Pubdate: Thu, 23 May 2013
Source: Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright: 2013 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact:  http://www.dispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/93
Author: Ed Gogek
Note: Dr. Ed Gogek is an addiction psychiatrist in Prescott, Ariz., 
and board member of Keep AZ Drug Free, a group that opposes 
legalization and medical-marijuana laws.

VOTERS BECOMING WISE TO MEDICAL-MARIJUANA RUSE

California voters passed the country's first medical-marijuana law in 
1996, but many are having second thoughts. Last year, five California 
cities voted on initiatives to allow marijuana dispensaries, and all 
five voted no. Oregon also voted down dispensaries. These liberal 
West Coast states have seen medical marijuana up close, and learned 
it's barely medical at all.

That shouldn't surprise anyone. The idea that smoking pot is medicine 
didn't come from doctors or groups representing the seriously ill. 
Neither the American Cancer Society nor the National Multiple 
Sclerosis Society supports it, and the American Medical Association 
and American Academy of Pediatrics strongly oppose it.

The idea to call marijuana medicine came from the National 
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana 
Policy Project. These two organizations are part of a national 
marijuana lobby that represents drug users, growers and sellers. 
They're behind every medical-marijuana law in the country.

They advertise these laws with an impassioned plea to allow 
suffering, terminally ill people access to medicine. However, once 
these laws pass, most medical-marijuana patients claim pain, not 
serious illness. In Arizona, 90 percent get their marijuana for pain. 
In Colorado and Oregon, it's 94 percent. Pain is every drug addict's 
favorite complaint; it's easy to fake and impossible to disprove.

Good doctors try to screen out drug abusers, but medical-marijuana 
laws are designed to circumvent good medical care. Most marijuana 
patients get their prescriptions from a few unethical doctors who see 
patients one time only and hand out marijuana recommendations to anyone.

Pot-smokers know who these doctors are, and they line their waiting 
rooms. Before Montana tightened its law, eight doctors wrote 
three-fourths of all the recommendations. In Arizona, 24 doctors did the same.

That's why there's a backlash. People feel hoodwinked. They voted for 
compassionate care, not drug abuse.

I'm a partisan Democrat who supports most liberal causes, but I'm 
also an addiction psychiatrist. I work with drug abusers. They're 
amazing con artists who will say anything to get their drugs. And the 
marijuana lobby is no different.

For example, based on scant evidence, advocates claimed for years 
that marijuana could treat glaucoma. Today, ophthalmologists believe 
marijuana can damage the optic nerve and make glaucoma worse. The 
Glaucoma Foundation now warns patients not to use the drug, yet no 
marijuana advocate has ever apologized for handing out bad medical advice.

The pot lobby paints the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Food and 
Drug Administration as blue meanies, depriving people of needed 
medicine. But science consistently proves these agencies right. For 
every illness possibly helped by marijuana, there are safer and more 
effective medications already available. There aren't thousands of 
people suffering because they can't use pot; that's a fiction the 
marijuana lobby invented.

In Arizona, they actually called their campaign "Stop Arresting 
Patients." They wanted us to picture grannies in prison, doing their 
knitting surrounded by tattooed gang-bangers. But in a live debate, 
the Marijuana Policy Project lobbyist could not name even one genuine 
medical patient who'd been arrested solely for possession. That's 
because there aren't any. Medical-marijuana laws protect drug dealers 
and drug users, not the seriously ill.

Even worse, these laws hurt innocent people. An analysis of several 
studies, published in the British Medical Journal, found that drivers 
under the influence of marijuana had nearly twice as many serious and 
fatal car wrecks as nonusers. California, Colorado and Montana all 
documented increased traffic fatalities caused by drivers with 
marijuana components in their bloodstreams, coinciding with increased 
use of medical marijuana. The biggest damage, however, is done to our 
kids. The National Survey of Drug Use and Health shows that teenage 
marijuana use is 30 percent higher in medical-marijuana states. Teens 
who smoke pot do worse in school, do worse in their adult careers and 
have twice the school dropout rate of nonsmokers. No parent wants that.

Last, these laws cost states money. The marijuana lobby promises that 
taxes on pot will fill state coffers, but it's just another 
deception. States with these laws pay out of their general funds to 
regulate marijuana, and for the increased health care, 
substance-abuse treatment and law enforcement needed any time an 
addictive drug becomes more available.

So don't be taken in; medical marijuana is a ruse. It's bad medicine 
that helps hardly anyone and has serious social and economic side 
effects for all.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom