THERAPEUTIC USE OF CANNABIS NO MYTH

HERMOSA - "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." When
Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger said that in 1943,
he was trying to get Congress to give his agency more money to fight the
largely unknown menace, "marijuana."

Worse than that, Anslinger claimed, dark-skinned musicians smoked
"marijuana," then used their altered abilities to "insert extra notes into
a measure of music," thus creating the abomination known as jazz. "They
also give marijuana to white women to seduce them."

Using the twin tactics of advertising that women become helpless in the
hands of men who give them marijuana (misleading, at best, based on my
experience) and creating a market incentive for people to grow or import
and sell marijuana, Anslinger and his successors managed to increase the
rate of marijuana use from about one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans to
about 20 percent in just 40 years. Very few ad campaigns have ever managed
a 20,000 percent increase in market penetration. They also managed to cut
by more than half the average age of first consumption.

More people smoking pot for more years. A dream for suppliers.

While public expenditures of $50 billion a year now help maintain a
monopoly of the marijuana trade in the hands of outlaws, that figure is
dwarfed by the untaxed profits created for those willing to take the risk
of delivering the product.

One embarrassing consequence of the massive proliferation of marijuana use
caused by the prohibition laws is that tens of thousands of sick, disabled
and dying people have learned of the relief, comfort and healing cannabis
can bring them. Their experiences render absurdly impotent the non-medical,
uninformed, malicious declaration by federal and state legislatures that
marijuana has "no medical use."

Medical cannabis patient Matthew Ducheneaux of Eagle Butte testified to the
drug and alcohol subcommittee of the legislative Criminal Code Revision
Commission in Pierre July 29. After describing how smoking cannabis
marijuana safely relieves him of pain and life-threatening muscle tremors,
Ducheneaux was asked, "What do you suggest we do to make marijuana
available to people who need it, like you?"

"Jeez, just do it," Matthew said. After wrestling with their consciences
overnight, the committee decided, in opposition to the subcommittee's
chair, Rep. Tom Hennies, that it was too much trouble to try to allow sick
people a medicine, safer than aspirin, that gives hope and comfort to
people who live in constant pain without it.

At least four major U.S. government-sponsored studies in the 20th century
concluded there is medical benefit in marijuana. Adding several dozen minor
U.S. medical studies, and dozens in Europe, we have a body of research
pointing to an inescapable conclusion: cannabis marijuana is of medical
benefit to a wide range of patients with a wide range of medical conditions.

Then there's the inconvenient fact that the U.S. government has sent 300
rolled marijuana cigarettes a month to each of seven medical patients for
over 10 years, whose doctors have all acknowledged these folks would be
dead (or blind) without cannabis.

Having listened to Matthew Ducheneaux describe to the subcommittee how
muscle spasms in his back "feel like somebody's hitting me in the back with
an ax, and the spasms keep me from breathing, like being squeezed by an
anaconda," and having witnessed Matthew gain immediate relief from such a
spasm provided by marijuana, I just don't get it. What kind of society
rewards a South Dakota Judge Tim Tucker or a Minnehaha County Prosecutor
Dave Nelson for maintaining that white is black, and for that reason you
must either suffer or become a criminal?

Rep. Hennies asked the subcommittee to recommend that people arrested for
small amounts of marijuana be allowed to argue in court that they did so
because they have a medical condition, and marijuana alleviates it. That's
all he asked for. To be allowed to say from your wheelchair, "Your honor, I
use marijuana because without it I will die."

Nelson and Tucker, both subcommittee members, said such a proposal would
cause problems. "If a medical defense is allowed in marijuana cases, it is
tantamount to legalizing marijuana," Tucker said. He also said it would
cause a "burden" on judges.

Apparently Tucker doesn't think the 43,877 marijuana criminal charges filed
over the past five years in South Dakota, or the 18,328 resultant
convictions are overly burdensome. But here I am trying to fathom the
thoughts of an obviously enigmatic man.

Therapeutic use of the herb, cannabis, is not a myth. The evidence is there
in overwhelming abundance. There is no evidence in opposition. For
thousands and thousands of people who gain relief by using it, the law is
relevant only inasmuch as they must live in fear of being imprisoned and
separated from the remedy that works for them. Even Judge Tucker and
Prosecutor Nelson would smoke marijuana if they were in Matthew
Ducheneaux's wheelchair.