Pubdate: Mon, 14 Oct 2013
Source: Minnesota Daily (U of MN,  Minneapolis, MN Edu)
Copyright: 2013 Minnesota Daily
Contact:  http://www.mndaily.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1280
Author: Oliver Steinberg

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE FOR KILL'S EPILEPSY

An important aspect of the story about Gophers head football coach 
Jerry Kill's predicament has gone unreported. If Kill were coaching 
at Michigan or Oregon or back in his previous job in Illinois, his 
doctors could take advantage of laws in those states to see if 
marijuana could successfully control his seizures.

Marijuana is a natural herb, and in my view far less toxic than 
commonly prescribed anti-seizure pharmaceutical medications. For many 
patients it can be more effective. Wise physicians listen to what 
patients have learned. Scientists have shown the anti-convulsive 
properties of marijuana.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has long disputed the medicinal 
uses of marijuana. Despite its view, the American Medical Association 
testified in favor of marijuana when Congress passed the original 
Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. In the late 1980s, the DEA's own 
administrative judge held it was "unreasoning, arbitrary and 
capricious" for the DEA to continue to deny suffering patients access 
to marijuana.

Since 1996, 20 other states have approved medicinal marijuana use. 
But Minnesota politicians slavishly cling to the DEA's legal fictions 
about medicinal marijuana.

Under the state's new castle law, a Minnesotan can legally kill 
someone to defend their life, but a Minnesotan cannot medicate with 
marijuana. And as long as our lawmakers are afraid of the political 
risk of medical marijuana, patients with serious illnesses will 
continue to unnecessarily suffer.

Oliver Steinberg, Daily reader
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom