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Jewish World Review June 9, 2005 / 2 Sivan, 5765 Hard on drugs, soft on suffering By Debra J. Saunders
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Someday, Washington will catch up with the 72 percent of
Americans over 45 who believe adults should be able to use medical marijuana
if a physician recommends it, according to a 2004 poll by the AARP. First,
however, voters are going to have to make some noise.
Or as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in this week's Supreme
Court ruling that upheld the federal government's authority to prosecute
medical-marijuana users, despite California's and 10 other states' medical
marijuana laws, "the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one
day be heard in the halls of Congress." Too bad, the drug-war hawks have
Washington spooked. Lawmakers don't want to appear soft on drugs, so they
are afraid to call an end to prosecuting people in pain.
That's why marijuana is a "Schedule I" drug in the federal
lexicon, which puts the drug in the same legal classification as heroin.
Less dangerous drugs — like cocaine and morphine — fall under Schedule II
and are available for medical use. But not marijuana.
That's because there is no recognized medical use for marijuana,
according to the American Medical Association, the drug warriors respond.
Fair enough. But the California Medical Association supports
medical marijuana. Chief Executive Jack Lewin, a physician, explained that
his group believes the government should listen to doctors who recommend the
drug. What's more, in passing Proposition 215 in 1996, state voters have
spoken, and from what Lewin has seen, "it's not doing a whole lot of harm."
Many California doctors recommend the drug because they've seen
salutary results with marijuana not found with its legal pill-form
equivalent, Marinol. For some reason, Marinol doesn't take with many
patients, who find relief by smoking, drinking or eating marijuana.
Marijuana, they say, relieves their nausea, mitigates the ravages of some
diseases and increases appetites depressed by chemotherapy.
Doctors have risked their careers recommending an illegal drug.
They don't need a study when they can look at the faces of afflicted people
who finally have found something that works for them. And many users note
that medical marijuana relieves their nausea without drugging them into
oblivion.
Sure, some medical-marijuana boosters may be looking for an
excuse to smoke pot. Two years ago, I went to a Santa Cruz, Calif., event
where a young man told me he took medical marijuana for an injured knee.
Yeah, right.
At the same event, however, I saw 93-year-old Dorothy Gibbs, who
suffered from post-polio syndrome. She found that marijuana eased her severe
nausea. As a member of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical marijuana, Gibbs
joined a different lawsuit against federal prosecutions, after the Drug
Enforcement Administration raided WAMM and seized 167 marijuana plants.
Gibbs is now dead, WAMM founder Valerie Corral told me on the
phone yesterday. In the six months after the raid, 13 WAMM members died —
almost 10 percent of WAMM's members. This is a group of seriously ill
people — and the kid with the bad knee was not one of them.
Corral, an epileptic, believes she suffers fewer seizures
because of medical marijuana. She used to take more powerful pharmaceutical
drugs that "made me feel as if I was underwater. " With marijuana, she said,
she is more functional.
Back to Congress. Ten states have legalized medical marijuana.
Republicans who believe in states' rights should support these states, but
in 2004, only 19 Republicans voted for a measure offered by Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher, R-Calif., that would have blocked federal enforcement for users
of medical marijuana in states that have legalized its use.
It failed 268 to 148.
Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., voted for such a measure in 2003,
but backed off in 2004. Locally, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., voted "no"
last year.
"We've got 70 percent of the Democrats," said Bill Piper, of the
anti-drug-war Drug Policy Alliance. Most, but not all.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., is one of two California House
Democrats, as Piper put it, "voting against their own state."
The White House drug czar John Walters has been a strong
opponent of medical marijuana. As he sees it, pot-heads are using sick
people to push marijuana.
I am sure he is right. And I don't care.
This year, I watched a friend die who lived longer, I believe,
because she could drink a tea that revived her appetite, mitigated her need
for other pain control and probably bought her a few extra weeks with her
children. Marinol didn't help her. Marijuana did.
So I'll quote what Dr. Marcus Conant once said to me. Conant is
the doctor who identified the first cases of Kaposi's sarcoma among San
Francisco AIDS patients. He also successfully sued to stop the federal
government from acting against doctors who recommend medical marijuana.
Conant explained: "To deny sick people relief because of abuse
is not humane."
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Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here. © 2005, Creators Syndicate |
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