Medical Marijuana … Controversial ?
Are you one of the millions of Americans that is suffering from sleeplessness or insomnia? It is estimated that one-third of all adults have insomnia.
Medical marijuana patients usually find that sleep is a wonderful benefit of cannabis. Many chronic pain patients experience insomnia due to their pain and find excellent relief and sleep when using cannabis.
As one of the provisions of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, marijuana was placed into the category of a Schedule I substance. What does that mean? It means that the potential for abuse of marijuana was considered to be prohibitively elevated while affording little evidence of having any useful medicinal properties. It was this categorization that resulted in marijuana in becoming even more restricted than such “harder” drugs as cocaine or morphine. While it is certainly true that both cocaine and morphine have been equally criminalized, it is also true that both are regularly prescribed by doctors and used by patients in one form or another. In the 1980s part of Reagan's “Just Say No” approach to the massive drug problem in America was the passage of more stringent legislation and penalties for growing or possessing marijuana. Since then, there has been a boiling controversy-some might even describe it as a frying controversy-over whether marijuana does or does not actually have any legitimate medicinal properties. As a result, support is more widespread than ever for a refashioning of the laws that prohibit the use of marijuana so that its medical benefits can be of use for those with no other outlet. Proponents often point to a reactionary government and a not so stealthy campaign against them as the biggest obstacles to their goal. In fact, the proponents of medical marijuana legalization should probably look in the mirror to find the biggest hindrance to their plans.
Marijuana as a medicine has been used for in the U.S. since at least the 19th century. Perfectly legal for much of America's existence, marijuana was incredibly popular as a management for pain ranging form headaches to menstrual cramps. That is not to imply, of course, that simply because a drug has been used to treat pain that is the same thing as evidence that it actually accomplishes that task. Those supporting the legalization of marijuana for medical use point to evidence that marijuana has been effective in the treatment of nearly every ailment from glaucoma to cancer. Marijuana has also been touted as a substance that can prolong the life of an Aids patient. The problem with these claims isn't that they aren't necessarily valid, but rather that they are too subject scrutiny. It is far too easy to point the finger at medical marijuana proponents and make the claim they are trying to slip one past you.
For instance, take Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard. Grinspoon is like the Moses of the medical marijuana movement, trying to get to the promised land of getting marijuana reclassified so that it can be treated like a medicine. Grinspoon affectionately uses 1990 survey of oncologists in which 44% of the doctors admitted that they have at one time or another advised a patient to smoke marijuana in order to bring some relief to post-chemotherapy nausea. His conclusion: “if marijuana were actually unsafe for use under medical supervision, as its Schedule I status explicitly affirms, this recommendation would be unthinkable.” Grinspoon is all too keen to ignore the historical record in which an actual majority-rather than the minority he relies upon-has occasionally been fully committed to the belief that one crackpot cure after another held promise. Indeed, the very fact that Grinspoon would hang his legacy on the fact that a minority view strengthens his case would cause the average person to question the very validity of the idea he forwards. If 44% said they would recommend marijuana treatment, doesn't that by definition mean that 56% of doctors would advise against it? What would be Grinspoon's view if 44% said that they had recommended bathing in elephant urine?
The credibility of the pro-medicinal marijuana movement, as you can see, is a primary issue in what actually is a rather argumentative debate. Opponents to legalizing medical marijuana are fond of arguing that the movement only exists as the first step in a plan to decriminalize marijuana entirely. Proponents point to this as more evidence of a reactionary agenda, but the sad fact is that it does ring true. Keith Stroup, former director of Director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), addressed the issue of the push to legalize marijuana for medicinal use as far back as 1979 during a speech at Emory University in which-probably while under the influence of weed-he said “medicinal marijuana would be used as a red herring to give marijuana a good name”. Richard Cowan, a writer for the pro-marijuana High Times Magazine, was even more explicit, suggesting he may have been on more than marijuana when he wrote how the pro-legalization movement has used the “medical model as spearheading a strategy for the legalization of marijuana by 1997″.
The medical marijuana drive suffered a dramatic setback in that year that pot was suppose to be legal for all when it failed to get a ballot initiative passed in Washington. This loss was made all the more distressing to proponents coming as it did directly on the on the heels of promising victories in both California and Arizona. The Washington initiative, known as I-685 was roundly defeated by a 60-40 margin in part because its backers-apparently under the influence-for some bizarre reason attempted to legalize not just marijuana but also harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin. In contrast, the victorious California referendum of a year earlier was successful mostly due to the fact that it focused on the specific contention that marijuana is helpful in easing symptoms of various medical conditions. This contention was based primarily not on scientific studies, but on anecdotal evidence courtesy of patients who suggest that marijuana is effective in everything from restoring the appetite of cancer patients to relieving nausea, and cancer patients who have smoked it to combat nausea. Proposition 215 in California was touted as legislation designed expressly to legalize marijuana for the sick or dying when in fact it called for the legalization of marijuana under exceptionally vague descriptions of alleged medical relief.
The biggest obstacle in place of legalizing medicinal marijuana seems to be not that the evidence in favor of it is particularly lacking-though, in fact, it does tend to rely far too much on anecdotal evidence-but rather that the brains behind it have been so fried on habitual pot use that they have no idea how to handle such a delicate issue. It's kind of like putting the syphilis-ravaged brain of George W. Bush in charge of handling such delicate issues as…anything. The best thing the proponents of medical marijuana could do would to utilize the talents of people like me who've never used any illegal drug, but who recognize that the continued criminalization of illegal substances is as pointless as trying to battle fundamentalist Islam with guns and bombs.
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