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.
I think you mean 'Colombia.'
It is more amazing how people blame marijuana for what cocaine does, and blame drugs for things that are caused only by the war against them. You know that if it weren't illegal, the "drug trade" wouldn't do anything for Colombia that the coffee trade hasn't done.
It's like looking at the 911 WTC atrocity and saying "See what being an infidel causes?"
It's either stupid or dishonest, or both. Most likely the latter.
It's all a conspiracy, man.
Man, hemp could save the whole world man.
Please ask her about the cost. I'm curious.
Thanks, kj
Note - the above arguments are not an argument for the total and unregulated legalization of marijuana. They are merely to the specific point that decriminalizing pot for medical purposes will have ZERO impact on the state of affairs in Columbia.
The evidence is already overwhelming that it turns your brains into mush.
Why should marijuana use be limited to the medical realm?
It's amazing the WOsD-heads ignore what drug prohibition has done to Columbia today.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. (Genesis 1:11)
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. (Genesis 1:29)
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Geneis 1:31)
If it is good enough for God, I am not going to contradict Him.
Thanks for letting us know the latest dope head fantasies.
Now. If you can cite anything that shows Reagan planned anything of the sort, then do it.
What you fellows don't realize is there is an easy way to legalize drugs and that is to change the laws.
I know how self-satisfying it is for you stoners to whine and complain be the victocrat rather than actually do anything tangible.
Take care.
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