Free Republic

The DEA Web pages on "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization" are linked with some regularity on FR. They're full of errors in fact and logic; since I couldn't find a comprehensive rebuttal online, I've started creating one. Here's my rebuttal to their "Fact 4;" more to come as time permits. ("Fact 1" rebutted at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2858443/posts; "Fact 2" rebutted at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2861557/posts; "Fact 3" rebutted at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2864032/posts.) Claim 4. "Smoked marijuana is not scientifically approved medicine. Marinol, the legal version of medical marijuana, is approved by science." Claim: Medical marijuana already exists. It’s called Marinol. A pharmaceutical product, Marinol, is widely available...

THE FOOD AND Drug Administration is contradicting itself. It recently reiterated its position that cannabis has no medical utility, but it also approved advanced clinical trials for a marijuana-derived drug called Sativex, a liquid preparation of two of the most therapeutically useful compounds of cannabis. This is the same agency that in 1985 approved Marinol, another oral cannabis-derived medicine. Both Sativex and Marinol represent the "pharmaceuticalization" of marijuana. They are attempts to make available its quite obvious medicinal properties — to treat pain, appetite loss and many other ailments — while at the same time prohibiting it for any other...