Pubdate: Tue, 22 May 2001
Source: Bergen Record (NJ)
Copyright: 2001 Bergen Record Corp.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: David G. Evans
Note: David G. Evans, counsel for the Legal Foundation Against Illegal 
Drugs, submitted a brief on behalf of 50 individuals and drug prevention 
organizations in the Supreme Court case. He grew up in Bergen County and 
practices in Pittstown, N.J.

HIGH COURT WAS RIGHT TO NIX MEDICINAL POT

OVER THE LAST THREE decades, the advocates of drug-legalization have 
employed a number of political and legal strategies to legitimize smoking 
marijuana. Recently they used a California ballot initiative to approve 
smoked marijuana as medicine. They put out misleading and inaccurate 
information that smoking marijuana can help ill people. Californians, out 
of compassion for sick people, bought it.

The efforts to legitimize smoking marijuana through ballot initiatives 
seriously threaten the Food and Drug Administration's process of approving 
safe medicines. It creates an atmosphere of medicine by popular vote, 
rather than the rigorous scientific and medical process that all medicines 
must currently undergo.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the case of U.S. vs. Oakland Cannabis Buyers 
Cooperative recently reviewed the California initiative and unanimously 
decided that smoked marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use at 
all." In deciding that smoked crude marijuana is not a medicine, the court 
upheld the FDA drug approval process that has protected Americans from 
unsafe and ineffective drugs for nearly a century.

As a cancer survivor, I am appalled by how seriously ill people have been 
victimized by the cruel hoax of smoked marijuana as medicine. It is not 
compassionate to give marijuana cigarettes to sick people. They may 
mistakenly choose to smoke marijuana instead of using medicines that are 
truly effective. Crude smoked marijuana contains some 400 chemicals. Smoked 
marijuana, an impure and toxic substance, has no place in our medicine 
cabinets.

Before the development of modern pharmaceutical science, the field of 
medicine was fraught with potions. There were many anecdotal stories about 
these potions as there are today about smoked marijuana. Many people were 
convinced that these potions helped them. However, many of these potions 
were absolutely useless, or conversely were harmful to unsuspecting ill 
people. Thus evolved our current FDA drug approval processes, which should 
not be undermined.

Smoked marijuana as medicine has been rejected by the American Medical 
Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Glaucoma 
Society, the American Academy of Opthalmology, and the American Cancer 
Society. Recently, the federal Institute of Medicine also conducted 
research on this issue and they see "little future in smoked marijuana as a 
medicine." There are good reasons why they reject smoked marijuana.

The major reason to reject crude smoked marijuana is that numerous safe and 
effective FDA-approved medicines are available for all the conditions that 
smoked marijuana supposedly helps. This includes a drug in liquid form that 
is derived from the marijuana plant and was approved by the FDA for 
treating nausea in cancer patients and wasting in AIDS patients. The drug's 
generic name is dronabinol, the trade name is Marinol.

The respiratory damage associated with marijuana smoke speaks against 
inhaling marijuana as a medicine. Smoked marijuana is associated with 
higher concentrations of tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens than even 
cigarette smoke.

One of the earliest findings in marijuana research was the effect on the 
various bodily immune functions. Cellular immunity is impaired, pulmonary 
immunity is impaired, and the impaired ability to fight infection is now 
documented in humans. It is clear that use of smoked marijuana bears 
substantial health risks especially for people at high risk for infection 
and immune suppression such as AIDS and cancer chemotherapy patients.

The government of the Netherlands did an extensive study to assess the 
efficacy of marijuana for medical use. The Dutch government studied the 
scientific literature published during the past 25 years and concluded that 
the evidence is insufficient to justify the medical use of marijuana.

Scientific literature shows that use of marijuana is a major risk factor in 
the development of addiction and drug use among our school children. The 
efforts to confuse the public about marijuana have contributed to the drop 
in school children's perception of marijuana's harm, and this has resulted 
in an increase in marijuana and other drug use among schoolchildren.

Of the nearly 182,000 kids in treatment today, 48 percent were admitted for 
abuse or addiction to marijuana while only 19.3 percent for alcohol and 2.9 
percent for cocaine, 2.4 percent for methamphetamine, and 2.3 percent for 
heroin. It is no coincidence that those states with medical marijuana 
initiatives have among the highest levels of drug use and drug addiction.

Smoking marijuana as medicine is a fraud. I am glad the Supreme Court saw 
through it. This is a victory for our children and for people suffering 
with illnesses who have been mislead by false claims.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom