece by David Taylor and Jeanette McDougal, “Medical’ Marijuana Is Snake Oil Remedy,” in a recent News Tribune, I had to grit my teeth.

Cannabis (marijuana) has been a medicine used by humans for as long as we have been recording history — more than 5,000 years. From Chinese emperors to British queens, the medical legacy of cannabis is well documented. Until the bigoted xenophobic anti-drug hysteria of the early 20th century became official policy, cannabis was available on the shelves of U.S. pharmacies.

In a study presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego in 2006, UCLA researcher Donald Tashkin presented findings from his study of cannabis and the respiratory system. Tashkin revealed that there was not a correlation between pot smoking and lung cancer and that there may well be a protective effect provided by cannabis against cancer. When asked at that meeting about separating pot’s high from the clinical benefits, San Francisco oncologist Dr. Donald Abrams said, “I don’t think that a drug that creates euphoria in patients with terminal diseases is having an adverse effect.”

In February of this year the American College of Physicians, the second-largest doctors’ group in the United States, endorsed legitimizing marijuana for medical purposes. Anti-marijuana zealots always fail to mention that, ironically, our federal government itself is the sole legal provider of medical cannabis. It’s true. They provide approximately one half pound of pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes each month to the remaining patients enrolled in the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, or CIND.

McDougall and Taylor leave much out of their rants. For instance, they will tell the public that the government itself has known since 1974 of cannabis’ anti-cancer properties. In a study conducted at the Medical College of Virginia in 1974, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health set out to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system. What they discovered instead is that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia. Those results were bolstered in 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC. Further research is showing great potential for this once common home remedy as an effective tool in the fight against cancer.

There is no factual justification for our jihad-like war against pot. Our laws against cannabis are supported solely by a seven decades-long program of propaganda rightly referred to as “Reefer Madness.” Cannabis was at one time a legitimate, sold over-the-counter medicine and the raw plant form was a relatively obscure intoxicant. It has risen to become the number one agricultural commodity in the United States. Foreign cartels use our suburbs for illicit indoor growing operations and our wild and remote forest lands — including even our treasured national parks — for pot plantations that often contain thousands of plants in one operation. These outdoor grows frequently involve the clearing of many acres and the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides that run off into our pristine waterways. Best guess estimates from law enforcement indicate that we interdict only 20 percent of the plants grown by these cartel-run operations.

There is no legitimacy to Taylor’s and McDougall’s arguments. Rather, there is only pontificating from these rabid mouthpieces for our massive and ineffective drug war bureaucracy. Perpetuating cannabis prohibition will only harm society. The prohibition against cannabis has failed, and if there is any measure of success it is experienced only by the criminals and their organizations in the billions of dollars in profit they receive each year. They’re the ones who have control of our nation’s most popular illegal drug.

Extremists like McDougall and Taylor have operated free from public scrutiny for decades. But today their opposition has a voice, and the truth of cannabis efficacy as a medicine is reaching the public’s ear. There are many supporters of legalization (not decriminalization), myself among them, who would be glad to debate today’s prohibitionists, should they ever desire to come forth for the challenge.

Tony Ryan

Denver

The writer was a decorated Denver police officer for 36 years and is now a board member of and speaker for LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. (LEAP - Cops Say)

Source: Duluth News Tribune
Copyright: 2008, The Duluth News Tribune
Contact: Letters to the Editor
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