Pubdate: Mon, 13 Dec 2004
Source: Hendersonville Times-News (NC)
Copyright: 2004 Hendersonville Newspaper Corporation
Contact:  http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/793
Author: Susan Hanley Lane, Times-News Community Columnist
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

MARIJUANA - ARCH-NEMESIS OR NEEDED HELP?

One of the most troubling ethical issues of our time, substance abuse,
begins early and innocently in our society, usually when a child
tastes his first sip of soda.

If that same child sees mom or dad smoking, he'll be far more likely
to step outside for a puff or two when someone offers him a cigarette
as a teenager, thereby adding nicotine to the caffeine he already enjoys.

Long before he's out of his teens, someone will offer him a beer, or a
wine cooler. If he likes it, he'll add alcohol to his growing list of
addictive substances that society has given him the green light to
use. He may get into a little trouble for trying it out before he's of
age, but most of the adults around him will wink at his indiscretions.
After all, they've been there.

Sooner or later, he'll be offered the next drug on the totem pole,
marijuana. But if he chooses to use it, he will step over an invisible
line from Joe Average to illegal drug user.

It really is that easy.

Hopefully, he'll have the common sense to say no. After all, that's
what he's been told to do. Just say no. Even though many of the same
people who urge him to say no to pot have no such qualms about
alcohol. Or cigarettes.

If he doesn't say no, chances are he'll at least try other
"recreational" drugs, like acid, mushrooms, cocaine, pills or speed.
Hopefully, he won't like them. Now that he's on the wrong side of the
law, the same people who don't mind if he smokes or drinks will throw
him in jail for even a few ounces of pot.

The irony is that many of the same drugs he can be jailed for if he
buys them on the street, are prescribed by doctors for patients with
legitimate pain. Dilaudid, Hydrocodone, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, even
Ritalin, or Xanax, bring in a lot more money on the street than any
pharmacist will ever charge.

We are a society that fosters addiction from childhood and jails
people once they become addicted. There are few people who don't have
at least one alcoholic in their family. Usually they deal with the
drinking by pretending everything's OK and praying the alcoholic won't
kill someone while he's driving. Since alcohol is legal, he can sleep
it off and try again.

But what about those who have stepped over that invisible line? What
do you do if someone you love is addicted to cocaine, or heroin or
crank? Where do you go for help when the treatment centers that used
to give addicts a shot at a normal life don't exist anymore?

Even worse, what do you do if someone you love has severe pain and
nausea, and the only drug that seems to alleviate the misery is
marijuana? Cancer patients, people who suffer with multiple sclerosis,
like Montel Williams, and many others with debilitating diseases have
found relief using medical marijuana when nothing else has worked.

On Monday, Nov. 29, the Supreme Court began deliberations on the use
of marijuana for medical purposes. However, the political
explosiveness of this case threatens to outweigh common sense.

It is difficult to persuade people who have watched nasty drunks
mellow out on marijuana, that a joint is more dangerous than a six
pack of beer. Most people who have tried them both testify that the
opposite is true.

Perhaps the most unfathomable irony of all is that the drug which is
classified by substance abuse professionals as the number one drug of
abuse in America, alcohol, is not only legal, but is far more deadly
than many of its illegal counterparts, including marijuana. Yet no one
would bat an eye if a cancer patient used wine to "chill out."

Opponents of the use of medical marijuana insist that people use it
for everything from back pain to athlete's feet. Federal agents feel
that even marijuana used for medical use undermines their efforts to
control the flow of marijuana.

They're probably right. If Prohibition were revived tomorrow, and
alcohol were illegal for all but medical uses, we would be amazed at
how many people would become "gravely ill" overnight.

The argument that marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to harder,
more dangerous drugs is, I believe, true; just as caffeine, nicotine
and alcohol are gateway drugs, often paving the way for each other.

The fact that we have managed to put in place a system to control them
speaks to our ability to monitor other drugs, including marijuana, far
more safely and effectively than street dealers who are interested
only in profits, not the health of the "patient," (addict).

Placing dangerous substances, like alcohol and nicotine, under the
purview of law, has not only wiped out dealers and bootleggers, it has
given states a chance to tax their sale and raise some of the money it
costs taxpayers to treat the diseases that result from smoking and
drinking.

To many fair-minded people, using marijuana under the supervision of a
doctor is no worse a crime than using prescription Oxycodone. Why
should a person be jailed for using something to alleviate nausea and
pain that is less dangerous than alcohol?

How poignant would it be if Chief Justice William Rehnquist, now being
treated for thyroid cancer, could find relief from the pain and nausea
of chemotherapy only by using medical marijuana? As he mulls over the
fate of other cancer sufferers, let us hope that the threat of
political hysteria will not drown out the voice of reason.

(By the way, let me answer your question. No, I have never used
marijuana.)

Susan Hanley Lane, a Times-News community columnist, lives in Naples.
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MAP posted-by: Derek