Why the SD War College just says "NO" to the MM ballot initiative
Because the red ones actually DO melt in your hand... Oh, the other MM. (That's been happening a bit lately.)
I had promised to clarify my opposition to the Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiative that Bob Newland had stated his case for a few posts back in the last "10 questions with" edition. And to be true to my word, here's 5 quick reasons why the SD War College is dead set against the Medical Marijuana Ballot initiative.
#1 Marijuana is illegal.
To state it simply; It is not legal in a house. It is not legal with a mouse. It is not legal in a boat. It is not legal with a goat. (You get the point.)
It is my strongest belief that the movement to legalize it for self-administered medical use will open the flood gates for a more relaxed attitude towards casual use, and a more widespread use of the drug illegally in society. We can barely keep it away from kids now while it's completely illegal. Making it partially legal is not going to help that any.
#2 Selling or distributing Marijuana is illegal.
As defined in Section 1: Caregiver - any person... who has agreed to undertake responsibility for managing the well being of a person with respect to the medical use of Marijuana. That seems to be awfully fancy terminology for... Well, for what I would commonly call "a drug dealer."
The act does not talk about the drug being prepared by a pharmacist with the dosage measured by a person who has had years of training and licensing for it. It's not going to be prepared in a labratory with strict quality controls for the health and safety on the end user. It's going to be prepared in someone's basement under "grow lights."
I don't thank that anyone who is doing it illegally now is going to cease that illegal activity if this passes. So why legitimatize it at all?
#3 All of section 4. Prescribing MM for Minors? No way.
The intent of this measure is to allow similarly afflicted minors access to Medical Marijuana? Children? Where are the medical studies that show effectiveness treatments of children with marijuana? In my own little insulated world, I've never heard of any.
If I was running a campaign to defeat this on the ballot, publicising that part of the measure by itself would be enough to defeat it. Bob may correct me at length on this point, but I suspect that there are some petition signers who aren't reading this part in detail.
** On a side note ** What a political ad it would be if you signed the petition for this measure and then later ran a political race. All your opponent would have to say is "John Doe says it's ok to consider prescribing marijuana for kids."And you could consider your campaign in SD sunk.
#4 Falsification of a card allowing use/distribution is only a misdemeanor?
I haven't checked law, but if someone is falsifying a prescription for a substance that can be prescribed, but otherwise is normally an illegal scheduled drug, isn't it usually a felony? Seems to be we're taking what would normally be a serious drug offense and turning it into a slap on the wrist.
#5 Where does responsibility lie on the drug manufacturer's part?
Maybe I'm too institutionalized in the quality control measures that I assume phamaceutical companies use. But as all of us are well aware, even they screw up at times. I don't even want to think of the quality controls that some dude in a basement is going to use. Where is the legal protection and recourse for a sick MM consumer who is not sold what's promised? Or it ends up doing them more harm?
As far as I know, Pharmacists are licensed and inspected by the state and federal government. Drug companies are inspected, licensed and insured. Where are the safety and control measures for the protection of the public? That's not addressed here, and a public protection measure of this nature is too important to just be promulgated in rule by DOH.
I'm sure I can come up with several more reasons if I pondered it further, but if it makes it to the 2006 Ballot, I'll leave that up to the group that opposes it. But these are my main objections - and points #1 and #3 are the ones that absolutely kill the measure for me.
I had promised to clarify my opposition to the Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiative that Bob Newland had stated his case for a few posts back in the last "10 questions with" edition. And to be true to my word, here's 5 quick reasons why the SD War College is dead set against the Medical Marijuana Ballot initiative.
#1 Marijuana is illegal.
To state it simply; It is not legal in a house. It is not legal with a mouse. It is not legal in a boat. It is not legal with a goat. (You get the point.)
It is my strongest belief that the movement to legalize it for self-administered medical use will open the flood gates for a more relaxed attitude towards casual use, and a more widespread use of the drug illegally in society. We can barely keep it away from kids now while it's completely illegal. Making it partially legal is not going to help that any.
#2 Selling or distributing Marijuana is illegal.
As defined in Section 1: Caregiver - any person... who has agreed to undertake responsibility for managing the well being of a person with respect to the medical use of Marijuana. That seems to be awfully fancy terminology for... Well, for what I would commonly call "a drug dealer."
The act does not talk about the drug being prepared by a pharmacist with the dosage measured by a person who has had years of training and licensing for it. It's not going to be prepared in a labratory with strict quality controls for the health and safety on the end user. It's going to be prepared in someone's basement under "grow lights."
I don't thank that anyone who is doing it illegally now is going to cease that illegal activity if this passes. So why legitimatize it at all?
#3 All of section 4. Prescribing MM for Minors? No way.
The intent of this measure is to allow similarly afflicted minors access to Medical Marijuana? Children? Where are the medical studies that show effectiveness treatments of children with marijuana? In my own little insulated world, I've never heard of any.
If I was running a campaign to defeat this on the ballot, publicising that part of the measure by itself would be enough to defeat it. Bob may correct me at length on this point, but I suspect that there are some petition signers who aren't reading this part in detail.
** On a side note ** What a political ad it would be if you signed the petition for this measure and then later ran a political race. All your opponent would have to say is "John Doe says it's ok to consider prescribing marijuana for kids."And you could consider your campaign in SD sunk.
#4 Falsification of a card allowing use/distribution is only a misdemeanor?
I haven't checked law, but if someone is falsifying a prescription for a substance that can be prescribed, but otherwise is normally an illegal scheduled drug, isn't it usually a felony? Seems to be we're taking what would normally be a serious drug offense and turning it into a slap on the wrist.
#5 Where does responsibility lie on the drug manufacturer's part?
Maybe I'm too institutionalized in the quality control measures that I assume phamaceutical companies use. But as all of us are well aware, even they screw up at times. I don't even want to think of the quality controls that some dude in a basement is going to use. Where is the legal protection and recourse for a sick MM consumer who is not sold what's promised? Or it ends up doing them more harm?
As far as I know, Pharmacists are licensed and inspected by the state and federal government. Drug companies are inspected, licensed and insured. Where are the safety and control measures for the protection of the public? That's not addressed here, and a public protection measure of this nature is too important to just be promulgated in rule by DOH.
I'm sure I can come up with several more reasons if I pondered it further, but if it makes it to the 2006 Ballot, I'll leave that up to the group that opposes it. But these are my main objections - and points #1 and #3 are the ones that absolutely kill the measure for me.
Comments
I thought your analysis of the ballot issue was right-on! I look forward to Bob and the other druggers' comments. It is going to get crazy!
(That was exactly the experience of Dr. Lester Grinspoon, emeritus associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
http://www.letfreedomgrow.com/articles/can050715.htm)
Marijuana's illegality would not bother you at all if your wife had to spend two days a week writhing in agony on her bed with a migraine, because none of the prescription medicines even put a dent in the pain, and you knew, as I do, that marijuana quells that pain for a large percentage of migraine sufferers who try it.
Even if you could present a reasonable case for marijuana to be illegal, that would still be irrelevant to its therapeutic use, which is established fact for all except those with the most deeply buried heads.
There is not a single case history (and there are tens of thousands of case histories of medical marijuana patients) that describes an instance of harm done a patient by marijuana therapy under a doctor's supervision.
In fact, I defy you to present an instance of marijuana ingestion doing harm. Period. (Bullet holes administered by cops don't count.)
Any of the rest of your comments could be settled if the DEA would lift its ban on legitimate academic medical studies on the effects of marijuana on various patients with various syndromes. (There are already dozens of such studies, but the politicians ignore them, because they were performed using subjects who used marijuana illegally.)
In short, your lack of compassion for sick, disabled and dying people leaves me short of breath. It appears you share Marie Antoinettism with Todd Epp: "Let 'em eat Valium."
Cannabis Health: Could you explain what Dr. JM McPartland and Dr Ethan Russo meant by the statement: "The combination of THC, CBD and essential oils in cannabis based medicinal extracts may produce a therapeutic preparation whose benefits are greater than the sum of its parts".
Lester Grinspoon: That is a good description of herbal marijuana, which is comprised of all of the therapeutically useful elements, some of which probably behave synergistically, and some have yet to be identified. If the extracts McPartland and Russo speak of contained all of these elements, they would have the potential for being as clinically useful as whole smoked or vaporized cannabis. However, because they are not intended to be taken through the pulmonary system, they are handicapped in any medical competition with herbal marihuana.
CH: GW recently stated in a press release: "Sativex is not liquid marijuana - Sativex is a pharmaceutical product standardized in composition formulation, and dose administered by means of an appropriate alternative delivery system, which has been, and continues to be, tested in properly controlled preclinical and clinical studies. Crude herbal cannabis-often called 'marijuana'- in liquid or any other form is none of those things".
LG: Over the 38 years during which I have been studying cannabis I have been so impressed by both its very limited toxicity and its versatility as a medicine that I should think that GW Pharmaceuticals would not take umbrage with the description of Sativex as "liquid marijuana"; I would see it as a compliment. However, I think these folks have undertaken a bold endeavor to make use of the anecdotal data generated by medical marijuana users to create a pharmaceutical product which now requires them to persuade the world that manipulated orange juice is safer, easier to deal with and healthier than whole oranges; and, of course, it's worth the extra cost. It's an absurd proposition but GW Pharmaceuticals has to persuade would-be medical cannabis users that there is a significant therapeutic difference between Sativex, an extract of marijuana, and herbal marijuana.
And while you might not think it, I've been in that position where I watched a loved one suffer in pain.
My own mother whom I lived about 6 block from most of my married life went through several bouts of chemotherapy.
I had to change diapers for her when she was too weak and debilitated from cancer to get to the bathroom.
I drove to Tulsa, OK to bring her back to SD, just to afford her the dignity of dying at home surrounded by family.
I could go on, and on, and on for hours with examples involving loved ones.
So initmating I don't care about sick and dying people is a bit of a cheap shot.
I myself live with constant and chronic hip and joint pain, the unwelcome reminders of breaking too many bones in my younger days.
Every morning I get out of bed and my knee crunches, and my legs creak upright, is a reminder that I'm going to face the replacment of at least two, more likely all three bone joints in my left leg. And there's times that asprin doesn't even begin to touch the pain.
And somehow I manage to get through my day without the need for homegrown phareceuticals.
So, don't intimate I don't know anything about people in pain. I'm all too familiar with my constant companion.
(And Eddie, I know all about glaucoma, it runs on the male side of my family. My dad takes daily medication for it, and I test for it yearly.)
so, nyeahh.
And I can't figure out what your mother has to do with this. She didn't try pot, either, at least as far as I can tell.
Wasn't it you who said I "lack compassion for sick, disabled and dying people"? That's what I'm referring to.
-p
Or would you have given it to your own mother but not to mine?
If marijuana caused a problem greater than head-up-butt among opponents of therapeutic use thereof, the epidemiologists would be all over it.
Wait, there is a serious problem caused by marijuana. Lots of people who use it end up with bullet holes in their bodies, administered by the thugs of the politicans.
Again, correct me if I am wrong.
The Author of the SD War College is not going to change his mind anytime soon, and,
This horse has been ridden to death, beat, beat some more, and now deserves his final resting place;
Therefore, I'm moving on to other discussions. (Jeez, it's not even on the ballot yet).
I think God will gladly take responsibility for creating "the most benign therapeutic substance known to man." (quote extracted from DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Gray's 68-page opinion on marijuana, which was summarily ignored by the DEA).
Naturally enough, since every objection he raises has been refuted. His mind was made up before this started, and he ain't gonna change it.
"Let them eat Valium."
I would reverse that, and say apparently you don't care about families, because despite the problems of drug use among teenagers and young adults, you continue to persist in the argument that what is considered a gateway drug to continued drug use and abuse should be made more readily available.
NOW there's been enough discussion.