WHAT THIS COUNTRY NEEDS IS A MARIJUANA SUMMIT

One Doctor's Answer to the Beer Summit

When a white cop handcuffed a black professor outside his own home we
had a beer summit in the name of better race relations.

That summit addressed the number one social problem in this country
since 1619 (the date the first African slaves were sold in the U.S.)

I'm calling for a marijuana summit.

This summit will benefit the health of millions, while saving hundreds
of millions of taxpayer dollars.

The federal government must concur with what we the people already
know. In the Obama Transition Team's own on-line poll, respondents
overwhelmingly selected legalizing marijuana as our country's number
one priority.

This May, even a Zogby poll commissioned by the conservative O'Leary
Report, found 52 percent of American voters in favor and only 37
percent opposed to legalizing (and taxing) marijuana.

I call on Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, to have a frank discussion with doctors and
researchers on medical cannabis and the efficacy of various routes of
administration. Sadly, Kerlikowske seems to be using the same illogic
as his predecessors in the drug office.

He recently cited a University of Washington treatment program as the
information source for his position that cannabis is bad stuff.

Why? Because people who had a choice between treatment and going to
jail chose treatment. Duh. I am disappointed in Kerlikowske. I expect
more from a former Seattle police chief and Obama appointee.

The chief administrative law judge of the Food and Drug
Administration, in a 1988 decision, found that cannabis is one of the
safest therapeutic agents known to man. The FDA in 2005 said that
liquid marijuana (Sativex) is safe enough to test on humans, cancer
patients in fact. The government needs to look at the types of cancers
that cannabis has been shown to treat.

Chief Kerlikowske has said he wants to hear from the doctors on
this.

When he does he'll find that we have a national organization, the
American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine, which will give him the real
dope on the medical utility of cannabis.

We can tell him of the benefits that our patients have
received.

I have incredible, compelling stories.

There is the 85-year-old ex-Marine cancer survivor who was dying from
starvation and used cannabis as an appetite stimulant and mood elevator.

The 26-year-old. hemiplegic woman with intractable epilepsy that was
well controlled by cannabis. The Vietnam vet who got surgery to remove
shrapnel, due to intractable seizures, and as a result of the surgery
got double vision and headaches.

Cannabis allows him to productively participate in civic
affairs.

And the examples go on and on, including paraplegics with intractable
pain, patients successfully treated for gastrophoresis ,
post-traumatic stress disorder, cyclic vomiting syndrome. I'll tell
him about the productive lives of my patients. They include the
principal of a high school, the mayor of a small city, a deputy
sheriff, an assistant DA, a counselor at a drug treatment program, a
very famous movie director, and lots of people with everyday jobs in
construction, medicine, education--contractors, developers, doctors,
nurses, professors.

Kerlikowske has tried to mitigate his earlier statements by saying he
only meant smoked marijuana.

He was recently quoted as saying that "the FDA has not determined that
smoked marijuana has a value, and this is clearly a medical question
that should be answered by the medical community." Speaking as the
vice president of the AACM, let me assure the drug czar that cannabis
is medicine whether smoked, vaporized, sprayed sublingually, dropped
sublingually, drunk in beverages, made into tea, eaten, or used topically.

Kerlikowske is wise to say he will listen to the doctors.

If he had a medical background I don't believe he would say it's okay
to have intractable seizures, excruciating migraines, phantom limb
pain, or to suffer with the symptoms of Crohn's Disease, or to die of
malnutrition. Like thousands of American physicians, he would see the
medical efficacy of cannabis.

I have literally hundreds of patients with those conditions and a
thousand more with chronic pain, cancer, and failed back syndrome who
have benefited from the medicinal use of cannabis, smoked or otherwise.

The Drug Czar is on a listening tour. Let's give him an
earful.

It is not marijuana that is dangerous, but the laws which restrict
research on it and make it difficult for people to use it
therapeutically. That is real risky.

We need to get the federal government out of the way, to honor the 9th
and 10th Amendments to the Constitution limiting the federal
government's authority, and to affirm that the 1925 Linder
decision--recognizing the right of states to regulate the practice of
medicine--still means something.

It is time for the drug czar to listen to America. It is time for the
marijuana summit.