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More on Medical Marijuana

Six months ago, the guys at the bar at City Cafe, mocked me when I predicted medmar would become an issue in this election. It appears I was right though. Every day it seems another public figure comes out in support of its use.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders' recent opinion piece, Myths about medical marijuana, is a case in point. Drug War Rant already posted on this story and as always, Pete speaks my thoughts so well, I won't duplicate it. Check out Elders' excellent deconstruction of our drug czar's myths and prevarications over there. For example:

"There is no evidence that marijuana is a medicine." The truth: The medical literature on marijuana goes back 5,000 years. In a 1999 study commissioned by the White House, the Institute of Medicine reported, "nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety . . . all can be mitigated by marijuana." In its April 2003 issue, the British medical journal The Lancet reported that marijuana relieves pain in virtually every test that scientists use to measure pain relief.

"Marijuana is too dangerous to be medicine; it's bad for the immune system, endangering AIDS and cancer patients." The truth: Unlike many of the drugs we prescribe every day, marijuana has never been proven to cause a fatal overdose. Research on AIDS patients has debunked the claim of harm to the immune system: In a study at San Francisco General Hospital, AIDS patients using medical marijuana gained immune-system cells and kept their virus under control as well as patients who received a placebo. They also gained more needed weight.

Meanwhile, that relentlessly tiresome disinformer Mark Souder, is once again sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong. He actually asked the U.S. FDA to send a warning letter to a Canadian company that sells medical-use marijuana. One wonders how he has time to deal with the concerns of his constituency with all the time he spends meddling. Last time I looked Indiana was not in Canada. He of course spews the usual prohibitionist dreck.

In a letter sent this week, Souder asked the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration to tell the Canadian company, Amigula, that it can not send marijuana to U.S. customers and that "any advertisements promoting marijuana for a medical purpose will be regulated under the existing rules that apply for direct-to-consumer marketing of drugs, including stating the adverse health risks."

Maybe Souder should have checked their order forms before he started threatening them.

"We don't ship into the U.S.," Warren Eugene, the founder of Amigula, said Thursday. "Souder should not involve himself in Canadian policies."

Souder doesn't plan to stop with Amigula however.

[He] told FDA Acting Commissioner Lester Crawford to "immediately send warning letters to all states, localities and sellers of marijuana explaining that botanical marijuana has not been approved by the FDA for medical use and cannot be advertised as such and imposing penalties, as appropriate, on those that continue to illegally promote this dangerous drug as medicine."

This despite the fact that nine states currently legalize the medicinal use of the herb and three others have legislation pending. Further, in December, a federal court ruled that the federal law prohibiting medical marijuana may not apply to sick people who live in states that permit marijuana to be used for medical reasons and who have a doctor's recommendation.

Souder has repeatedly stated that, "There are no generally recognized health benefits to smoking marijuana."

Who are you going to believe, a career politician whose political power depends on the continued prohibition of cannabis, or a former Surgeon General who has dedicated her life to medicine?