Pubdate: Wed, 15 Jun 2005
Source: Salem News (MA)
Copyright: 2005 Essex County Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.salemnews.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3466
Author: John  Milne
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

COURT'S DECISION ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA HAS EVERYONE IN A QUANDARY

The Supreme Court's recent medical marijuana decision provided the downbeat
for the gaudiest parade of strange bedfellows I've ever seen. On June 6, the
court ruled that federal law takes precedence over the statutes of 11 states
- - among them Vermont and Maine - that allow marijuana to  be used as a
medicine, not a way to get high.

"Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum," said Justice
Stephen G. Breyer during oral arguments last November. Justice John Paul
Stevens, writing the majority opinion, called the federal Controlled
Substances Act "a valid exercise of federal power." Lock 'em up. In reply,
Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger said without citation that
smoking marijuana can reduce nausea, one of the devastating side effects of
chemotherapy. "Friends sick with cancer must choke down this decision," he
snapped.

Most of the commentariat endorsed Justice Clarence Thomas' argument that
such states as California should establish independent drug-use policies.
Thomas has never been praised so highly.

A greater paradox is Justice Antonin Scalia's citation of New Deal rulings
that the Agriculture Department had the power to limit how much wheat a
farmer could plant. The court's most articulate defender of limited
government backed the New Deal.

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society weighed in on June 12. In a letter to The
New York Times, President Dwayne Howell called the decision "a severe blow
to cancer patients and others with debilitating diseases who desperately
need a measured, alternative form of pain relief."

Readers of this space know that I've had lymphoma, which was destroyed with
chemo of near-lethal toxicity. I've been there, and I have no idea how
Howell reached his conclusion.

Yes, I was nauseated, and friends offered to get me marijuana to smoke. I
couldn't smoke anything. My disease resistance was so low that I couldn't
have flowers in the room or eat a fresh green salad for fear of picking up a
germ or two. Is it possible that the benefits of medical marijuana are
exaggerated? Laura Landro, who lived through leukemia and a transplant,
described her experience with synthetic marijuana in her 1998 book,
"Survivor." "I had smoked marijuana in high school, but I grew to dislike
the spacey way it made me feel and the weird, dry-mouthed feeling it gave
me, and this drug had  much the same effect," she wrote.

My friend Cathy, an ovarian cancer survivor, said when she smoked pot "it
made me paranoid."

Of course, this isn't a scientific sampling. And I admit to knowing nothing
about whether marijuana can alleviate glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and the
other diseases it's supposed to help. I believe that neither side knows
what it's talking about.

Preliminary studies, the most recent in 1999, suggest that marijuana may
have therapeutic value. But the federal government strictly limits access to
legal marijuana for research, wrote psychiatrist Sally Satel in The New York
Times.  Thus conclusive research is well-nigh impossible. Federal lawmen are
stuck in the "reefer madness" mindset that predates the New Deal. Proponents
of more liberal drug laws aren't much better. During the 2004 New Hampshire
primary, a group called Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana asked
presidential candidates whether they would "arrest people for taking their
medicine." Several Democrats running for commander in chief replied that
they wouldn't enforce this one particular law. It must not have occurred to
them that such a promise would violate the oath of office. Judge Stevens, no
judicial activist, suggested the better place for the medical marijuana
argument is Congress or the White House. But a first stop ought to be the
lab.

Even better: Talk to patients with no ax to grind. 
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MAP posted-by: Josh