Posted on 04/09/2003 12:45:44 PM PDT by MrLeRoy
ALBANY — A campaign to legalize medical marijuana gained steam Tuesday, as a legislative committee took the first step in sending the issue to a vote by the Legislature.
The Assembly Health Committee voted 16 to 6 to advance a bill that would establish guidelines to allow physicians and other health care professionals to prescribe marijuana to alleviate pain. It was the first time any legislative panel has voted on the measure.
The bill, which has been around since 1997, still needs to go through other committees before reaching the full Assembly, and it needs a Senate sponsor.
But the bill picked up a Republican co-sponsor, Assemblyman Joel Miller of Poughkeepsie, who said as a dentist he has prescribed stronger drugs.
“We should not be embarrassed about taking drugs, even if they may be street drugs, and using them appropriately,” Miller said. “If this is at all helpful to people, I don’t see why we can’t move forward.”
Marijuana can ease the pain of cancer, and it can help AIDS patients and others with debilitating pain, supporters say.
One Democrat and five Republicans opposed the bill, including Jim Bacalles, R-Corning, and Dan Burling, R-Alexander, Genesee County. Burling, a pharmacist, said other options were available.
Under the bill, a physician would have to certify each month that a patient has a condition meriting marijuana treatment. The patient would get marijuana from a registered nonprofit organization, regulated by a local health department or the state.
All the while your oncologist is trying to beat back the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation. Thousands of dollars are being spent trying to save your life. All the best that science and medicine has to offer is going to your benefit.
And you're "token up like a bastard".
Sorry, but legal drugs would be penny ante and no such tax revenue would be available. Heck, everyone who wanted to could grow their own Marijuana in their back yard.
If you end the War on Drugs, the goverment would save a fortune on enforcement costs, prison costs, lost taxes from people in jail and such. This is at least $100 billion/year. That cost hurts the taxpayers.
Against that is the money made by various industries with political connections: drug industry, beer industry, law enforcement, prisons, etc. These industries are quite willing to waste whatever tax money as needed to keep their own gravy train going.
Just another reason that the drug war is pure evil and hurt.
Ditto.
Then you would be thinking incorrectly, for I quoted noone's statement, just voicing my own opinion.
But seriously, I believe that federal funding is on the increase. Plus, let's not forget the private sector and those studies funded by organizations like the American Cancer Society.
The feds have classifed pot such that the research is highly difficult to go forth with by putting it in the class 1 category. You speak of the private sector doing research, but they are who I speak of, because the feds have effectively squashed all pot research. The just don't allow it to happen. "Pot Research" in this country typically comes from studying things that have already happened, not from setting up and doing experiments with controls and other things that add legitimacy and repeatibility.
Whatever the ACS has done by way of research (and I don't recall seeing any about pot), I personally would take with a large grain of salt, for they have a long history of falling very short when it comes to repeatability and peer review. Note I'm not totally cutting down the ACS, but they certainly do have some bias.
Just like the stuff coming from the ONDCP is not well balanced or full of the truth.
And before you point it out, the other side (the pro legalizers) do also bend the truth and and sometimes are guilty of deliberate ommisions (just like those on the both sides of the fence)
I am saying there should be fair, unbiased, clinical, long term, controlled and peer reviewed studies being done. Presently they are not happening because Federal law does not allow this to happen. Almost every study I have seen comes from questionable sources with questionable material. And both sides are somewhat guilty of this.
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