Pubdate: Fri, 10 Jun 2005
Source: Plain Dealer, The (OH)
Copyright: 2005 The Plain Dealer
Contact:  http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/342
Author: Tom Feran, Plain Dealer Columnist
Note: priority given to local letter writers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Raich (Gonzales v. Raich )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

RULING ON MARIJUANA REALLY IS JUST A SICK JOKE

I don't smoke dope, never smoked dope and have no plans to smoke dope.
So I'm no expert. But I certainly understand the big argument against
the use of so-called "medical marijuana."

It's a slippery slope or a Trojan horse. If you legalize the use of
marijuana to ease the effects of chemotherapy for cancer patients, all
sorts of other people will demand chemotherapy so they can legally use
marijuana, too. The next thing you know, people will be trying to get
cancer or AIDS or glaucoma or seizures as the fast track to a bag of
herb, because it is so powerfully seductive and addictive.

All those pot-smoking patients will severely strain the health-care
system and put an additional burden on Medicaid.

I think that's the argument, anyway. Nothing else makes
sense.

It wouldn't make sense to argue marijuana could be dangerous or
might fall into the wrong hands. The same could be said of aspi rin.
Warning labels about the potential side effects of many legal
medications list everything up to death.

Arguing that marijuana is addictive wouldn't make sense either. If it
were -- and it's questionable -- it would be in company with a number
of legally prescribed painkillers on which you also can get high. As
you can with alcohol.

So we're left with worries about the health-care system and fears that
healthy people will want to get sick so they can smoke dope.

That was my conclusion after hearing the comments of Calvina Fay,
executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, after the
Supreme Court ruled Monday that state laws allowing the medicinal use
of marijuana don't protect patients from federal prosecution.

She said the decision was a "victory for the future of our children
and our families." Medical marijuana, she said, would cover "anything
and everything people want to use as an excuse to smoke pot."

But she had another comment, too. Feeling good is not medical
treatment, she said. "We don't want truly sick and dying people to be
scammed into thinking they are being medically treated by smoking pot."

That was confusing. It dismisses the testimony of sick people who say
their homegrown marijuana gave them relief from suffering that no
pharmaceutical company was able to provide.

And it raises the question of why dying people shouldn't be able to do
what they want.

I have known a few people who died of lung-related illnesses and
smoked cigarettes to the end. You probably do, too. It's a terrible
thing.

But I was always baffled by the expressions of shock and horror about
stories that somebody was smoking on one lung, on oxygen or on his or
her deathbed.

What's the difference at that point? If there is one place somebody
ought to be free to smoke without being hassled, a deathbed should be
it.

"Where do you draw the line?" Fay asked in one interview. "Is crack
cocaine a medicine?"

No, it's not. But if it gave relief to a dying patient who wanted it,
what's the harm? Who's the victim?

There might even be a market for what would be called "extreme hospice
care." No limits, no holds barred. You want cheese fries with gravy
and a milkshake chaser? It's yours. You feel like watching
round-the-clock porn? That's your option. You always wanted to go
skydiving and never had the chance? Here you go -- they'll tie a
freight parachute to the bed and shove it out the back of a C-130. You
can smoke all the way down if you want.

When the "war on poverty" started, there was a joke that you could
join it by beating up a bum.

Now we have a "war on drugs," and the federal government can wage it
against medical-marijuana users. If you think that's a joke, you've
been smoking something. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake