Posted on 06/26/2006 8:22:44 AM PDT by bassmaner
If ever a piece of legislation should pass readily through the U.S. House of Representatives, it is a measure sponsored by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., that would prevent the Department of Justice from using tax dollars to prosecute medical-marijuana patients in states that have legalized medical marijuana. Because it is a good bill, expect it to fail.
Polls show that some three out of four Americans support allowing doctors to prescribe medical marijuana for patients who need it. Members must know that constituents within their districts use marijuana to control pain and nausea -- their families would like to live without the fear of prosecution. As Time Magazine reported last year, research shows that the drug has salutary "analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects."
Republicans should be drawn to the states' rights angle of the bill, while Democrats should go for the personal stories of constituents who have found relief, thanks to medical marijuana.
Yet when the House last voted on the measure in 2005, it tanked in a 264-162 vote. As the House is scheduled to consider the measure this week, few expect the measure to pass. "I wish I could tell you it's going to pass," Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken conceded by phone last week. "I can't realistically expect that."
Over the last decade, two big hurdles existed: Republicans and Democrats. Last year, a mere 15 Repubs voted for the measure -- down from 19 GOP members who supported it in 2004. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are moving toward the light. In 1998, the Clinton Justice Department filed suit against California medical-marijuana clubs. Last year, however, an impressive 145 Dems voted for Hinchey-Rohrabacher.
Martin Chilcutt of Kalamazoo, Mich., has written to his local GOP congressman, Rep. Fred Upton. A veteran who believes he got cancer because of his military service, Chilcutt told me that his Veterans Administration hospital doctors supported his use of medical marijuana when he had cancer.
Upton's office told me that Upton believes Marinol, the legal synthetic drug that includes the active ingredient in marijuana, should do the trick.
I asked Chilcutt if he had tried the drug. "I don't like Marinol at all," Chilcutt replied. It takes too long to work, it is hard to calibrate the dose you need, and "it made me feel weird." He prefers marijuana because it works instantly -- "You can control the amount you're using, and you get instant feedback."
Upton also fears sending the wrong message to kids about marijuana. But federal law has long allowed the sick access to needed pain control with drugs more powerful than marijuana. Only bad politics can account for the fact that marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act, and thus deemed more harmful than cocaine and morphine -- drugs that can kill users who overdose.
Alex Holstein, a former GOP operative and conservative activist, is lobbying Republicans on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project. He believes that regardless of their position on medical marijuana, Repubs in the California delegation should support Hinchey-Rohrabacher because state voters approved Proposition 215 -- and Republicans should stand up for states' rights and the will of California voters.
As it is, President Bush should direct the Justice Department to lay off medical-marijuana users -- because it is the right thing to do for sick people.
It's not as if the administration doesn't know how to sit on its hands and not enforce existing law. Last week, The Washington Post reported that under Bush, the number of employers prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens plummeted from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003.
If the Bushies can look the other way when well-heeled employers break the law, they can look the other way when sick people try to relieve unnecessary pain.
oh, THIS is the rigorous science. Marijuana caused people to hate the viet nam war, and riot at the Chicago convention--it had nothing whatsoever to do with a venal, corrupt president fighting an unpopular losing war of aggression with a compulsory draft, half a world away from home. Of course, what could I have been thinking--how scientific of you.
Yea right. Pot was legal as air, and very commonly prescribed by doctors for such things as easing woman's time of the month woes, as it had been, ever since the time of Galen. When the Marijuana Stamp Tax act of 1937 was proposed, the AMA was astonished, and put on a full court press to oppose taking such a mainstay of everyday medicinal advice off the market. Sheesh how can you pack so much unalloyed ignorance in one sentence?
I cited my main sources. Most of that stuff about Washington is in "Licit and Illicit Drugs". By Consumer's Union.
yea yeah yeah. So your "scientific" argument boils down to you hate hippies, and hippies like marijuana, so you hate marijuana. Drug warriors just love to rewrite science, or at least ignore it, to their advantage.
Balderdash, there is no compelling statistical evidence that pot users in legalized regimes have any different health profile than non-users. Pot users that get thrown in jail take some understandable health hits.
You've also apparently decided that you can use the "New Deal" living document Commerce Clause to do it and somehow be immune to the consequences.
Oookay, thank god the drug warriors never utter anything that sounds like an unprovable conspiracy theory.
Soros is behind all of it. The RWJF doesn't exist.
Since it's convenient, let's simply use this thread. Point out my "hysterical rantings". Then we'll compare them to donh's posts.
I rest my case. Oh, if you wish to challenge any statement I make on this forum feel free.
In looking back on this thread, I've posted more facts, more quotes, and more cites than all the other posters combined. Your accusations carry no weight with me unless you can back them up. You can't. Go bug someone else.
I rest my case
...on blovated thin air. What have you brought to the party that matches in gravity, accepted authority, or throw-weight of facts, the Nixon Report, the Young Commission report, the Acadamy of Sciences Report, or "Licit and Illicit Drugs"? Like most drug warriors, you live on a dream planet where your lame and insulting, unfounded, and fairly ignorant opinions carry the weight of gold.
Wow...you really are a liberal! How is it you've survived so long on Freerepublic without being zotted?
Oh please, let's not insult the intelligence of the readers on this forum. You honestly think that repeatedly holding the smoke from a burning plant in your lungs doesn't adversely affect your health? Oh no, I forgot. It makes you healthier because it's "medicine". Right.
Why was he experimenting? Why did he want to experiment with Indian Hemp?
I didn't say it doesn't affect your health--I said the effect was statistically insignificant, for the reason, obvious to anyone whose brain hasn't been fried by uxorious anti-drug propaganda, that marijuana doesn't addict you to the extreme degree that tobacco does. But I'm game, show me the stats and I'll retract. Show me the massive clinics where they treat marijuana-induced lung cancer victims. Maybe you can find them if you look next door to the clinics where they treat the 100,000 or so mortal victims of tobacco, a legal recreational drug, each year.
Huh? So I'm a liberal because I oppose the existence of a federal agency that can tell citizens what they can or can't put in their bodies. Whereas, you think you qualify as a conservative while supporting that agency, because it promotes the welfare of the state or the people as a whole. That's straight out of the communist manifesto--"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
So, you support communist schemes to improve the State and the common people by depriving people of such a rudimentary right as to dispose of their own bodies as they see fit, but I'm the liberal.
Hogwash. The shoe is on the other foot. I'm a jeffersonian republican, your a commy symp.
They also sold tapeworms as a weight loss devices, put cocaine in patent medicine, and at one time doctors claimed that cigarettes were healthy too. Medicine has come a long way since those days. Except for potheads. They're making the same claims as tobacco companies did in order to push their product.
When the Marijuana Stamp Tax act of 1937 was proposed, the AMA was astonished, and put on a full court press to oppose taking such a mainstay of everyday medicinal advice off the market. Sheesh how can you pack so much unalloyed ignorance in one sentence?
Again, you're living in the past. AMA Decides Against Endorsing Medical Marijuana
No, you sound like a liberal because of what you said here:
Marijuana caused people to hate the viet nam war, and riot at the Chicago convention--it had nothing whatsoever to do with a venal, corrupt president fighting an unpopular losing war of aggression with a compulsory draft, half a world away from home.
Sounds just like Jane Fonda and every other leftist during the 60's.
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