Support States' Rights - OK Medical Pot

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.

Sounds just like Jane Fonda and every other leftist during the 60's.

Well now,let's just do a reality check here. Did or did not Nixon resign and get pardoned for the whitewater breakins? Was that or was it not criminal behavior by the executive branch? Can you caugh up, just off the top of your head, what we won in return for sacrificing about 60,000 of our kids? Cause we won that war, with our clever strategems, right? And you think you can blithly dismiss the effect of all this on the social fabric with an irrelevant, blithely tossed insult? It highly amusing that you think marijuana tore the fabric of civil life up more than this.

I was doing forward intel in that war, I lost friends, and I don't much appreciate being irrelevantly compared to Jane Fonda because you have a itch to scratch about marijuana. I suggest you might possibly mind your manners, and stick to the point you are arguing a little better than this.

Your honor, I rest my case.

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.

Lest we forget. The argument was over whether or not marijuana was legal and available between the civil war and the first world war. A point which I brought up in response to your unfounded and unlikely opinion that legal marijuana would destroy the fabric of civilization, and strike at the marrow of our manhood. May I take it that you now recognize this to be the case--that marijuana did not bring down the republic while we rose to economic pre-emminence in the world? And you are now trying to pile as much irrelevant balony on top of the original argument as you can, not that you've lost it.

Your honor, I rest my case.

Which of my statements of fact here are incorrect? Was the whitewater breakin a crime, or not? Do you think having a president commit felonies might have an effect on the "fabric of civilization" or not? Did we lose the war in Viet Nam, in full retreat, or not? Go on--which of these is an incorrect statement? And you think hippies toking weed in their backyards matches up with this for rending the fabric of civilization? On what planet?

Again, you're living in the past. AMA Decides Against Endorsing Medical Marijuana

1991 eh? yea, right.

American Medical Association (AMA)
* REFERENCE: Council on Scientific Affairs Report #10: Medical Marijuana
DATE: December 1997
* POSITION: endorsement of a physicians' right to discuss marijuana therapy with a patient
* SUPPORTING STATEMENT: "The AMA believes that effective patient care requires the free and unfettered exchange of information on treatment alternatives and that discussion of these alternatives between physicians and patients should not subje ct either party to criminal sanctions."
* POSITION: research
* SUPPORTING STATEMENT: "The AMA recommend that adequate and well-controlled studies of smoked marijuana be conducted in patients who have serious conditions for which preclinical, anecdotal, or controlled evidence suggests possible efficacy in cluding AIDS wasting syndrome, sever acute or delayed emesis induced by chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, dystonia, and neuropathic pain."

And on 6/22/01, the AMA voted in Chicago to withdraw it's opposition to compassionate access.

The AMA is only partly a science organization. It is also a keenly tuned political body with it's ear to the ground. It withdrew it's opposition to the predecessor of the DEA when they started jailing doctors right and left. They are not the science horse, they are a cart with a sticky wheel that blows however it finds most favor with the administration, to whom they are beholden for their virtual monopoly on medicine, far too easily.

If I wanted to argue these points with a liberal, I'd call up my sister. Look, you gotta admit that your viewpoint is traditionally the leftist/Democrat viewpoint of the 60's. Don't you recognize that?

"What qualifies you to speak on this topic?"

To speak? I'm probably as qualified to speak on the subject as anyone else on this forum.

As far as what qualifies me to be taken seriously -- I post the facts. I can back up those facts with links to sources which can then be examined and debated. If my source is biased or wrong, I welcome a correction.

I came to this thread invited. Other times I just show up. I don't bother posting unless I see something that's misleading, dishonst, or an out-and-out lie. For example, the article mentions that this amendment failed last year. True, but not the whole truth. It also failed in 2004 and in 2003. I think that's relevant. I mentioned it.

"What qualifies you to speak on this topic?" To speak? I'm probably as qualified to speak on the subject as anyone else on this forum.

As far as what qualifies me to be taken seriously -- I post the facts.

OK, what are those qualifications of which you speak?

Otherwise, just say it's none of my business and I'll write you off as an overly-impassioned crusader.

I posted a response to you that contained my bona fides, where's yours.

By the way, one of the facts you posted was that the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 made Marijuana illegal. It didn't.

Saying something is a fact and linking to some like-minded hysteric doesn't make it a fact and the impression that I get from your posts is someone in a dark cellar surfing the net on a Cannabis Jihad.

"... and I'll write you off as an overly-impassioned crusader."

Please do that. It's easier.

"By the way, one of the facts you posted was that the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 made Marijuana illegal. It didn't."

Technically, no it didn't. But it had that effect, and everyone uses it as the starting point of when marijuana became "illegal". Maybe if I saw my post in context I could be more specific.

Boy, if that's your definition of my "hysterical rantings", maybe you should have taken more psych courses.

Maybe you think it's a clever tact on the part of conservatives to defend conservative values by pretending certain inconvenient facts of history don't exist. There is a large streak of conservative thought that does not support the arrogation of powers to the federal government that accelerated with the New Deal's trashing of the limits on government power explicit in the 9th and 10th amendments. If Friedman and William F. Buckely think I'm a conservative, maybe your conviction on this subject doesn't rest on such a secure foundation after all.

Thank you for admitting your fact wasn't.

Now, I've gone back and read all of the posts you made presenting "your facts" in this thread.

Every single one of "your facts" you present, are, in fact, someone's opinion.

For a guy who is so emotionally invested in a subject, you blow a lot of smoke (pun intended.)

And I, for one, would rather smoke a bone than drink Glen Livid, which is, I assume, your drug of choice or is it tobacco?

You still refuse to provide your bona fides. Why should anyone pay attention to your posts?

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.

Marijuana Dangers: Get Help Now!!

Ok, I'm game. How many deaths from the use of marijuana did the Spencer Recovery Center report last year?

As far as what qualifies me to be taken seriously -- I post the facts. I can back up those facts with links to sources which can then be examined and debated.

Here's a 'bold' fact you can't back up.

Ready for the big one? California can ban all guns if they so chose. There's nothing in the state constitution (one of six states, I believe) about the right to keep and bear arms.
129 posted on 11/20/2003 1:30 PM PST by robertpaulsen

If a doctor wants to prescribe LSD because he and the patient believe it infers a medical benefit, then so be it. If a doctor wants to prescribe heroin to a patient because they both "believe" it infers a medical benefit, then go for it. Belief trumps empirical evidence and rule of law.

There is strong evidence that marijuana has medical benefits. Marijuana need not be smoked ... and whether those benefits outweigh the harms of smoking is not for government to decide.

Conservatives wouldn't define having men having sex with 16 year old boys as "freedom", "liberty" or "states rights".

Minors don't possess the full rights of adulthood, which is why I don't support legalizing marijuana for minors.

Conservatives wouldn't define letting hookers run around neighborhoods unimpeded as liberty

No, they'd call for regulation (including zoning) instead of a futile and counterproductive criminalization.

Conservatives wouldn't define killing unborn babies as liberty

Killing, unlike marijuana sale or use, violates rights.

And conservatives wouldn't define smoking pot as an issue of liberty

Sure they would.

And if we're criminalizing "potential to harm our society" where do we stop? Ban junk food? Enforce bedtimes for adults?

I didn't see your answer to this question.

Pot makes its users docile, stupid and susceptible to liberal propaganda. Since they can remain in this docile and stupid state for decades they make the perfect voting bloc for liberal propaganda.

So it's OK to ban things that make people vote liberal? Attending Harvard? Reading the NY Times?

Marijuana need not be smoked ... and whether those benefits outweigh the harms of smoking is not for government to decide.

Well that's exactly what the left wants, the freedom to smoke marijuana. It's got nothing to do with medicine since Marinol, a pure medicine derived from the plant, is already available. Of course there are other medicines that are more effective.

Now if the left were to come out with their REAL agenda...i.e. we want the "freedom" to smoke pot and take drugs, then it would never sell to the public. So cloak it in respectable terms and confuse the issue. Right out of the Democrat playbook.

Killing, unlike marijuana sale or use, violates rights.

I know you're probably a liberal and don't listen, but Rush Limbaugh made a good point. Libertarians want to pretend that everything they want to affects nobody else. Take drug use. A person using drugs affects wives, kids, loved ones and society in ways to numerous to mention. Just because drug users are too brain fried and selfish to see the truth doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

And if we're criminalizing "potential to harm our society" where do we stop? Ban junk food? Enforce bedtimes for adults? I didn't see your answer to this question.

That's because that line of argument is a leftist ploy designed to minimize drug use. It's no worse than eating junk food or not getting enough sleep. That's a load of dangerous tripe and is a completely irresponsible inference to make considering that children can and often do read this forum.

Kids, drugs are for idiots.

So it's OK to ban things that make people vote liberal? Attending Harvard? Reading the NY Times?

There you go again. Taking drugs is no worse than attending Harvard or reading the New York Times. What's wrong with you guys??

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