Pubdate: Tue, 07 Aug 2001
Source: Sun News (SC)
Copyright: 2001 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://web.thesunnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987
Author: Ellen Goodman

U.S. SHOULD TAKE CUE FROM CANADA

And now from our northern neighbors, the allegedly staid Canadians, a new 
antidote to our reefer madness.

The Canadian government has just increased the number of people who can use 
marijuana as medicine.

As of this month, the terminally ill and those with chronic diseases...

And now from our northern neighbors, the allegedly staid Canadians, a new 
antidote to our reefer madness. The Canadian government has just increased 
the number of people who can use marijuana as medicine.

As of this month, the terminally ill and those with chronic diseases from 
cancer to AIDS to multiple sclerosis can turn their back yards into their 
medicine cabinets. With the approval of a doctor, they can either grow it 
or get it free from the government, which is paying a company to nurture 
the plants in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba. Where does 
that leave us? U.S. citizens, who routinely cross the border for cheap 
prescription drugs, won't be allowed access to the Manitoba motherload. But 
if Canadians can't export their medical marijuana, it's time for us to 
import their policy. The northern light on the subject comes in the wake of 
a Canadian Supreme Court ruling that any patient suffering from a terminal 
or painful illness should be allowed access to marijuana when a doctor says 
it may help. Our own Supreme Court in May ruled on narrow grounds that 
federal drug law allows no exception for medical marijuana. The Canadians 
have implicitly recognized that marijuana has uses as well as abuses.

Our government supports the idea that marijuana has no medicinal value 
worth the social risks. Our law is on a collision course with the policies 
in nine states Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, 
Oregon, Nevada and Washington. More to the point, it's on a collision 
course with patients who are looking for relief without looking for trouble.

Thousands of patients from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to your 
neighbor's grandmother have reported on pot's value in relieving the nausea 
of chemotherapy or improving the appetite of an AIDS patient. The few 
studies available show mixed results.

A recent survey in a British medical journal reported that marijuana was no 
better than other available drugs for severe pain and somewhat better for 
nausea.

But these were marijuana-based medications, not smoked marijuana.

The patients still preferred the marijuana medications by a large margin. 
Marijuana, like most drugs, has side effects, although worrying about the 
effects of smoking on the lungs of a terminally ill patient seems a bit absurd.

One of the other side effects is what medical researchers label "euphoria," 
or in street parlance, a "high." But as Leonard Glantz, a Boston University 
professor of health law asks, "If someone is terminally ill, and they can 
eat and be euphoric, why is that bad?" Here we get to the heart of the 
matter: the drug war in which marijuana has played a starring role with 
700,000 arrests in 1998. There is a fear that if grandma can smoke it 
legally for her health, granddaughter will smoke it to get high. "We're 
seeing America's war on drugs being taken to an extreme that begins to make 
no sense," says Glantz. Politicians are so afraid of appearing soft on 
drugs they can't draw any distinctions. Compare this to morphine.

We don't allow morphine on the street but we permit it in the doctor's 
arsenal for the treatment of pain. Imagine the uproar if we made morphine 
illegal.

There is no logic in treating marijuana differently.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens