Approximately 15 tons of medicinal cannabis are stolen each year, police records show.
Most medical marijuana fields do not meet the police’s standards, according to Zilberman, who called the situation “bizarre.” He said that some of the fields are near shopping malls and parks and have low fences, without security cameras or locks.
“Anyone can come in and take what they want,” Zilberman explained. “We warned the Health Ministry that they must close those fields, but nothing happened.”
Committee on Drug Abuse chairman MK Taleb a-Sanaa (UAL-Ta’al) expressed frustration that after two years of meetings on securing medical marijuana fields, the topic still has not been dealt with properly.
“Those who are ill will pay the price for these problems,” he said.
Dr. Yehuda Baruch, who is responsible for coordinating the growth of medical marijuana, warned that without government regulation, use of the drug for medicinal purposes could lead to general legalization of cannabis.
I wonder if Israeli med marijuana users are like our dope-head med marijuana users that just want to push their dope agenda on us normal folk or are they legitimate?
There are some important, common-sense arguments about marijuana and other drugs, illegal and legal.
1) By far the best true argument that can be made about marijuana to young people is that it makes them slow, dim-witting, dull and uninteresting. Oddly enough, this is a pretty persuasive argument. In 2001, a singer named “Afroman” did a song about how he lost all the good things in his life because he just lived in a marijuana stupor, “Because I Got High”. It is a light and cheery (and a little NSFW) song, that sounds like a party song; but it really hit home to a lot of marijuana users as an effective anti-marijuana song.
2) Marijuana does have so very effective therapeutic uses, especially for some bad, and otherwise incurable eye conditions that result in blindness, and is a standard therapy in Israel to treat PTSD in soldiers. But its premier use is in conjunction with chemotherapy during cancer treatment. It is vital that such patients get good nutrition, and otherwise they cannot even drink water without vomiting.
3) For long the government anticipated that marijuana would cause an epidemic of lung cancer, because it does contain carcinogens. But this did not come about, because it also contains potent anti-cancer chemicals that more than neutralize the effect of the carcinogens.
4) The human brain does not fully mature until the early 20’s. A juvenile or adolescent brain will adapt to many addictive substances far easier than will a mature brain, so for this reason, children should be denied any and all addictive drugs, including caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, as long as possible. If this is prevented in youth, as an adult they will be far less likely to get addicted to anything, and if they do get addicted, it will be far easier for them to break the addiction.
5) Some of the most dangerous drugs available today are pharmaceutical opiates such as hydrocodones and hydromorphones. They are much the same as prescription heroin and are terribly addictive. This is likely to get much worse in the future, because currently such drugs are limited to about 20% opiate, but there are plans to market 100% opiate drugs.
While these will be effective against life threatening pain, the potential for harm is staggering.