TIME TO REACH 21ST CENTURY

In spite of the fact that Florida is on the ultra-regressive side of
every social issue " abortion, same sex-marriage, adoption by gays
and lesbians, for example " I won't stop trying to enlighten our
indigenous nincompoops.

We all have a vested interest in moving into the 21st
century.

That said, it's high time for our Legislature to legalize the use of
marijuana for medical purposes.

Twelve states have already done so. Two states have passed laws
favorable to medical marijuana, though short of legalizing it.

The pros and cons in the medical marijuana debate are laid out at
www.procon.org, a highly informative web site.

Here are some of the facts and opinions you'll find there that, I
believe, should make any rational human being support legalization " even a
Floridian:

1. Marijuana was used as medicine in the U.S. until
1937.

2. In the opinion of Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Emeritus Professor of
Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, marijuana "is extraordinarily
safe " safer than most medicines prescribed every day. If marijuana
were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying
cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug."

3. Since 1975, more than 70 percent of Americans have "said" that
medical marijuana should be legalized.

4. Three different U.S. government-funded studies have shown that
marijuana may have medical value.

5. Some of the symptoms and conditions that marijuana may mitigate:
Alzheimer's, anorexia, AIDS, arthritis, cachexia, cancer, Crohn's,
epilepsy, glaucoma, HIV, migraine, multiple sclerosis, nausea, pain,
spasticity, and wasting syndrome.

6. As reported in the journal Brain, researchers at London's Institute
of Neurology reported that "cannabis may . . . slow down the
neurodegenerative processes that ultimately lead to chronic disability
in multiple sclerosis and probably other diseases."

7. In 1997, Consumer Reports magazine concluded that "for patients
with advanced AIDS and terminal cancer, the apparent benefits some
derive from smoking marijuana outweigh any substantiated or even
suspected risks."

8. Groups ranging from the American Cancer Society to Kaiser
Permanente support access to or research on medical marijuana, as does
the New England Journal of Medicine.

9. Perhaps, U.S. Senior District Judge John L. Kane, Jr. (Colorado)
made the best case in a 2002 op-ed, when he wrote "that tobacco is
legal and, at 430,000 deaths per year, is the leading cause of
substance-abuse deaths; that alcohol is legal and 11,600 die from it
each year; that adverse reactions to legal prescription drugs cause
32,000 fatalities a year . . . that 7,600 people die each year from
taking anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin. . . . [But] the total
number of deaths caused by marijuana is zero."

After getting the dope on pot, we look like dopes for continuing to
criminalize something that helps sick people.

For once, can't Florida do the right thing?

Stephen L. Goldstein duels the issues with retired Editorial Page
Editor Kingsley Guy on alternate Fridays.