LETTER OF THE WEEK

DENYING MARIJUANA FOR CANCER INCREASES SUFFERING

By Harlan Miller

The news hits you like a freight train as the doctor tells you that
you have been diagnosed with leukemia.

He informs you the most effective treatment is to start chemotherapy
treatments immediately to try and combat the invading death that is upon you.

With the treatment will be terrible side effects, including extreme
nausea and crippling pain.

He informs you that he can treat you with a synthetic drug that
contains THC, the active chemical in marijuana, but it only has about
a quarter of the effectiveness of natural marijuana.

Even though he can't "recommend" it because it is currently illegal,
he suggests "off the record" that if you know of anyone who has
access to marijuana, it might be a good idea to get some.

You are a law-abiding citizen, so you stick with the pharmaceutical medication.

As the treatments of chemo continue, your nausea is so severe you
can't eat anything with out violently throwing up.

Your body is racked with severe pain to the point you have to be
heavily sedated.

Your existence is reduced to a point where you do nothing but lay in
bed, slowly withering away without nutrition, the chemo killing you
as well as the cancer.

You can't interact with your loving husband, your kids and your
closest friends.

You die alone months before your physical body perishes.

If only you could have had legal access to the one medically known
chemical that could have alleviated or greatly diminished these
horrible side effects.

But instead some other human who is representing you decided you were
not deserving of this last bit of happiness.

Why?

Harlan Miller

Minneapolis

Pubdate - Wed, 25 Apr 2007

Source - Saint Cloud Times (MN)