On the issue of medicinal marijuana, Obama said that if the “best way to relieve pain and suffering is through medicinal marijuana,” then it’s something he’s open to.
http://www.wibw.com/home/headl…
Not too swift, Obama, but, in our drug-crazed country, truly enlightened.
Curiously the New York Times only reported that Obama was against legalization and admitted he had inhaled (unlike Bill Clinton).
Pure madness. There is a tiny list of people who are allowed to have marijuana but no one is allowed to sell it to them. The first person that finally got on the list had glaucoma. He had a choice between breaking the law and going blind. The lawbreaker had been arrested numerous times. Pain in suffering is hardly the only medicinal effect of marijuana. I believe it has been approved for multiple sclerosis sufferers to help with tremors. In cancer patients, it not only helps with nausea but increases the appetite. In fact, many cannabis doctors missouri have managed to improve the quality of life for many people suffering through debilitating diseases.
Those who would deny the benefits of the purest cbd oil canada has to offer to dying patients are not fit to live in a decent society, let alone be elected to any office IMO. Our grand Supreme Court unanimously denied marijuana had any medical benefit.
There is a rare and very expensive synthetic marijuana that can be taken in pill form. Can you figure out the problem with a very expensive pill for nausea? Our brilliant politicians can’t. Larry Craig might be able to solve the riddle with his expertise on toilets.
Besides the pill causes a very powerful high that patients tend to find unpleasant.
Thanks, Obama.
You didn’t offer much but that beats all the others.
Best, Terry
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I think Kucinich is for legalizing marijuana & I’d heard Richardson has everything in place in his state, waiting for the law to change…I might be wrong tho-
to NORML, the National Association for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. May sanity prevail.
Disclosure: I’m a member of the NORML attorney panel.
and you’re right — the hypocrisy is boundless! Medical marijuana can be helpful for a lot of different ailments, but especially for cancer patients with pain or nausea. And there’s obviously a lot of research showing its effectiveness or all these groups wouldn’t be supporting it.
And here’s another interesting thing. The instructor, who has been involved in drug/alcohol counseling for thirty years, pointed this out: No one has ever died from marijuana. I don’t have any links to support that, but she emphasized pretty strongly.
Meanwhile, thousands of people are dying every year from doctor/hospital errors and prescription drug complications, and no one’s going to jail over that. But here in California, people who actually need medical marijuana and have a legitimate doctor’s prescription for it are afraid to get it filled because they could still be arrested. It’s crazy! “Reefer Madness” lives!!
As a Candidate, met with my friend Jacki Rickert for 8 minutes in Osseo, Wisconsin on his Mississippi River bus tour just after the Democrati Convention. She’d been approved for the Federal govt’s medical marijuana program, and was awaiting the monthly meeting of the Board expected to issue her State approval when PoppaBush closed the program.
Bill: “When I’m president you’ll get your medicine.”
Writing the White House after his inaugural, she got multiple copies of the same form letter as the rest of us: “If drugs were legal, my brother Roger would be dead.”
HHS under Clinton/Shalala barred even research protocols on medicinal uses of cannabis, a policy finally eased when Tommy Thompson replaced Shalala.
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the last time I talked to him. I don’t suppose the good professor’s temper has mellowed much.
You see Dr. Burstein had invented and patented ajulemic acid, a synthetic form of marijuana without the psychotropic effects.
Cannabis CB1 receptors in the brain give the high that has been sought by most every politician except Bill Clinton, who didn’t inhale. Ajulemic acid only attaches to the CB2 receptors that are scattered throughout the body. Drug warriors arresting cancer patients with a joint create their own endogenous cannabis in their brains. I think they should turn themselves in but they never do.
Year after year I asked the CEO of Indevus Corporation how they were doing with the effort to commercialize ajulemic acid. Year after year the CEO of Indevus assured me they were working hard on a drug that would ease the pain of cancer patients, perhaps delay blindness in glaucoma patients, eliminate some of the tremors in multiple sclerosis victims though all would be done without the happiness that so worries drug warriors.
The last time I talked to the scientists and CEO of Indevus along with Dr. Burstein. Seemed they were just having a devil of a time manufacturing the stuff though the previous year they had made a barrel of the stuff in preparation for clinical trials.
I was not exactly an all-star in chemistry labs. Have no idea how one might whomp up a bucket of ajulemic acide. I asked Dr. Burstein later in the parking lot if there were anything to the claim that the manufacture of ajulemic acid was extraordinarily difficult. The professor, a chemist, used a technical term. He said it was pure bullshit.
So ajulemic acid will never likely be on the market, Professor Burstein will be only able to bore his students with tales of what might have been and people will continue to live and die without a powerful treatment for their ills.
An analyst asked the CEO of an Israeli biotech how many joints a shot of his synthetic marijuana, also without the joy potheads seek, was equivalent to. The CEO wisely evaded answering. The correct answer was 1-200 joints.
That potency of such synthetics may be the best reason for their existence in R&D. Wouldn’t the hated psychotropic effects that worry drug warriors so much, except when they are creating their own in their heads, be a benefit rather than harm for a terminally ill cancer patient?
Seems like it to me.
Best, Terry
… practicing medicine without a license?
I would vote for them
but even with the best of intentions the forces working against cannabis decriminaliztion are SO huge, I often liken it to a complete overhaul of the tax code.
Think of the industry that’s sprung up from the illegalization of cannabis.
There’s law enforcement of course, from Customs to the Coast Guard to the DEA at the top, then filtering down to all of the law enforcement officers below.
These agencies get billions of (taxpayer’s) dollars every year to buy new helicopters, weed-sniffing dogs, guns, ammo, boats, planes, the list goes on and on and on.
All that money is at stake. And it’s a LOT.
And cannabis legalization represents an utter nightmare for Big Pharma. Why on earth would anyone pay Big Pharma for drugs they develop from cannabis when they could grow the source of those medications in a bucket filled with dirt in their closet? I wouldn’t.
When I was a kid back in the 70’s I used to think “Once my generation gets in power, pot will finally be legal!” Was I full of shit or what?
Anyway, I do admire Obama for at least “going there” in discussing this issue but I believe that the forces that are lined up against cannabis decriminalization and/or legalization are way too great for any one person to overcome and in a country that still has deep puritanical roots like this one, well… it may never happen at a Federal level, unfortunately.
A good start, IMHO, would be to have cannabis reclassified from a Schedule I drug (No acceptible medical use like heroin and LSD) to a Schedule II drug. (I believe this is what the SCOTUS wanted to see happen in order for the law to change)
What’s interesting to me – the following drugs DO have accepted medical use and CAN be prescribed in the US: Cocaine and Methamphetamine. Is that ironic or what?