LET OUR PATIENTS TOKE

In November's election, Michigan became the thirteenth state of the
United States to legalize medical marijuana, defying federal law in
the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classifies "marihuana" as
a Class I drug. When Congress passed this act, it audaciously declared
cannabis to have a high potential for abuse, a lack of acceptable
safety in use, and no medical value. Meanwhile, they scheduled cocaine
- - a drug which had caused countless deaths, was known to be
dangerously addictive and involved in international organized crime -
as a Class II drug. Apparently, the venerable usage of marijuana in
medicine was spurious compared to cocaine's highly limited utility in
certain anesthetic applications (in which the highly toxic drug can
often be replaced by safer medications anyways).

Ever since then, groups like NORML have called upon Congress to
rethink marijuana's scheduling as the large body of (now legally
difficult to conduct, yet persevering) medical research involving
cannabis continues to grow.

We've all heard by now that this humble little shrub can be used to
alleviate chronic pain, nausea, asthma and glaucoma. AIDS sufferers
and chemotherapy patients often make the news after federal agents
seize their medical marijuana and arrest their suppliers. But the
almost miraculous-seeming pharmacological array present in these
plants has been revealed to offer much more to modern medicine. It has
slowed the growth of lung tumors and decreased hardening of the
arteries in lab rats and mice. Just this past summer, certain
compounds from marijuana were shown to be able to kill the MRSA
superbug, which is difficult to treat with current
antibiotics.

To keep medical marijuana illegal is to be contemptuous of science and
our patients. Time and time again, marijuana has been shown to be safe
and effective. Yet in 2004 Merck had to pull its anti-inflamatory drug
Vioxx from the market after it killed an FDA-estimated 27,000. Surely
if we allow such insufficiently tested drugs to be sold to the public,
a plant that had been deemed by multiple authorities to be less
dangerous than alcohol is safe enough. Our legislation regarding
marijuana must have been authored by individuals who were either
highly irrational, or let their offense at the youth culture and its
attack on their generation's entrenched mores supercede expert medical
opinion. And indeed, after the National Commission on Marijuana and
Drug Abuse relseased its report in 1973 stating that with zero related
fatalities and zero linked deviancy or drug abuse, marijuana should be
decriminalized, President Nixon regarded it as rubbish, even though he
himself had appointed nine of the thirteen commissioners to skew their
findings.

Of course, just because our current marijuana policy is highly
politicized and moralistic, doesn't mean that it can't be changed to
be more compassionate and medically sound. More than a dozen states
and their voters have disregarded and undermined cannabis' schedule by
Congress in demanding marijuana for their patients. So I say this to
anyone with a speck of empathy in their hearts: please show some
compassion to our patients, and let them have cannabis.