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Posted on 04/30/2007 2:17:03 PM PDT by microgood
She is 71 years old, a great-grandmother - hardly the type of person you would expect to see in Bronx Criminal Court to answer charges of buying two dime bags of pot.
Yet at the appointed time today, Barbara Jackson will make her way to the courthouse, a colorectal cancer survivor ready to plead her case.
"I smoke it to live," the feisty granny told the Daily News. "I don't think I should have been arrested."
Jackson said she started smoking the green, leafy drug eight years ago - a year after being diagnosed with cancer - to restore her appetite after chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
"After cancer treatments, I was very sick," she said. "I couldn't eat and could not stand the smell of food."
Even though her cancer is in remission, she lost her appetite, Jackson said.
On March 13, she set out to find some more of the illegal drug shehas grown dependent on. She found some close to her house on E.179th St. and began walking down Walton Ave.
Plainclothes cops suddenly descended on her and found the two bags of marijuana on her.
"I am looking for a dismissal in the interest of justice," said Ron Kuby, one of two lawyers representing Jackson. "I would hope the Bronx district attorney's office has more important cases than prosecuting a great-granny for medicinal marijuana."
After her arrest, Jackson was handcuffed and brought to jail. She was taken to the 46th Precinct stationhouse, photographed, fingerprinted and issued a desk appearance ticket that she must answer today.
Her other lawyer, David Pressman, said it's heartbreaking to see a senior citizen who was "just trying to survive" handcuffed and held in police custody for five hours.
Steven Reed, a spokesman for the Bronx district attorney's office, said his office is not aware of the case because it hasn't come into the the DA's office.
Jackson hopes to get a chance to tell her story.
She weighed 99 pounds when she entered Lincoln Hospital in 1998. After surgery and treatments she lost even more weight. Jackson said her doctor prescribed an appetite enhancer, but it made her sick.
"The medicine gave me a terrible headache," said Jackson, who was raising three great-grandchildren at the time. "I was very weak and sick after treatments. I had diarrhea and was vomiting all the time.
"The smell of food made me sick and I was nauseous," she said. "The marijuana calmed me down and gave me back my appetite. My taste buds are gone, but the marijuana helps me get the food down."
Jackson said she puffed marijuana twice a day in the privacy of her home. Jackson, who now weighs 124 pounds, credits the marijuana with saving her life.
"The marijuana has kept me alive; I wouldn't be here if I didn't smoke," Jackson said. "I know it's illegal, but I did what I had to do to make myself comfortable and restore my quality of life."
That’s the “slippery slope” argument, which is a version of a straw man argument. You start with what you want to attack, generate a string of progressively worse but related straw men, attack the last strawman, and then denounce what you want to attack.
ANYTHING can be argued on that basis. For example: drinking water leads to drinking juice which leads to drinking alcohol which leads to DUIs which kill people, therefore drinking water is BAD and should be banned. (Obviously ridiculous, but structurally the same type of argument and logically little different from pot -> bad drugs -> bad things -> ban pot.)
Another example: If guns are legal for people to own, machine guns will be next, then land mines, then chemical weapons, then biological weapons, then nukes, and we’ll all die, so guns must be banned!
This type of argument is usually a sign of a weak basis for attacking the starting point (pot, water, guns above).
Now that's a good point!!! Should NOT be done around the kids. I'd prefer a controlled environment such as a doctor's office. Would also take the "cool" and "fun" factors out of it, so only people who really needed it and benefitted from it would go to the trouble.
Incidentally, pot is not physically addictive if I recall properly.
Good points, too. I do think pot will be legal in our lifetime, using the very process you discuss. Just like prohibition was ended. Do NOT think other "hard" drugs will be legalized. IMO that's as it should be...
“If you think the line should be somewhere else than where it is, debate it openly and work to get the law changed. That’s fine. But don’t insult my intelligence by hiding behind cancer victims as a group. Most of them aren’t looking for pot to help them out.”
I’m not looking to insult your intelligence, so I will state openly that I *do* think the line has been drawn in the wrong place. In fact, I will go so far as to declare my opinion that marijuana is *LESS* dangerous than alcohol.
Confession time: I have been extremely drunk and extremely stoned at different times in my life, in my younger and more liberal days. And I speak from my personal experience when I say that being drunk is a FAR more frightening and uncontrollable experience than being stoned. Being drunk is far more dangerous - both alcohol and pot will remove your inhibitions, but only alcohol will leave you the necessary willpower (if not the coordination) to attempt to act while uninhibited; far more drunks than stoners have died in car accidents or barroom brawls.
Not to mention that the long-term effects of alcohol frighten me far more than the long-term effects of marijuana, because the former are far more lethal (I’ll be honest with you, I’d prefer twenty years of short-term memory problems to a terminal case of cirrhosis); you can’t overdose on THC either, but it’s very easy to take a lethal amount of alcohol. And why stop there? There are other things I could go on about; I could ask why Salvia divinorum, a plant whose effects (when smoked or taken in extract) make cannabis seem like a mere sugar rush, is still legal in this country, while pot remains on the red list.
...Sorry, my libertarian roots seem to be showing. I’ll creep back under the carpet and the rest of you can go on with what you were saying.
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And thank God you are here to stop them.
Marijuana Cuts Lung Cancer Tumor Growth In Half, Study Shows
Science Daily ^ | 4/17/07 | American Association for Cancer Research
Posted on 04/18/2007 4:20:10 PM EDT by Teflonic
The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies.
They say this is the first set of experiments to show that the compound, Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), inhibits EGF-induced growth and migration in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expressing non-small cell lung cancer cell lines. Lung cancers that over-express EGFR are usually highly aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy.
THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids, which are cannabinoids that are naturally produced in the body and activate these receptors. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.
"The beauty of this study is that we are showing that a substance of abuse, if used prudently, may offer a new road to therapy against lung cancer," said Anju Preet, Ph.D., a researcher in the Division of Experimental Medicine.
Acting through cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2, endocannabinoids (as well as THC) are thought to play a role in variety of biological functions, including pain and anxiety control, and inflammation. Although a medical derivative of THC, known as Marinol, has been approved for use as an appetite stimulant for cancer patients, and a small number of U.S. states allow use of medical marijuana to treat the same side effect, few studies have shown that THC might have anti-tumor activity, Preet says. The only clinical trial testing THC as a treatment against cancer growth was a recently completed British pilot study in human glioblastoma.
In the present study, the researchers first demonstrated that two different lung cancer cell lines as well as patient lung tumor samples express CB1 and CB2, and that non-toxic doses of THC inhibited growth and spread in the cell lines. "When the cells are pretreated with THC, they have less EGFR stimulated invasion as measured by various in-vitro assays," Preet said.
Then, for three weeks, researchers injected standard doses of THC into mice that had been implanted with human lung cancer cells, and found that tumors were reduced in size and weight by about 50 percent in treated animals compared to a control group. There was also about a 60 percent reduction in cancer lesions on the lungs in these mice as well as a significant reduction in protein markers associated with cancer progression, Preet says.
Although the researchers do not know why THC inhibits tumor growth, they say the substance could be activating molecules that arrest the cell cycle. They speculate that THC may also interfere with angiogenesis and vascularization, which promotes cancer growth.
Preet says much work is needed to clarify the pathway by which THC functions, and cautions that some animal studies have shown that THC can stimulate some cancers. "THC offers some promise, but we have a long way to go before we know what its potential is," she said.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Association for Cancer Research.
“ordinary, healthy people who want to get high.”
So let ‘em, for chrissake. It’s better for them than booze.
Are you series?
The ignorance displayed on WoD threads stunes my beeber.
Well, I’m glad to be ignorant. I’m clean. ;-D
Do you think it’s good for children to be stoned?
Maybe I’m going far saying “addicted” (I don’t know), but apparently another vehement MM supporter thinks it’s a good point. ;-)
It's the point about addiction that I have problems with. It's been known for quite some time that pot is not physically addictive.
I would think it would be better for her not to smoke it around the kids, but if it's a matter of her either dying or smoking pot around kids, perhaps it would be better for her to live.
Why do you care?
Nobody but me cares That I ate a ribeye tonight (so far).
MARINOL -- The SYNTHETIC CANNABIS:  MARINOL - Technically speaking Marinol is a synthetic [chemical] form of Cannabis and "Ironies of Ironies," at one time marketed by Roxanne Laboratories [a.k.a. The Columbus Pharmacal Co.], which made extensive use of Cannabis before the anti-Medical Marihuana laws went into effect. While many people criticized its medical efficiency, it is fully FDA approved and legal while actual Cannabis [the plant] is NOT. And what is it that Mezz Mezzrow was once quoted as saying: "Of Course Cannabis is more dangerous that Alcohol, you can get sent to jail for it". Which is another way of saying, Marinol is good enough for government work.   WHY THE NAME? Although this is only a guess, the name does seems to have a certain likeness to another word. Mari-nol AN ASIDE - ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE: Although better than nothing, the author is of the opinion that Marinol will not replace Cannabis [the plant], and for the following reasons:
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