Halleluyah!!! Medical Marijuana approved!!!!

[skater]

Like a previous poster, I'm extremely conservative on most issues, but I totally support this decision. There is no logical reason that marijuana should be illegal to anyone who can benefit from it medically. There's a lot of worse things prescribed currently.

 

[imabrat]

This isn't just an upset stomach we're talking about here. You make it sound trivial. Thankfully, I have never had cancer nor gone through chemo, but my grandmother did and I watched out it took it's toll on her. The ONLY reason we never got an pot for her was because she already had emphysema and breathing issues, but I would have done it in a heartbeat if it would have brought her some relief. The next best thing we could find, and it worked occasionally, was Coke syrup. Also wasn't hard to find, but a friend of a friend owned an old fashioned soda shop. It settled her stomach just enough, again occasionally, to let her eat a slice of bread, or soup.

Well said!
Nausea from chemo isn't just an upset stomach. It is full on, everything you have in your body, any energy you have in your body, occasionally projectile vomiting. (TMI, I know) I went through 10 straight months of that hell, getting chemo every Monday for 3 weeks, only 1 week off. Yes, there were days I vomited for 20 minutes straight. Like I said previously, at my lowest point I lost 60 pounds in 6 months. At 14 years old and only 5'3" tall it wasn't healthy. Sorry, but when I'd been on chemo for 9 months and was so nauseated I wanted to die, I was NOT going to wait 20 minutes for a damn pill to kick in. Call me impatient but I'd gone through hell and back and wanted it to be over with already. If the actual smoking helps with immediate relief, then by all means DO IT! (FWIW, this from someone who's bone cancer didn't but had a large chance of spreading to the lungs)

 

[KAMLEM]

Until my mom quit smoking everything when she was 35 (I was 10) she and her friends would smoke around us.

I know it sounds terrible, but she was a wonderful, marvelous mother who was a hippie in SF in the 60s, and she worked 6 days a week to support us, and if every so often she needed to giggle with her friends, that was OK.

Except for the fact that it was illegal and not a very good example to set for kids. As a result, you now believe that it's OK to break the law if you work hard all week to support your children.

 

[Joe in VA]

Speeding is illegal and people do it for pretty much any reason. Smoking marijuana is illegal, and we are going to stop sick people from using it for very real medical reasons?

 

[Geoff_M]

I heard a story on NPR, of all places, yesterday that shows that talks about how the "medical pot" laws has in fact been used to provide a defacto legalization of recreational drug use by providing little oversight or checks and balances:

Heard on All Things Considered

October 20, 2009 - MELISSA BLOCK, host:

Some cities that have been trying to put a lid on new marijuana storefronts aren't happy.

As NPR's Richard Gonzales reports, the new policy comes at a time when parts of California are feeling overrun by medicinal pot.

RICHARD GONZALES: In a downtown Oakland coffee shop, there's a back room where medical marijuana patients can buy small amounts of cannabis specially grown for the discerning connoisseur.

Mr. RICHARD LEE: Just going to have you smell the menu. This is Blue Dream. How does that smell? Spicy? Sweet?

GONZALES: Richard Lee is the owner of this dispensary. He opens a small baggie with a different variety of high-grade marijuana.

Mr. LEE: Maybe try that against the Snow Cush(ph), see what you think of that.

GONZALES: So, it's kind of like red and white wines, they have different flavors and tastes?

Mr. LEE: Yeah. That's how we try to, you know, some people don't realize that it is a lot like the wine industry with little boutique flavors and tastes.

GONZALES: Lee is one of many dispensary operators who hope the administration's policy signals a shift in cultural attitudes towards marijuana.

Mr. LEE: That's what we're seeing happen now with all these cannabis outlets being opened, because you got to remember, they don't act - operate in a vacuum. That means there's landlords willing to lease them space. There's lots of employees willing to work there. So, the culture has already embraced this. It's just a matter of time till the politicians catch up.

GONZALES: Not so fast, say a lot of law enforcement officials and elected leaders around California.

Mr. STEVE COOLEY (Los Angeles District Attorney): We're going to eradicate the illegal sales of marijuana that are occurring in dispensaries.

GONZALES: Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley recently announced a crackdown on the estimated 800 medical marijuana dispensaries that have mushroomed in his county in the past year.

Mr. COOLEY: The vast, vast, vast majority, about 100 percent of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and city are operating illegally.

GONZALES: Cooley says the dispensaries are in violation because they are operating as moneymaking businesses and not as nonprofit collectives. L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine agrees and insists that this isn't a battle against medical marijuana.

Mr. DENNIS ZINE (Los Angeles City Councilman): We all support it. It's been abused and it's simply a mask for recreational use of marijuana with the doctors who write prescriptions at will for different dollar value, whether it's $65 or $100 or $200. It's been abused and that's the problem. People are abusing it, and they're simply using it to get high.

GONZALES: Zine says the expansion of medical cannabis dispensaries in L.A. has led to a rash of robberies, at least 200 over the past two years. In many neighborhoods, residents regard the pot stores as a nuisance, says John Lovell, a lobbyist for California police groups.

Mr. JOHN LOVELL (Lobbyist): If this law had been genuinely restricted to the terminally ill for pain management, you wouldn't see this pushback now. But the law was written not by people who care about pain management for sick people, but by people who were trying to use the law as a subterfuge for de facto legalization.

GONZALES: But Los Angeles has found it difficult to stop the growth of medical marijuana storefronts. Yesterday, a measure banning any new ones was overturned in court. So, the city is back to the drawing board trying to write a new rule that will pass muster.

Richard Gonzales, NPR News.

800 stores for "medical" marijuana in the LA area? Doesn't that seem like a tad bit of overkill for the sort of medical use that's been used to drive the efforts to decriminalize its "humane" use???

 

[Joe in VA]

Oh well. It doesn't hurt anyone else if people are using it recreationally through a loophole. And it can help very sick people.

There is even an argument that it doesn't hurt the smoker themselves. It certainly isn't as harmful as alcohol or tobacco. I'm not sure why anyone cares that other people are smoking pot?

I am very conservation (100% pro-life), support slashing taxes, oppose the NEA, etc, but to me making marijuana illegal is a farce.

 

[mom2boys77]

Ita! I am also very conservative on most things but it doesn't make sense to me to let sick people suffer more than they need to. My mom was diagnosed this summer with stage 4 lung cancer (non-smoker) and you can bet that I would do anything to take some of the pain away from her.

Like a previous poster, I'm extremely conservative on most issues, but I totally support this decision. There is no logical reason that marijuana should be illegal to anyone who can benefit from it medically. There's a lot of worse things prescribed currently.

 

[Geoff_M]

Ita! I am also very conservative on most things but it doesn't make sense to me to let sick people suffer more than they need to.

I agree that it was a shame that the DEA kept marijuana classified as a Schedule I drug and therefore prevented it from being used for medical research and, if found it be medically beneficial, to be used as a medication in the controlled sense like Morphine, and other pain medications. Not doing so has now led to the issue being seized by the Jeff Spicoli's of the world, under the banner of "compassion", as a means to effectively get "toasted" as much as they want as long as they can get a note from a doc for treatment of problems, real or imagined. California has basically, as highlighted in the NPR piece, lost control of the whole issue. Unlike docs that can be, and are, sanctioned for writing bogus Oxycontin scripts, there doesn't seem to be any means to control docs who write marijuana licenses for cash. Meanwhile in the last year alone about 800 new "medical dispensaries" have opened up in the LA area that cater to the discriminating pot head who's looking for just that right blend of "sweet" and "spiciness". I mean, those are the important qualities that we look for in our medicines, right?

 

[Joe in VA]

I agree that it was a shame that the DEA kept marijuana classified as a Schedule I drug and therefore prevented it from being used for medical research and, if found it be medically beneficial, to be used as a medication in the controlled sense like Morphine, and other pain medications. Not doing so has now led to the issue being seized by the Jeff Spicoli's of the world, under the banner of "compassion", as a means to effectively get "toasted" as much as they want as long as they can get a note from a doc for treatment of problems, real or imagined. California has basically, as highlighted in the NPR piece, lost control of the whole issue. Unlike docs that can be, and are, sanctioned for writing bogus Oxycontin scripts, there doesn't seem to be any means to control docs who write marijuana licenses for cash. Meanwhile in the last year alone about 800 new "medical dispensaries" have opened up in the LA area that cater to the discriminating pot head who's looking for just that right blend of "sweet" and "spiciness". I mean, those are the important qualities that we look for in our medicines, right?

We don't go around putting alcoholics or tobacco addicts in prison, so why do we go around putting potheads in prison? It makes no sense.

 

[Geoff_M]

We don't go around putting alcoholics or tobacco addicts in prison, so why do we go around putting potheads in prison? It makes no sense.

I wasn't suggesting that we do so.

 

[dcentity2000]

Hehe! A DIS first! Pretty much everyone is agreeing on a political issue



Rich::