Local View

CANNABIS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO SERVE AMERICANS, PATIENTS

Home grown or community, area dispensary grown cannabis affects
interstate commerce, so says the Supreme Court. How so? One way is
that pharmaceutical companies will lose money on the sale of
synthetic drugs. Another way is that some patients who, reluctantly,
go to the street to find a dealer wouldn't have to do that.
Therefore, the poor drug lords and dealers could only buy a Ford, not a BMW.

Drug companies pump big money into politics today. It will be a cold
day when our Congress goes against their benefactors and allows the
public legal access to medicinal cannabis again. Drug companies would
have to search dark corners of old vaults for old drug formulas. By
the 1930s, Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Tildens, and Brothers Smith and
Squibb were selling top quality cannabis products.

Then again, new formulas are a possibility, perhaps like Sativex,
recently developed in England. It is a cannabis spray applied under
the tongue or in the cheek to help the pain and other symptoms of
multiple sclerosis. Canada has approved its use for 50,000 MS
patients. Unfortunately the 400,000 MS patients in the U.S. won't
have access to Sativex.

Patients say, unlike many prescribed, synthetic drugs, marijuana
provides them relief from ailments' harsh symptoms without potential
damage to their bodies and allows them to function more normally.

Presently, seven patients legally use cannabis in the U.S. Under a
"compassionate use program of 1976" our government provides each a
canister with up to 300 marijuana cigarettes each month. One of the
seven is a glaucoma patient, a resident of Nebraska.

Another, less spoken element in the issue of rescheduling cannabis
for medicinal use relates to its big brother "hemp." Although
allowing its growth would help solve some U.S. environmental
problems, it will not be a plus for our balance of trade with other
countries. Presently tons of hemp are imported to support the needs
of several industries.

Cannabis has served America(ns) well for over 300 years. It should be
allowed to do so again. A few items to ponder:

Thomas Jefferson said "If people let government decide what foods
they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as
sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."

"God makes the Earth yield healing herbs, which the prudent man
should not neglect" (from the book of Sirach 38:4 in the Catholic Bible).

"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; that which
cometh out of the mouth defileth man" (Jesus as quoted in the book of
Matthew 15:11, Revised Standard Version).

Wayne Whitmarsh lives in Lincoln.