Posted on 09/15/2002 8:38:29 AM PDT by JediGirl
Early in the morning of Sept. 5, dozens of armed men stormed a respected medical facility where nearly 300 people desperately ill from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses got their medicine. Brandishing semiautomatic weapons in the faces of terrified patients, including a woman paralyzed from childhood polio, they destroyed all of the medicine and took prisoner the facility's operators.
The work of Osama bin Laden? Hamas? Some other international terrorists?
No. This particular terrorist raid was carried out by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The facility they attacked was the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana ( WAMM ) in Santa Cruz, Calif. A co-op run entirely by and for seriously ill people - 80 percent of whom have terminal diagnoses - WAMM sold nothing. All of the medical marijuana grown was given to members without charge.
The facility was supported by the community and worked closely with local officials. According to County Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt, WAMM operated in an "exemplary" fashion. After the raid - which had been planned and executed with no warning to the local government - Wormhoudt told reporters she was "appalled" by the DEA's action.
The patients WAMM served are desperately ill. For many with AIDS or cancer, marijuana is the only thing that allows them to tolerate the horrendous side effects of the harsh treatments that keep them alive. Others endure excruciating pain that conventional medicines have failed to relieve, but which marijuana helps.
Because of this raid, many of these people will die prematurely - agonizing, horrible deaths - because the only medicine that helped them has been taken away.
What could possibly motivate such cruelty?
Desperation.
All around the world, governments and scientific experts are coming to believe that marijuana shouldn't be illegal - that it is simply not dangerous enough to warrant arresting and jailing even social or recreational users, much less people using it to relieve symptoms of cancer or AIDS. The British government has already moved to make marijuana possession a nonarrestable offense.
On Sept. 4, Canada's Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs released the most exhaustive investigation of marijuana data and policy options ever conducted by any government. The 650-page report declared that criminalizing marijuana amounted to "throwing taxpayers' money down the drain in a crusade that is not warranted by the danger posed by the substance."
But marijuana - which accounts for the vast majority of illegal drug use and arrests - is the engine that drives the war on drugs and keeps massive drug-control budgets pumped up.
So even as DEA agents were shoving machine guns in the faces of sick people, White House drug czar John Walters and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson stood in front of a Washington, D.C., press conference, spouting long-discredited myths as if they were proven facts.
Marijuana, said Thompson, is "a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of all its users" - a statement contradicted by reams of scientific research.
Indeed, in 1995, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet stated flatly, "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health." This year, the British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the Canadian Senate committee came to similar conclusions after extensive study.
But our government's drug war ideologues don't care about science. And they don't care how many sick people they literally torture to death in their desperate effort to pump up a collapsing policy.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. If you ingest something and become a public charge, the public is stuck with the bill of keeping you alive. Hence the public has a right to prevent you from doing things that will make you a public charge.
And no, we don't live in a libertarian utopia, so we cannot allow drug addicts to simply die on the streets. Besides, druggies dying and begging on the streets impose a negative externality on those who have to pass by them.
I try to tell the pro-lifers on this board the same thing,
but it doesn't satisfy them, either. Whining and
complaining about what someone else is doing
has become part of the American psyche.
Not to mention the robberies and assaults.
Pot makes a person drowsey too..so I hear. But I had enough bad habits growing up, without adding POT to the list. :~)
sw
It's a BLOG, dufus! She didn't post her blog stuff here, so why do you try and inject it into the debate? I guess you don't have anything relevent to add, so you go out there looking for some personal slams to try to change the subject
Translation: "He got a free lunch, we demand one too!"
We're not specifically talking about cannabis sativa anymore, are we? How exactly are chemotherapy patients supposed to carry out robberies and assaults?
If we accept that as the primary consideration in formulating law and public policy, then we must ultimately become a socialist collective.
And that's MUCH better for you than smoking devil weed ....
Oh and my Pharmacist wife says it is VERY rare for insurance to cover it and if they do .. it is a limited amount for a limited time.
Why are cigarettes and alcohol legal then? Should these be made illegal?
I had a heroine habbit once,and I'll state from experience that,should any young man be contemlating a heroine habbit,contemplate one that isn't redheaded. Fun,but expensive. And society most assuredly didn't pay for that habbit of mine-I was stuck with the bills,and they weren't small ones.
You're only advocating "medical marijuana" for "chemotherapy" patients, "Doctor?"
I believe that is what this discussion is about, yes. That's the gist I got from the article above.
And you didn't answer my question - how are those felled by chemotherapy supposed to hold up a 7-11?
I guess you saw that Dragnet episode with Blue Boy...
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