Pubdate: Thu, 17 May 2001
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washtimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Steven Chapman
Note: This column also appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n889/a11.html
Note: Headline by newshawk

DROP DEAD

The bedrock rationale for all our laws against marijuana and other 
forbidden drugs is the insistence that these substances are dangerous to 
your health -- which is why the government must protect you from them. The 
problem is that if you're unfortunate enough to contract a deadly illness 
like cancer or AIDS, marijuana may actually help save your life.

So what's the federal policy toward those people? It's simple, really: Drop 
dead.

That's how the Supreme Court read the law in an important case this week. 
After California voters approved a measure permitting the use of pot for 
medical purposes, the U.S. Justice Department decided that the federal law 
against marijuana had to take priority. It set out to close down clubs that 
provide the weed to patients in need.

One of them, the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, fought back. It 
insisted that the government was obligated to make an exception to the law 
in cases of "medical necessity." A federal appeals court agreed, ruling 
that the Justice Department had to find a way to accommodate "seriously ill 
individuals who need cannabis for medical purposes."

Now, the Justice Department could have taken the position of former drug 
czar Barry McCaffrey. He insisted that no one needs cannabis for medical 
purposes, for the simple reason that it has no legitimate medical purposes. 
But that argument is hard to make when legions of physicians and patients 
are insisting, from personal experience, that a joint can be the best 
medicine around. So the government simply asserted that the law allows no 
exceptions for the petty needs of people wracked by cancer or AIDS.

The Supreme Court didn't endorse the wisdom of this policy, but merely 
acknowledged that our elected leaders have a right to pursue it. "It is 
clear from the text of the act," wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, "that 
Congress has made a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits 
worthy of an exception." Since the job of judges is to "interpret, rather 
than author, the federal criminal code, we are not at liberty to rewrite it."

Of course, Congress can also pass a law stipulating that summer begins on 
Dec. 21, followed six months later by winter, and the Supreme Court 
presumably would apply it. That decree would be no more ridiculous than 
denying the therapeutic benefits of cannabis. The movement to allow medical 
marijuana arose only because many patients found it worked better than 
anything else they could find, and were willing to take the risk of going 
to jail rather than endure pointless and sometimes life-threatening agony.

Doctors and nurses have long known that smoking pot can relieve the 
vicious, debilitating nausea often suffered by cancer patients undergoing 
chemotherapy and by AIDS patients, some of whom develop a condition called 
"wasting," which causes severe weight loss.

"I have had patients whose nausea and/or wasting were so disabling that 
they preferred death," testified AIDS specialist Neil Flynn, a professor at 
the University of California at Davis medical school, who regards cannabis 
as a last resort when more conventional medicines don't work. "Almost every 
patient I have known to have tried marijuana achieved relief from symptoms 
with it." For a doctor not to suggest it to a patient in such 
circumstances, Flynn said, would amount to malpractice.

When the government made the gross mistake of trying to justify its ban on 
medical marijuana on scientific grounds, a federal court found its effort 
thunderously unconvincing. Contrary to the government's claims, said 
Administrative Law Judge Francis Young in a 1988 decision, "the evidence in 
this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of 
relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so 
with safety under medical supervision."

Two years ago, the government's own National Academy of Sciences issued a 
report by a panel of experts reaching the same conclusion. It found that 
marijuana can be useful for combating chemotherapy-related nausea, AIDS 
wasting and muscle spasms caused by multiple sclerosis. The panel also 
dismissed concerns that allowing cannabis for medical use would increase 
its popularity for recreational purposes.

All that medical marijuana supporters ask is for this substance to be made 
available to patients under the supervision of their doctors when it may do 
some good. If we allow doctors to prescribe all sorts of powerful medicines 
that can have serious and even fatal side effects, it's hardly radical to 
let them prescribe cannabis, which Judge Young described as "one of the 
safest therapeutically active substances known to man."

But federal policy, as made by Congress, doesn't allow for scientific 
evidence or common sense. It rests on two basic propositions. Rule No. 1: 
Marijuana is bad for you. Rule No. 2: If marijuana is good for you, refer 
to Rule No. 1.
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