Pompo

Yes on Prop 1: Allow seriously ill people the relief marijuana may offer
10/2/08|Detroit Free Press| Editorial



If people who are seriously or chronically ill can convince their doctors that using marijuana will make them feel better, the State of Michigan should not stand in the way. Proposal 1 on the statewide ballot Nov. 4 would allow Michigan residents to cultivate and possess small amounts of marijuana for medical reasons with a doctor's approval. Voters should say yes to this proposal, which was placed on the ballot by a petition campaign that collected almost 378,000 signatures.

This is not about drug use. It's about compassion. The initiative would amend Michigan law to allow seriously ill people to seek authorization from a doctor to grow up to a dozen marijuana plants and possess up to 2.5 ounces of the weed, strictly for personal use. The continuing, regulated sale of alcoholic beverages poses more of a problem for society than will passage of this law.

Voters in five Michigan cities -- Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, Ferndale and Traverse City -- and a dozen other states have already approved similar statutes without the dire consequences forecast by federal drug-control authorities who fear the start of a slippery slope toward broad drug legalization.

While there are other prescription drugs available to control the pain or anxiety that afflicts the seriously or terminally ill, some such patients find more relief with less loss of control and fewer side effects from marijuana. These are not people who will start peddling the products of their little pot gardens to neighborhood kids. They won't have that much and will need all of it for their own use. And such sales would still be illegal under the proposed law.

Last month, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a national survey showing Americans rank marijuana well behind other illicit drugs, prescription drugs and alcohol among substances that pose a threat to society.

The national Marijuana Policy Project, which provided nearly all of the $1.1 million spent to put this question on the Michigan ballot, acknowledges a larger goal of replacing "marijuana prohibition with a sensible system of regulation." But that may be a long way off, if, indeed, it happens at all. Meantime, Proposal 1 is about helping sick people feel better.

Hairy_Pothead_RN

As a MI nurse I am planning on voting yes on proposal 1 on Nov. 4th. I have cared for many a patients that would have or could have benefited from the use of medicinal marijuana. The problem with most doctors feeling comfortable prescribing marijuana is the very nature of the plant. If you are given a prescription for any given medication you can be resonably sure that you will get a specific dose as ordered. However with marijuana you can take seeds from the same plant and achieve different levels of active ingredients based on how the plant was grown and cared for. This does not take into account for the many different varieties and strains of marijuana that can be grown. So simply saying that a person in need of medical marijuana may have on their person X amount of weed, or be allowed to grow X number of plants, does not ensure that marijuana can be prescribed to a person with the same degree of certainty as with know properties of FDA approved drugs. On another note, we have a huge problem with prescription drugs being sold illegaly on the street. I am sure if medicinal marijuana was legalized you would have grandmas on social security selling it to make ends meet. A far better solution than medical marijuana would be to have the federal gov. decriminalize marijuana all together