Making the Case for Medical Marijuana

[patric]

Maybe he needs it for pain, and is just trying to avoid the Rush Limbaugh Oxycontin route...


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government's war on drugs has failed.
The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of "The 700 Club" on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. He said people should not be sent to prison for marijuana possession.

In a statement Thursday, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Robertson's "clearly stated and well-reasoned comments throw a curve ball into the growing debate over legalizing marijuana."
"Defenders of marijuana prohibition ... must be wondering if it's only a matter of time before theirs proves to be a lost cause," he said.

[jacobi]

Maybe he needs it for pain, and is just trying to avoid the Rush Limbaugh Oxycontin route...


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government's war on drugs has failed.
The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of "The 700 Club" on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. He said people should not be sent to prison for marijuana possession.

In a statement Thursday, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Robertson's "clearly stated and well-reasoned comments throw a curve ball into the growing debate over legalizing marijuana."
"Defenders of marijuana prohibition ... must be wondering if it's only a matter of time before theirs proves to be a lost cause," he said.

In other news, Satan and Hitler are having a snowball fight in hell.....

[heironymouspasparagus]

In other news, Satan and Hitler are having a snowball fight in hell.....

He has talked about this for a while now.  He recognizes that the 'war on drugs' has been an abject failure.  If you keep doing the same thing after 100 years and it still doesn't work, it's time to try something else.

[jacobi]

He has talked about this for a while now.  He recognizes that the 'war on drugs' has been an abject failure.  If you keep doing the same thing after 100 years and it still doesn't work, it's time to try something else.

Communist.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Communist.

Me or Pat Robertson?

(Answer; neither.)

[jacobi]

Me or Pat Robertson?

(Answer; neither.)

Both.  Why not?  It was sarcasm either way. 

[heironymouspasparagus]

Both.  Why not?  It was sarcasm either way. 

Yeah...I know....

I am probably closer than PR, but still a long ways away.  I have both Marx's Communist Manifesto and Mao's 'Little Red Book'.  They both read a lot like the RWRE nonsense verbally spewed on KRMG.  Take a little tiny grain of truth and weave a tapestry of crap around it.

[patric]

Vinita PD and Craig County deputies take a drug dealer off the streets (at least those streets that are handicap accessible).

http://www.fox23.com/mostpopular/story/Deputies-find-pot-277-000-in-73-year-old-womans/g1ML55dBqUGxyhznY5hgDA.cspx



VINITA - A Craig County drug task force serving a search warrant late Monday seized about $277,000 in cash from the home of a 73-year-old woman, Craig County Sheriff Jimmie Sooter said.
"She said the money was hers, that it was for retirement. Of course, once we got into it, it was pretty obvious it wasn't hers."

[Conan71]

I'm sorry, why did you post this in a thread on medical marijuana?

A 73-year old is in the Craig County Jail after deputies found five pounds of pot inside her house on Monday night.

The Craig County Sheriff says they had been watching Darlene Mays' home, which is five miles east of Vinita, for five months before serving a search warrant on Monday night.

Deputies say the search turned up guns; five pounds of pot and $221,550 vacuumed packed inside a garbage bag in the house. An additional $53,020 was found in a truck.

Deputies arrested Mays and say she admitted the pot and money was hers. Deputies say she was distributing the drug.

Granted, I don't see the point in it being criminalized, but you make it sound as if she got busted with an ounce of weed for her glaucoma.  How about tax evasion on $275,000?

[GG]

Vinita PD and Craig County deputies take a drug dealer off the streets (at least those streets that are handicap accessible).

http://www.fox23.com/mostpopular/story/Deputies-find-pot-277-000-in-73-year-old-womans/g1ML55dBqUGxyhznY5hgDA.cspx



VINITA - A Craig County drug task force serving a search warrant late Monday seized about $277,000 in cash from the home of a 73-year-old woman, Craig County Sheriff Jimmie Sooter said.
"She said the money was hers, that it was for retirement. Of course, once we got into it, it was pretty obvious it wasn't hers."

Now we know why grannies brownies always sold out so fast at the church bazaar. 

[Vashta Nerada]

Three and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana.

My survival has demanded an enormous price, including months of chemotherapy, radiation hell and brutal surgery. For about a year, my cancer disappeared, only to return. About a month ago, I started a new and even more debilitating course of treatment. Every other week, after receiving an IV booster of chemotherapy drugs that takes three hours, I wear a pump that slowly injects more of the drugs over the next 48 hours.

Nausea and pain are constant companions. One struggles to eat enough to stave off the dramatic weight loss that is part of this disease. Eating, one of the great pleasures of life, has now become a daily battle, with each forkful a small victory. Every drug prescribed to treat one problem leads to one or two more drugs to offset its side effects. Pain medication leads to loss of appetite and constipation. Anti-nausea medication raises glucose levels, a serious problem for me with my pancreas so compromised. Sleep, which might bring respite from the miseries of the day, becomes increasingly elusive.

Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.

This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. Being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I am receiving the absolute gold standard of medical care. But doctors cannot be expected to do what the law prohibits, even when they know it is in the best interests of their patients. When palliative care is understood as a fundamental human and medical right, marijuana for medical use should be beyond controversy.

Sixteen states already permit the legitimate clinical use of marijuana, including our neighbor New Jersey, and Connecticut is on the cusp of becoming No. 17. The New York State Legislature is now debating a bill to recognize marijuana as an effective and legitimate medicinal substance and establish a lawful framework for its use. The Assembly has passed such bills before, but they went nowhere in the State Senate. This year I hope that the outcome will be different. Cancer is a nonpartisan disease, so ubiquitous that it's impossible to imagine that there are legislators whose families have not also been touched by this scourge. It is to help all who have been affected by cancer, and those who will come after, that I now speak.

Given my position as a sitting judge still hearing cases, well-meaning friends question the wisdom of my coming out on this issue. But I recognize that fellow cancer sufferers may be unable, for a host of reasons, to give voice to our plight. It is another heartbreaking aporia in the world of cancer that the one drug that gives relief without deleterious side effects remains classified as a narcotic with no medicinal value.

Because criminalizing an effective medical technique affects the fair administration of justice, I feel obliged to speak out as both a judge and a cancer patient suffering with a fatal disease. I implore the governor and the Legislature of New York, always considered a leader among states, to join the forward and humane thinking of 16 other states and pass the medical marijuana bill this year. Medical science has not yet found a cure, but it is barbaric to deny us access to one substance that has proved to ameliorate our suffering.

Gustin L. Reichbach is a justice of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

[Teatownclown]

It's going to happen just like last week on SSM....it will be Obama ending the War On Drugs by declaring states have the right to legislate and saving billions in the budget....when he gets re-elected.

http://news.yahoo.com/autopsy-evidence-marijuana-martins-blood-215533578.html related...Martin smoked before he died! OMG

[heironymouspasparagus]

Gustin L. Reichbach is a justice of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

I wonder how many people he has sentenced for marijuana?  Or how many appeals ruled against?

Hopefully none.


I don't often wish ill for others - this is one topic where a convenient little dose of cancer for those who are voting and working against this use would probably be a pretty good case of "poetic justice".
I know - that is a terrible thing to wish and I really don't.

[Red Arrow]

I don't often wish ill for others - this is one topic where a convenient little dose of cancer for those who are voting and working against this use would probably be a pretty good case of "poetic justice".
I know - that is a terrible thing to wish and I really don't.

Yes you do or you wouldn't have brought it up.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Yes you do or you wouldn't have brought it up.

I just might in this case.  Hard to say, since that wish goes so greatly and directly against my nature and basic belief structure.  When compared to the evil done by those people to inflict the large amount of suffering by their policies just to keep some economic benefit - well, I guess that kind of colors my outlook.