WHO SAYS MARIJUANA IS GOOD MEDICINE?

In November, Arizona will vote on Proposition 203, the so-called
medical marijuana initiative. As an anti-drug activist for 30 years,
I've watched the pro-legalization lobbies.

For many years, their strategy has been to legalize illicit drugs by
claiming they're actually medications. Proposition 203 was designed
by the Marijuana Policy Project, a group whose stated aim is to
legalize marijuana, and Proposition 203 will do just that.

Here's how it works. The law says only licensed physicians can
recommend marijuana, but in other states with similar laws a handful
of doctors found they can get rich seeing people for as little as 5
minutes and handing out marijuana cards to anyone who pays $150.
These marijuana doctors write almost all the marijuana
recommendations. Legitimate doctors hardly write any.

Among serious illnesses that qualify for marijuana, the law includes
"severe and intractable pain." That can be anything, from a sprained
ankle to an occasional headache. One woman got marijuana because her
high heels hurt.

Besides, pain is easily faked. In Montana, over 90 percent of
marijuana patients have pain. Or claim to.

These laws encourage unscrupulous doctors and dishonest patients to
collude, and that collusion accounts for 98 percent of the medical
marijuana prescribed. Few patients have serious illnesses like
cancer, multiple sclerosis or glaucoma.

Basically, medical marijuana is nothing more than a back-door route
to legalization, and it's not harmless. States with these laws have
higher rates of both teenage drug use and traffic fatalities caused
by marijuana.

Worse, Proposition 203 says people can't be charged with DUI or fired
from their jobs for small amounts of marijuana in their blood
streams. However, there's no definition of these small amounts, and
you know their lobbyists will fight any attempt to set the bar low.
Do we really want doctors, teachers and truck drivers high on pot
while working?

Pro-marijuana groups talk about elderly people with cancer and
glaucoma, never mentioning that 98 percent of the pot goes to people
with no serious medical problems at all. They also play on fears
about government, hinting that the FDA is captive to special
interests and doesn't care about regular people.

However, it's not just the FDA that says marijuana isn't medicine.
The American Cancer Society, The American Glaucoma Society and the
National Multiple Sclerosis Society all say there is little evidence
of benefit and that other medicines are safer and work equally well.

These organizations represent the very illnesses medical marijuana
supposedly treats, and even they say crude marijuana is bad medicine.
Either there's a huge conspiracy and these organizations are
intentionally depriving their own members of good treatment, or else
marijuana is being oversold by people with another agenda.

Our country has a tightly controlled supply of medical cocaine,
because the FDA looked at the research and found legitimate uses.
Marijuana never passed that test. With pot, what they found is that
the medical benefits don't outweigh its negative effects.

Pro-marijuana groups don't care. Their agenda is to legalize pot as
they're trying to do in California. So they're ignoring the gold
standard of approval used by the FDA -- a complete review of all the
research. Instead, they pick out tidbits that support their argument,
quoting just one study or one person's story. They want voters to
ignore science and override health care standards that have protected
the public for years.

If we do, that will be really bad medicine.