U.S. Government’s Reefer Madness Challenged
Medical marijuana advocates have filed suit against two federal health agencies who assert that smoking the Evil Weed has no medical benefit.
The nonprofit group, Americans for Safe Access, challenges the government’s position that marijuana “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.�
In its lawsuit, the group contends that the Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration have publicly issued “false and misleading statements� about the medical benefits of marijuana.
The suit seeks a court order to retract and correct statements that the group called, “incorrect, dishonest and a flagrant violation of laws.�
I have no idea of the suit’s chances of success, but it is long overdue.
There is ample evidence that smoked marijuana can save lives. It eases nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy and other crippling treatments and helps mitigate the effects of AIDS wasting and glaucoma.
There also is ample evidence that with the vast majority of users, marijuana is not a so-called gateway drug that leads them to hard drugs like cocaine and heroin.
More here on the lawsuit.
For more on my take on medical marijuana and to learn why my folks (see photo) and I engaged in what the federal government considers to be criminal behavior, click here.
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18 Responses to “U.S. Government’s Reefer Madness Challenged”
Of all of the things I have seen in my life this war on pot is surely the strangest and stupidest. Its a wild weed for gosh sakes! It causes no violence, it helps people chill out who need to chill out the most, its safe relative to cigs and booze, and, did I mention its a naturally growing weed? How completely immoral and unethical to try and ban a wild growing weed. And how utterly unethical it is to allow drug companies to mine the plant for its beneficial components and sell them back to us as pills for billions, all because the government does not want you to get high. Think of it, the plant is being called the aspirin of the 21st century, the discoveries so far regarding nausea and pain relief are astonishing, so we will get all of the benefits of the plant save one: you cant be allowed to feel good. Its the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard or seen.
[...] Original post by Shaun Mullen and software by Elliott Back [...]
Because it’s a…
*evil music*
GATEWAY DRUG TO COCAINE, HEROIN, AND METH!!!
*smh*
it’s basically because the drug companies want to control it…and the government doesn’t want to lose its War on Drugs budget money.
Ahhh.. the war on drugs… originally created to distract the public from the Vietnam War…
I might point out that “wild weeds” aren’t necessarily harmless. Deadly nightshade, hemlock, and monkshood grow wild too.
But the more important point I’d like to make is that while marijuana likely does have useful medical purposes, with symptom management (especially management of pain) it’s more commonly a case of not using existing drugs effectively rather than a need for new medication
I don’t believe America’s dementia about pot has anything to do with corporations. It is some bizarre mutation of morality, perhaps tapping into religious puritanism. Nothing else could explain the sheer irrationality of the laws in this respect.
It fills the prisons, given minimum sentencing rules, with non-violent offenders. Its cost to the country is simply staggering.
Not harmful either, really. Granted, long term use does seem to diminish one’s ability to count…and one becomes sorta forgetful. Sorry, no links to prove this. Just what I’ve ahhh heard.
Alan G:
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation, and blaming victims for not taking their medications is misplaced.
No medical marijuana advocate is saying that pot should be a substitute for other medications or that users should neglect their med regimens. What marijuana can do, as it did in the case of my father, is provide relief.
My father took all of his meds faithfully and underwent long courses of horribly debilitating chemo and radiation therapy. He became violently nauseous and had trouble sleeping. Marijuana provided my father with a modicum of relief before he died in 1981.
I have a more contemporary example, a longtime friend who battled late-stage cancer a couple of years ago.
Even with the advances in treatment, he experienced the same profound discomforts as my father. He ate pot brownies for relief with the tacit approval of his cancer specialist. Marijuana provided him with a modicum of relief. Thanks to advances since my father’s passing, my friend is now in remission.
The bottom line is that what both my father and friend did was criminal.
That is wrong, and for government health and welfare agencies to turn a blind eye to the substantial body of research on the benefits of medical marijuana is criminal, as well.
Shaun…your blog provides a very powerful example of the perversity of the US laws on marijuana.
But in looking over your blog, while you have ample evidence of the hypocrisy of the whole business, I didn’t see you offer any opinion as to why this is? That is, why all the energy and focus on something that is…well…fairly innocuous (at least in my opinion)?
It does seem insane to folks in other countries.
As you have clearly thought a lot about this, I would be curious as to your opinion.
Wait a minute here…I don’t think I said (or at least didn’t intend to say) that patients weren’t or shouldn’t take their meds. What I said was that the medical community is not using existing medications effectively.
That doesn’t mean that marijuana is not useful or that it shouldn’t be used. It does mean that one should look at existing drugs first to see if they’re being used optimally, before turning to something new.
What I was referring indirectly in that post was something I read in a book on hospice care. The author said that some people believe that heroin would make an effective painkiller and hospice care won’t really work until drugs like that are available for medical use.
Of course, heroin is much more dangerous than marijuana. In fact, marijuana is much less dangerous than the commonly used morphine (since heroin breaks down into morphine it isn’t any more effective than morphine anyway).
But I don’t want people to think that effective medications for palliative care don’t exist, outside of ones presently illegal. And I do want people to know that inadequate use of pain medication is a big controversy in the medical community, especially between the traditional curative medical community and the hospice community.
Indeed, hospice organizations have some of the same problems with the government that marijuana advocates have. The DEA limits the amount of narcotics doctors can prescribe, even though terminal patients often require very high doses for relief. Many states require narcotics prescriptions to be filled out in triplicate, significantly increasing the paperwork load in organizations that don’t have a large administrative staff to deal with it.
So to conclude this rather long post, I’m not against medical marijuana. I just want people to know that that’s not the only problem facing palliative care in this country.
Possibly true. Possibly untrue. Major red herring.
There may be existing drugs to provide marajuarna-type effects, but …
1) There may not.
2) Even if there are, that’s no reason to use them exclusively.
3) Not all drugs are equal in all ways, so choice should be available.
4) This completely and totally avoids the elephant in the room that others see: the ridiculous conseqences of the failed and idiotic war on drugs.
It’s always shocking when Marlowecan and I can agree on something. As far as where this obsession comes from I think its deepest roots go back to St. Augustine. I mean, how much do you think his philosophy influenced the Puritans? The U.S. is in the grip of a strange mutant morality that doesn’t really belong in modern times any more than the even more extreme puritanism of Islamists.
Jim Satterfield said: “It’s always shocking when Marlowecan and I can agree on something….The U.S. is in the grip of a strange mutant morality that doesn’t really belong in modern times any more than the even more extreme puritanism of Islamists.”
Hhahahaha…isn’t that the bizarre wonder of TMV?
I don’t know enough of the social background of US marijuana laws, but I have to agree with you that they do seem to be something out of Saudi Arabia (you know, steal an apple and your hand gets cut off).
Immense cost to society. Ruining thousands of lives through imprisonment. Rampant hypocrisy. It seems profoundly irrational, yet no one – liberal or conservative – dares to touch these laws (or they’ll be whacked by the morality police?)
Perhaps some of you are familiar with Peter McWilliams, who was diagnosed with AIDS and cancer in 1996. Due to the extreme nausea associated with the caustic medications necessary for treating his illnesses, he turned to marijuana to help him control his vomiting and found it to be a more effective than marinol. Due to his frustration with our countries draconian anti-drug laws as well as his own life experience, he became a medical marijuana activist and joined the Libertarian Party in order to reform our drug laws.
In 1996, he wrote book entitled Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do. It was based upon a simple premise: The government has no business criminalizing consensual victimless offenses.
In 1998, McWilliams was investigated by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration and arrested for violating federal marijuana laws, even though medical marijuana was legal under California state law. Interestingly, McWilliams’ arrest come just 19 days after he condemned the federal government’s vendetta against medical marijuana at the Libertarian National Convention.
Like so many other medical marijuana users before and after him, McWilliams was not even allowed to explain his condition or its connection to the charges against him. McWilliams was convicted for his “crime”, but his mother put up her home as collateral for his son’s jail bond, and thus, he was allowed to remain free pending his sentencing on the condition that he not use marijuana (or else be sent back to jail).
On June 14, 2000, McWilliams was found dead in his apartment, having choked on his own vomit.
There’s only one word to describe a government that would arrest terminally ill people for using marijuana in the privacy of their own home:
AUTHORITARIAN
And you have to remember that McWilliams’ arrest and conviction occurred under the Clinton Administration, whose Drug Czar, General Barry McCaffrey, a rabid anti-drug crusader who was instrumental in expanding our nation’s War on Drugs.
How pathetic that man who used marijuana for medical purposes was prosecuted and convicted by an administration whose president was known to have used marijuana recreationally. And how pathetic that these policies that have continued under the Bush administration and the current Drug Czar.
“my folks (see photo) and I engaged in what the federal government considers to be criminal behavior”
This photo is evidence, Shaun? Hmm, must have been taken during the prohibition era. What’s in those paper cups?
“this war on pot is surely the strangest and stupidest”
Indeed. And why did it start? Because the oil industry started heavy lobbying and a smeary PR campaign to prohibit pot, in order to get rid of the hemp business that was hampering (hehe) their efforts to market their new plastics products…
“Hhahahaha…isn’t that the bizarre wonder of TMV?
”
Hehehe indeedy! In every thread, new, surprising coalitions!
[...] In commenting on my post yesterday on a lawsuit brought against the government by a medical marijuana advocacy group, Marlowecan noted “the perversity of the U.S. laws on marijuana� and asked why there is so much energy and focus on a substance that is fairly innocuous and the existence of policies that are viewed as fairly crazy by folks in other countries. [...]
[...] As a reader of The Moderate Voice, I felt let down by the 2 threads dedicated to medical marijuana. Yesterday, Shaun posted U.S. Government’s Reefer Madness Challenged citing this info on a lawsuit and his personal experience here. Today he posted Marijuana, Religious Puritanism & Social Hypocrisy and responds to a readers question of why there is so much energy and focus on a substance that is fairly innocuous and the existence of policies that are viewed as fairly crazy by folks in other countries: I believe the answer lies somewhere between those twin pillars of American society: Religious Puritanism and Social Hypocrisy. [...]