Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jul 2016
Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)
Copyright: 2016 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.
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Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/25
Note: Accepts letters to the editor from Arkansas residents only

DON'T GO TO POT

For the Sake of Your Health

AT LEAST a couple of proposals legalizing "medical" marijuana are now 
angling for a place on November's ballot. Which means the state's 
Health Department may be called on to issue many a clarification 
between now and then. The first one came out last week. To quote 
Nathaniel Smith, M.D., and director of the department: "There was a 
statement by one of the proponents of medical marijuana that she had 
spoken to the Department of Health and that we were gearing up, 
expecting this ballot initiative to pass. That's not correct."

Dr. Smith added: "This so-called medical marijuana doesn't meet 
either standards of safety or effectiveness and for all of these 
[medical] conditions, there are FDA-approved alternatives. That's why 
I can't-either as a physician or director of the Health 
Department-support it. That's been our consistent position, even 
under the previous administration."

There's been a lot of smoke and more than a few mirrors used to 
obfuscate this whole issue. Here is the sponsor of a competing pot 
amendment, David Couch, dismissing opposition to his Arkansas Medical 
Cannabis Amendment as a nefarious conspiracy by the pharmaceutical 
industry: "For decades, big pharma has stifled all research on 
medical marijuana." He went on to use his concern for veterans as 
cover: "Eight veterans die each day as a result of post-traumatic 
stress disorder." Which is longhand for PTSD, formerly shell shock. 
"Medical marijuana is one of the recognized treatments for that. We 
shouldn't let any more veterans die."

All of which demonstrates only that, when the facts fail to back up 
an argument, yelling Conspiracy! is the next resort. It's not clear 
which is the more despicable: Trying to sell the public some snake 
oil in the guise of medicine, or using vets to hide behind when exposed.

To all of which Director Smith of the Health Department responds by 
citing the facts, noting that there is "a study here or a study 
there, but not the kind of controlled trials for something to be 
marketed or classified for a medical treatment. In the U.S., THC [the 
essential feelgood component of marijuana] has been produced 
synthetically . . . and that's marketed as Marinol. That's approved 
specifically for management of loss of appetite related to AIDS and 
for nausea, particularly associated with chemotherapy . . . . As an 
HIV physician, I did prescribe that medication, used it years ago, 
during the time we were treating AIDS patients before we had really 
effective treatments . . ." So not only are supporters of "medical" 
marijuana wrong factually, they're pushing a long outmoded treatment. 
But reasoning with them may prove an exercise in futility, for they 
put on their ideological blinders long ago.

THERE'S a simpler way to use marijuana's key ingredient: Get a 
prescription from your doctor. But that would mean cutting out the 
possibility of a lucrative monopoly in the stuff. What's really being 
stifled here are the simple facts of the matter.

Why open the floodgates to all these dangers? Maybe it's part of the 
distrust of all authority in this age of Trump. To quote another 
authority the rest of us should listen to, namely Greg Bledsoe, the 
surgeon general of this state: "There's a significant number of 
people in this country who feel they've been dealt a wrong hand by 
their government and by their political leaders and I've begun to 
think that part of this medical marijuana popularity is not so much 
the people are in favor of medical marijuana. It's almost they want 
to push back against whatever this is that they feel like is causing 
some of their problems."

In short, the current demand for locoweed addresses a political and 
cultural condition rather than a medical one.

Call this two non-endorsements for medical marijuana. And the list 
keeps growing.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom