MEDICAL MARIJUANA NECESSARY FOR SOME

Some people claim the plant called Cannabis sativa, also sometimes called
Cannabis indica, "marijuana" or just "pot," has medicinal value.

Right now the Supreme Court is considering the case of Ashcroft v. Raich
regarding this issue. The plaintiff in the case is Angel McClary Raich, a
woman with a staggering array of severe illnesses including cancers and
chronic spasms who claims to need marijuana therapy to survive. She has an
affidavit from her doctor testifying that she has tried 35 other plausible
therapies, and that "she 'may suffer rapid death' if forced to stop using
the marijuana she consumes (via pipe, massage oils and quantities of
pot-spiked zucchini bread) every two waking hours of the day," according to
slate.com.

The 39-year-old Mrs. Raich is from Oakland, where California's medical
marijuana law allows her to acquire and use pot. She is arguing that the
federal government doesn't have the constitutional right to overrule
California's law.

John Ashcroft, as we know, is the now-former attorney general of the United
States. He had agents of the Department of Justice raid the homes of Raich
and her co-plaintiffs to seize their plants. He claims government research
shows marijuana has no medicinal value, and that the federal government has
every right to prohibit marijuana, according to the Controlled Substances
Act of 1970.

This is a case where the legally correct decision may in fact be completely
immoral and unjust. For students of the law, which really should include
everyone in a democracy, these cases are the most important to understand.

The relative medicinal value of marijuana has been pretty well
demonstrated, despite the paltry amount of study devoted to it. It is very
revealing of our health care system that something so physiologically
reactive and potentially beneficial is not well studied. The reason for
that is because no pharmaceutical company can patent the ancient plant, and
thus nobody is devoting big money to prove, by expensive Food and Drug
Administration standards of proof, the effectiveness of marijuana therapies.

However, the National Institute of Medicine, a division of the National
Academy of Sciences, compiled a large report on medicinal marijuana in 1999
titled "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base." By the way, in
terms of scientific credibility, the academy is probably the best source of
information and opinion.

In that report, as quoted from the Raich brief, the authors say in the
conclusion, "the accumulated data suggests a variety of indications,
particularly for pain relief, antiemesis, and appetite stimulation.

"[F]or patients such as those who suffer simultaneously from severe pain,
nausea and appetite loss, cannabinoid drugs might offer broad-spectrum
relief not found in any other single medication."

They go on: "There is no clear alternative for people suffering form
chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as
pain and AIDS wasting." By the way, Wednesday was World AIDS Day.

Pot gives people the munchies, and for patients such as those with AIDS
Wasting Syndrome -- who otherwise basically starve to death for lack of
appetite -- this helps very much. It can also be "antiemetic," meaning it
makes some people, such as those undergoing chemotherapy, not feel like
they are going to throw up. It can also reduce spasticity and muscle pain
in people with multiple sclerosis. These are all serious conditions, with
the benefits of marijuana well demonstrated, and for which often all
alternative therapies are ineffective, including the legal synthetic
cannabinoid Marinol.

Thus, marijuana not only is medicine, it is essential medicine for many people.

There are, of course, damaging effects, as well. Smoking marijuana has the
same harmful side effects as tobacco, including bronchitis and very
probably lung cancer. The carbon monoxide from the smoke reduces a person's
blood oxygen level, causing a mild but prolonged hypoxic fatigue. Much of
these effects can be eliminated however with the use of a device called a
vaporizer, which releases the cannabinoids into the air without burning and
smoke release.

There is also research to suggest that marijuana, as a cardiac stimulator,
can induce heart attacks.

Then there is the psychological factor. It has not been demonstrated to
cause a pure chemical dependence, like alcohol, but frequent pot use is
known to be habit-forming and is correlated with all sorts of psychological
problems, such as depression and anxiety.

There are other drugs that are more addictive and perfectly legal.
Painkillers such as morphine, Percoset, Oxycontin, depressants like Valium
and anti-anxiety medications like Xanax are all sold in pharmacies and have
important medical applications, but are also at times abused by patients
who may or may not need them. That is how marijuana should also be
distributed: high-grade strains, grown in well-controlled conditions,
prescribed by a doctor and sold in pharmacies.

As stated before, however, the case of Ashcroft v. Raich isn't just about
pot's medicinal value; it's also about states' rights.

In Article I of the Constitution, the framers set out to divide powers
between the federal government and the states. Mostly, they set out to
enumerate the limited set of things they wanted the federal government to
do, like make treaties and war, raise armies and regulate interstate
commerce. In the 10th Amendment they reinforced this idea: "The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to
the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

This seems strange, in light of the fact that the federal government now
does all sorts of crazy things that are not listed in its powers. For
example, the feds regulate public schools in many ways, such as the No
Child Left Behind Act.

But they have a sneaky way of doing this; they can't force states to comply
with the rules, but they deny federal funding to schools that do not. They
do the same thing with roads, health care and a whole array of things the
framers did not intend them to be involved with.

Raich's attorneys say that the feds have no right to restrict medical
marijuana. Ashcroft is claiming that in fact, the power to regulate
medicinal marijuana falls under the interstate commerce clause. Since drugs
can potentially pass from one state to another, it is deemed relevant to
interstate commerce, and thus the federal government has the right to ban it.

He is clearly correct in noting that pot travels. Illicit growers in
Oregon's basements and backwoods grow tons for export, and some even claim
that a full accounting would show marijuana to beat grass seed as the
state's biggest cash crop. Strangely, we also import a lot. For those who
smoke pot (I'm, of course, not endorsing it), you may have heard that yours
came from anywhere along the Pacific Coast, with the most common sources
being British Columbia and Mexico (B.C. and Mexi, obviously).

From this, one could infer that Ashcroft is correct in asserting that pot
will travel, and it is thus an interstate issue, and the federal government
therefore has the right to ban it.

This case demonstrates the strange way, which every citizen should notice,
that the courts can truly respect the law, and read it correctly, then
possibly come out with a totally unjust verdict. It's a legal mess, and the
real losers will probably be the poor, sick people who just want their
medicine.

For more information, see a good article at slate.msn.com/id/2110204/,
health care information at aids.org, or a startling bit of misinformation
from our government at http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/marijuana.html