MEDICINAL MARIJUANA COULD BE ACCEPTED THANKS TO RAICH

I awoke on Monday morning with the alarm clock set to KOSU,
Stillwater's NPR carrier. The news was over Angel Raich from Oakland,
Calif., urging the Supreme Court to initiate changes on federal
policies towards medicinal marijuana.

Who could blame her? Citizens using marijuana medicinally have been
arrested in the past and thrown in prisons for smoking to alleviate
pain from cancer, multiple sclerosis, AIDS; the list goes on.

Raich claims marijuana is the only drug she can use to help alleviate
pain experienced everyday from scoliosis, brain tumors and chronic -
no pun intended - nausea, along with other symptoms including loss of
appetite. She told Bill O'Reilly on Fox News she uses three ounces a
week. Her main goal is to end all federal punishment on medicinal
marijuana smokers and be able to grow her own supply.

Doctors of today will not recommend smoking plant matter in any form
even though their predecessors endorsed tobacco smoking for
generations. Marijuana smoking has small traces of cancer causing
chemicals, but tobacco is legal and kills half a million people in the
United States alone each year. If our federal government wants to keep
medical marijuana from ever holding a strong footing in the US and
state constitutions, they should stop growing marijuana for American
citizens. The Investigational New Drug Program established by the FDA
on Nov. 20, 1982, legally grows marijuana in the US for seven patients
under lenient federal supervision. All patients under this program are
still alive, including Irvin Rosenfeld, who claims to have smoked over
3,000 ounces for the past 22 years.

History and recent studies like "Marijuana As Medicine" in Harvard
Magazine prove smoked marijuana has its medicinal purposes. Heroin and
cocaine, two drugs labeled illegal for recreational use by the Food
and Drug Administration, have had medicinal purposes for hundreds of
years, domestically and abroad. If this woman along with other cancer
patients relieves cancer pain only by smoking marijuana, do we let her
continue to light up or give her tough love?

A reporter asked Mrs. Raich following the court hearing if this case
is a back door for recreational use. Others accused Mrs. Raich of not
seeking treatment through the proper systems such as prescription pill
forms of THC, the chemical in marijuana that alleviates the pain.

Cancer treatment, such as chemo-therapy, doesn't work for everyone,
and pills have been known to add to the pain in some cases. Does the
failure of modern medicine justify the use of a potentially dangerous
drug? If alcohol and tobacco remain legal then yes, of course. We are
more likely to get cancer from biologically enhanced foods and local
water sources than from smoking marijuana.

Mrs. Raich, a mother of two teenage children, was once against any
form of marijuana use, including the medicinal form. She says she was
offended at first when a friend recommended the drug years ago. She is
one of many Americans changing their minds about medicinal uses of
marijuana after investigating the facts, rather than listening to only
anti-drug propaganda.

Raich stands in front of America speaking a word of knowledge into a
political system controlled by its fears. Go ahead and accuse Raich
and Rosenfeld of any presupposed assumption like the reporters in
Washington.

Mrs. Raich is busy raising her children. Rosenfeld works as a very
successful stock broker in New York City. People are going about their
lives using drugs we claim "are more harmful than we thought" in
television commercials.

For those on their hands and knees praying for recreational
legalization, cases like these can give doctors and scientists a
better understanding of marijuana for the future. Sadly, legalization
will not make its way to the table anytime soon.

Pray for Canadian lawmakers. Only they can influence our government at
this point.