CHECK THE WEB FOR DATA ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Terence P. Farley is correct that misinformation abounds on medical
marijuana. If you want some misinformation, just go ask any DEA agent about
the issue. Lying about marijuana has been official U.S. government policy
since 1937 when Harry Anslinger, then head of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, realized that cannabis was already so widespread then that he
would never be able to control it with his limited budget and manpower. As
a result, he decided to use The Big Lie. And the lies were stupendous, to
say the least. The U.S. official expert on marijuana testified in court,
under oath, that marijuana would make your incisors grow six inches long
and drip with blood. Farley apparently forgot that evil effect.

Farley also neglected to mention that the U.S. government sends a big tin
can full of 300 smokable joints to a number of patients each month. The
reason they do that is because some of those patients went to federal court
and proved to a legal certainty that marijuana is a medicine and it is the
only medicine suitable for their needs.

Farley mentions the Institute of Medicine report, but then fails to mention
that the report concluded that, despite the problems with smoking any
medicine, there were clearly some people for whom there simply aren't any
good alternatives to medical marijuana at the current time, and that those
people should be allowed to use it.

Farley fails to mention the reasons that marijuana is illegal at all.
Marijuana was originally outlawed because of the fear that heroin addiction
would lead to the use of marijuana -- just exactly the opposite of what
Farley would like us to believe today.

The laws never did have anything to do with protecting public health and
safety and -- another thing Farley forgot to mention -- every major study
of drug policy in the last 100 years has concluded that the marijuana laws
were based on the worst kind of racism, ignorance and nonsense, and should
have been repealed long ago because they do more harm than good. And they
weren't even talking about the medical use.

You don't have to take my word for that. You can read the full text of most
of them at www.druglibrary.org/schaffer under Major Studies of Drugs and
Drug Policy.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon's U.S. National Commission on Marijuana
and Drug Abuse concluded the largest study of the drug laws ever done. They
stated that the real drug problem was not marijuana, or heroin, or cocaine.
The real drug problem, they said, was the ignorance of our public officials
who have never bothered to read the most basic research on the subject.
Farley proves it is still true.

If Farley is actually interested in good information on the subject, he can
find the full text of Nixon's commission -- along with the full text of the
largest studies ever done by the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada
and Australia, at the link above. But he probably won't read any of it. In
the case of the DEA, the ignorance is deliberate -- and that amounts to
plain stupidity.

CLIFFORD SCHAFFER Director, DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy