Posted on 11/11/2015 11:22:02 AM PST by ConservingFreedom
Another day, another controversy. Medical marijuana activists are rightly upset over comments DEA head, Chuck Rosenberg, made to reporters last week.
During a Q&A, he talked about his stance on medical marijuana.
"What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal because it's not. We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don't call it medicine -- that is a joke."
Right, so you want to have an intellectual debate prefaced with medical marijuana is a joke. Want to clarify that bit a more?
"There are pieces of marijuana -- extracts or constituents or component parts -- that have great promise," he said. "But if you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana -- which is what people are talking about when they talk about medicinal marijuana -- it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine."
I'm with the activists who point to study after study showing it helps with chronic pain, muscle spasms and other ailments. In fact, here's an analysis of 79 studies from JAMA pointing to "moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity."
Damn, here he is making a blanket statement and along comes science...
No. I get the frustrations of medical marijuana activists. They have turned to change.org demanding his resignation. As of today, the petition has gathered nearly 16,000 signatures.
Nothing wrong with voicing frustration at the DEA head, but it's empty. The DEA works like every other agency in the executive branch. It enforces the law. Well, sometimes...
23 states and DC have passed some form of marijuana legalization. Specific medicinal uses all the way to recreational. One problem, none of the state laws trump federal law.
And yes, the DEA is a federal agency. Chuck Rosenberg isn't a fan of marijuana. Even if he was on the side of legalizing it for everyone, he can't do anything. His job is to enforce the law as directed by the President.
Notice the raids have quieted down on dispensaries across the 23 states? Rosenberg may think it's a joke, but the latitude given to the states is telling. Politicians make bombastic statements, but state after state is flipping green.
The FDA is moving to give researchers more room to study the drug. The JAMA study above? 79 studies. That's it. In 2013, 16,000 people overdosed from opioid painkillers. How many died from overdosing on marijuana? Oh right... Zero.
Other studies have shown a decrease in painkiller overdose deaths when medical marijuana was accessible.
It isn't just pain where marijuana plays a significant role. Seizure disorders have been treated with various strains. Who knows what researchers could unlock in the future?
Is it time to open the doors and make it legal? For medicinal use? Definitely. Recreational? Soon, but it needs tight regulation to prevent a wild west of potent strains and no oversight. In Colorado and Washington, the results are still early, but you cannot call it a failure.
Is it a joke? Maybe to Chuck Rosenberg and others. Should he resign or be fired? Of course not.
To the people medical marijuana helps? They aren't laughing. And it's a shame they get targeted. But, the tide is turning. The American people are with them. State governments are increasingly with them. The Federal government? One day you'll wake up to a simple voice vote that finally ends the debate.
Why "purportedly"? Marijuana contains THC just as the pill does - why would it not provide the same relief?
provided by marijuana.
Oral administration is much slower onset, so much harder to adjust ("titrate") to the minimum currently-effective dose.
I contend that those pushing for medical marijuana are EXACTLY those who are pushing for it's legalization across the board.
And if you ever provide evidence for your contention it will have some relevance.
That is highly relevant.
It is utterly irrelevant to the existence of marijuana's medical benefits.
And you are a authoritarian posing as a conservative.
I’m just a person who has realized that the iron fist of a government crackdown only benefits the drug kingpins and the politicians they own. You do realize that from the time this country was founded until about 1913 there were no laws regarding the recreational use of drugs, don’t you? If we didn’t need them for the first 130 odd years, why do we need them now? It used to be that if a person wanted to ruin their life with drugs, we let them. Now we jail them instead and cost the taxpayers billions every year. Did you also know that the original 1913 anti-drug laws were declared unconstitutional in the 1930s? When FDR objected he threatened to load the Supreme Court with enough new yes men that he could have anything he wanted declared constitutional or unconstitutional. So Congress passed a new law just as unconstitutional as the old one and it was allowed to stand.
What turned me around is the government’s use of “civil forfeiture” to literally steal private citizens’ property for the mere SUSPICION that the property was purchased with mone from the sale of drugs. Think it only happens to drug dealers? Just googe “civil forfeiture” and read the horror stories where people’s life savings were stolen by the government because they chose to travel with large amounts of cash. And there are hundreds of banking laws whose sole purpose is to catch someone in the drug trade. I’m sick of an overbearing iron-fisted, nanny government who thinks that they know better how to run people’s lives than the individual.
Any there are many millions of lives which have been needlessly wasted thanks to pot not to mention countless trillions of brain cells. Pot is for losers. I’m sick of people trying to find excused to get stoned.
LOSERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m sick of this crap.
Come to CA and see how people abuse mm laws.
Now if a CREDIBLE doctor treating a very sick patient suffering serious pain prescribed some form of THC because no other drug or pain reliever would work, I would have nothing to say about that, much as I have no issue with cancer patients being prescribed morphine.
You do know that due to the moral underpinnings of society previous to that time that that wasn't a problem in the least, don't you?
As a side note: Opioids slow down your body’s many processes.
Most noticeable is the, ahem, slowdown in the lower GI tract.
MJ never prevented me from pooping for 3 days. Can’t say that about the harder stuff, especially the time I ripped my rotator cuff in 2 places and had to have a pain pump inserted into my neck.
PS: MJ has components that are analgesics, antiinflammatories, and antiseizure/antispasmodics. To deny the medical aspects is laughable and ignorant.
So we replace the moral underpinning of society with an uncaring, unfeeling, iron-fisted government? That’s your solution?
In light of the loss of moral underpinnings, should we ban the deadly (unlike marijuana) addictive (more so than marijuana) mind-altering drug alcohol?
Like all "medical" marijuana pushers the author is dishonest. The quote from the DEA is exactly right. Smoked marijuana isn't a medicine. The author then attempt to prove him a liar by referring to JAMA about cannabinoids...which ARE those elements that have promise. NOT smoked marijuana. Furthermore from the JAMA page he linked to:
Conclusions and Relevance There was moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity. There was low-quality evidence suggesting that cannabinoids were associated with improvements in nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, weight gain in HIV infection, sleep disorders, and Tourette syndrome. Cannabinoids were associated with an increased risk of short-term AEs.
In other words, drugs derived from pot have only modest results or evidence that it works in cases of chronic pain or spasticity. And scant evidence that it works for anything else. In fact there are better drugs with less side effects for all these issues.
The ONLY reason there is such a thing as smoked marijuana being called "medical" is that a bunch of leftists want to make pot legal.
Oral THC is a stupid joke and does not have the efficacy of other methods.
It is not the THC that pain sufferers want. It is the CBDs and terpenes. Terpenes (which by the way are already 100% legal) like Limonene, Pinene, Beta-Caryophylene, and Linalool.
Free yourself from your obsession with THC.
So if the patient was sick but not “very sick”” you would disapprove?
What’s the cut off?
So, people who suffer pain at a level below the cut off do not get to ease their pain if you were the boss?
I am glad you don’t get to decide.
You are immoral.
Why is it abused?
Does it cause euphoria...does one get "high" from it?
I'm asking a valid question here...not sniping at you...because I was put on Lyrica for over 6 months before the stupid MD's finally found out that a piece of shrapnel from Viet Nam had migrated into my hip joint and was causing excruciating pain, similar to sciatica, but not emanating from my spine.
Lyrica did nothing...zero...zip for me.
The only relief I got was from Norco and I damn well know how it can make one feel.
So, seriously, how does one abuse Lyrica?
You are basically accusing those who want to come out of the shadows of being wrong because they were in the shadows. We know that as catch-22 or petitio principii.
In general herbal medicine, even the “legal” kind, isn’t well regulated. Some of these herbals DO have significant effects but they vary. I use a “legal” herbal and I have to be careful with it because if I use too much, I get too lethargic.
BTW, you do know that southern Democrats who championed the 1913 anti-drug law did so to have a way of imprisoning black men on southern prison plantations. The big lie they uses was that black men wer doing cocaine and then raping white women. Woodrow Wilson, who was a well know racist, signed it into law. That same Congress and president gave us the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and the 17th and 18th Amendments.
Cannabinoids...NOT smoked marijuana. And quote the rest.
"Conclusions and Relevance There was moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity. There was low-quality evidence suggesting that cannabinoids were associated with improvements in nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, weight gain in HIV infection, sleep disorders, and Tourette syndrome. Cannabinoids were associated with an increased risk of short-term AEs."
This isn't smoked marijuana. It's clear that drugs made from marijuana are pretty crappy when taken as a whole. There are better drugs for each of these. Yet when people talk about "medical" marijuana they're talking about a bunch of stoners who go to "clinics" to get their pot supply. That's ALL it is.
We would be a much better society because of it. Prove me wrong.
In all fairness, he addressed that by saying some constituent parts of MJ have shown great promise for medical issues, but smoking the leaf is not necessary to obtain that.
For the record, I’m against ANY imposition by a federal government into the drug issue. That is not their place, but is an issue for states to decide.
Would you honor the right of states to criminalize recreational drugs?
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