Faces at rally reveal tragic truth of medical marijuana patients

Sacramento Bee ^ | 22 September 2002 | Diana Griego Erwin

[JediGirl]

Tess Williams of Elk Grove wept when she saw her sister holding a sign in the crowd of protesters standing outside Santa Cruz's City Hall last week.

"It just is so unlike her," Williams said. Her sister, a soccer mom, PTA secretary "and always the more quiet and elegant of us two," isn't the sign-waving type.

[Rifleman]

I sincerely hope that those who would deny a palliative drug to those in pain, will die screaming.

[Pearls Before Swine]

You know, I watched someone die of cancer recently. They had her on a morphine drip and she assured us she was in no pain as long as she was conscious and able to speak.

My sympathies for your loss. Unfortunately, the pain management of many other cases is not as humane. In fact, it verges on the barbaric. Some years ago, my father had cancer. He wasn't in much pain, and fortunately, his hearing had pretty much gone. I say "fortunately" because he spent several days in a nursing home (which we speedily removed him from, but that's another story) with a room-mate who was screaming non-stop from terminal cancer pain. I went to the desk and reported this, but they were unconcerned and would do nothing. First, they didn't have authorization to dispense medication ahead of schedule (true, but they could have asked for authorization, or reported up the chain.) They then asked if I wanted him to become addicted. What--so what if he did? What was an 85 year-old guy with terminal cancer who became addicted to morphine going to do--knock over a liquor store?

The same attitude is seen in WOD people towards medical use of marijuana. Some on this thread say that many who advocate medical use of marijuana are simply trying to get the camel's nose under the tent, and would also advocate non-medical use. To me, this is more a legalistic authoritarian argument. Pot is not more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. We've seen how people have enjoyed the cover of moral/legal fashion to exercise their authoritarian impulses with alchohol (prohibition) and tobacco.

I'm not an absolute libertarian on all drugs--PCP, GHB, meth--all societally dangerous. Pot isn't. But even it it were, to extend a perception of danger to interference with monitored medical use is unwarranted and cruel. Morphine is clearly more addictive, and not many of the WOD people on this thread would advocate with-holding its postoperative medical use. I know, its legal, and at the moment pot isn't--but that doesn't make the current situation "right" or optimal.

[Aunt Polgara]

The dopers' definition of the term includes every health condition known to man, including ingrown toenails.

Gee, 07055, where's your compassion? Don't you know that ingrown toenails frickin' hurt??!!

[Lokibob]

IMHO, it all goes back to the 60's when there was rioting in the streets over Vietnam.

 

You were either pro government or anti government.  No gray areas allowed.  Pot smokers were Anti government, therefore needed to be punished.

 

The war goes on still.

[Rifleman]

Do you mean like beta blockers, which were delayed from use in the US for several years by the tax lice in the FDA thus causing several hundred thousand premature deaths from heart disease? The FDA kills more Americans each month than the islamist pigs killed on 9/11/01.

[uncbob]

Morpine coecaine etc are legal for pain management so what is the big deal about pot

[Illbay]

Marijuana has never killed anybody regardless of the doseage.

How naive you are.

[Illbay]

In this case, I mean that FDA approval and "control" of a substance doesn't mean diddly.

My doctor just changed a medication I'm taking, because "new data" indicate a small chance of liver damage. Stuff is taken off the market all the time, even after having been "approved" for prescribed use.

There is no benefit of pot that can't be derived from far safer controlled substances, and the downside is huge.

This whole argument of "medical marijuana" is just a farce.

[twocents]

How naive you are.

Explain why this is true.

[Illbay]

Because hallucinogens kill.

[Lokibob]

comments?

 

http://www.jackherer.com/comparison.html

 

HOW DANGEROUS IS MARIJUANA COMPARED WITH OTHER SUBSTANCES? Number of American deaths per year that result directly or primarily from the following selected causes nationwide, according to World Almanacs, Life Insurance Actuarial (death) Rates, and the last 20 years of U.S. Surgeon Generals' reports.
TOBACCO	340,000 to 450,000
ALCOHOL (Not including 50% of all highway deaths and 65% of all murders)	150,000+
ASPIRIN (Including deliberate overdose)	180 to 1,000+
CAFFEINE (From stress, ulcers, and triggering irregular heartbeats, etc.)	1,000 to 10,000
"LEGAL" DRUG OVERDOSE (Deliberate or accidental) from legal, prescribed or patent medicines and/or mixing with alcohol - e.g. Valium/alcohol	14,000 to 27,000
ILLICIT DRUG OVERDOSE (Deliberate or accidental) from all illegal drugs.	3,800 to 5,200
MARIJUANA	0
(Marijuana users also have the same or lower incidence of murders and highway deaths and accidents than the general non-marijuana using population as a whole. Crancer Study, UCLA; U.S. Funded ($6 million), First & Second Jamaican Studies, 1968 to 1974; Costa Rican Studies, 1980 to 1982; et al. LOWEST TOXICITY 100% of the studies done at dozens of American universities and research facilities show pot toxicity does not exist. Medical history does not record anyone dying from an overdose of marijuana (UCLA, Harvard, Temple, etc.).

[Tony Niar Brain]

Right, when it comes to smoking cigarettes, which is documented to kill hundreds of thousands, we all have a choice to do what we will and be free.

When we start talking about the evil demon weed, which hasn't got a single documented death, all of a sudden we're talking about Western Civilization collapsing in a dope haze.

Quite a glaring inconsistency, I'd say. Probably a symptom of the Reefer Madness.

[A_perfect_lady]

I thank you both for your comments. I'm not actually opposed to legalizing pot at all, I'm just pointing out that there are other methods of pain relief that are legal. And PBS, that was a truly harrowing story, those people who ignored that poor old man should be shot.

[Illbay]

When in doubt, throw out a bunch of "statistics" that can easily be confused with facts. "Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure."

[Lokibob]

62.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97apr/reef.htm

 

Reefer Madness

 

Marijuana gives rise to insanity -- not in its users but in the policies directed against it. A nation that sentences the possessor of a single joint to life imprisonment without parole but sets a murderer free after perhaps six years is, the author writes, "in the grip of a deep psychosis"

by Eric Schlosser
IGHT years ago Douglas Lamar Gray bought a pound of marijuana in a room at the Econo Lodge in Decatur, Alabama. He planned to keep a few ounces for himself and sell the rest to some friends. Gray was a Vietnam veteran with an artificial leg. As a young man, he'd been convicted of a number of petty crimes, none serious enough to warrant a prison sentence. He had stayed out of trouble for a good thirteen years. He now owned a business called Gray's Roofing and Remodeling Service. He had a home, a wife, and a two-year-old son. The man who sold him the drug, Jimmy Wilcox, was a felon just released from prison, with more than thirty convictions on his record. Wilcox was also an informer employed by the Morgan County Drug Task Force. The pound of marijuana had been supplied by the local sheriff's department, as part of a sting. After paying Wilcox $900 for the pot, which seemed like a real bargain, Douglas Lamar Gray was arrested and charged with "trafficking in cannabis." He was tried, convicted, fined $25,000, sentenced to life in prison without parole, and sent to the maximum-security penitentiary in Springville, Alabama -- an aging, overcrowded prison filled with murderers and other violent inmates. He remains there to this day. Under the stress of his imprisonment Gray's wife attempted suicide with a pistol, survived the gunshot, and then filed for divorce. Jimmy Wilcox, the informer, was paid $100 by the county for his services in the case.

---

 

I realize that you won't go read the article because your mind is made up, but the above  story is an example of how pot ruins lives.  A perverted example, but hell, an example.

 

This article goes on and on about pot.  I won't reproduce it here. Go to the web site for the full article.

 

Summary, tho:

 

There are more people in jail for pot smoking than for violent crimes.

 

[robertpaulsen]

That product already exists and is called Marinol (Dronabinol). It's main ingredient is THC (found in marijuana), and is prescribed to combat nausea.

The pro-drug legalization crowd says, however, that some patients can't keep the pill down and need to smoke. Yet the Santa Cruz city council recently handed out marijuana-laced muffins to the qualified medical marijuana patients in defiance of Federal law. So, believe what you will.

[FITZ]

Where's the 'dignity', in spending your final days in a dope haze?

A lot of the legal stuff doctors prescribe does that anyway. Even for routine surgeries they give stuff that puts people in a dope haze.

[JediGirl]

Darn those states defying the big federal government? Do they think they have rights or something?

[07055]

The pro-drug legalization crowd says, however, that some patients can't keep the pill down and need to smoke.

Hmmmmm. I thought smoking was about the worse thing you can do for your health?

And pot smokers don't smoke like cigar smokers---they definitely inhale. And deeply. What do you think a bong is for?

[JediGirl]

first '?' = '.'