Lit_Match

Drug czar says medical marijuana is bad medicine
10-15-08|MLive.com|By BEN LEUBSDORF

A ballot proposal that would legalize medical marijuana is bad medicine for Michigan, according to the nation's top anti-drug official.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in an interview Wednesday that proponents rely on sympathy, not hard facts, to gain support for allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

"It's not a science-based review of the efficacy of this substance," he said.

Walters said medical marijuana initiatives like the proposal before Michigan voters on Nov. 4 are the first step in "a clear strategy to ... legalize drugs," exploiting marijuana's reputation as a less risky narcotic than cocaine and heroin.

But Dianne Byrum, spokeswoman for the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care, said Walters and other opponents of medical marijuana are using "rhetoric and scare tactics that have no basis in fact." The Ferndale-based group has spearheaded the medical marijuana ballot initiative.

"This is about a compassionate law to protect seriously ill patients," Byrum said.

If approved by voters next month, Proposal 1 would let severely ill patients in Michigan obtain a doctor's recommendation and use marijuana to relieve pain, nausea and other symptoms. Twelve states have similar programs.

Walters, a Detroit native who grew up in Lansing, was in the Detroit area Wednesday to speak out against the ballot proposal. He appeared at events in Lansing Tuesday.

Walters said there's no scientific evidence that marijuana is an effective treatment for cancer, AIDS and other conditions. He added that criminals may exploit a medical-marijuana law to find openings for illegal activity that would make drugs more available to young people.

Byrum said federal officials have stymied medical research into marijuana's benefits despite evidence that it can relieve suffering. She said the Michigan measure has safeguards built-in to prevent abuse, including specifying diseases like cancer, glaucoma and HIV that can be treated with marijuana, instead of relying on more ambiguous symptoms like pain.

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