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xxdr_zombiexx

Government Must Correct Medical Marijuana Misinformation
NEWS ADVISORY from AMERICANS FOR SAFE ACCESS – CONTACT: William Dolphin (510) 919-1498

Petition Says Health and Human Services is Target of Patient-Group Action Under Data Quality Act

Press Conference Noon Monday with Doctors and Patients at the National Press Club

(Washington, D.C.) Wednesday, September 29 – When the government says there is no medical use for Marijuana, it’s just plain wrong, according to a petition being filed Monday under the Data Quality Act, a little-known law that requires federal agencies to rely on sound science.

If the patient-advocacy group filing the claim prevails, the Department of Health and Human Services will have to change its tune on medical Marijuana and publicly admit that the drug is now routinely used for medical treatment.

Americans for Safe Access, the national medical-Marijuana advocacy group responsible for the petition, will hold a noon press conference at the National Press Club. Reporters will enjoy a light lunch and hear from leading physicians, research scientists, medical Marijuana patients, and representatives from some of the dozens of professional health organizations that have endorsed changing federal rules to allow medical use of Marijuana, including the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association.

At issue is the government’s insistence that “Marijuana has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” a conclusion Health and Human Services reached in 2001 after a Food and Drug Administration review. According to the petition, established research, federal reports and patient experience all show Marijuana works for pain, nausea, loss of appetite, anxiety, and spasticity, the severe muscle spasms associated with Multiple Sclerosis, spinal injury and other conditions.

Admitting Marijuana has medical use would clear the way to allowing doctors to prescribe Marijuana to their patients. Currently, nine states have laws permitting patients to legally use it with a doctor’s recommendation, but those laws are at odds with the federal prohibition that ranks Marijuana as more dangerous than cocaine or amphetamines.

A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Dr. Marcus Conant, who will appear at the press conference, prevents the government from sanctioning doctors who make those recommendations. The Supreme Court will soon review another appellate decision that found certain California medical Marijuana patients and their caregivers to be exempt from the federal prohibition.

WHAT: Press conference on correcting government statements on medical Marijuana. Lunch provided.

WHO: Prominent physicians, medical Marijuana patients, and advocates, including:

* Marcus Conant, MD, leading HIV/AIDS clinician and researcher whose suit against the government established the right of physicians to recommend Marijuana to their patients;

*Denis Petro, MD, chief of neurology, Malcolm Grow Medical Center of Andrews Air Force Base, a leading researcher in treating Multiple Sclerosis with Marijuana and its cannabinoid components;

*Robert Melamede, PhD, chair of the biology department, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where he researches and teaches on the role of cannabinoids in health and disease.

WHEN: Noon, Monday, October 4, 2004.

WHERE: National Press Club, Edwin R. Murrow Room, 13th Floor, 14th and F Sts. NW, Washington, D.C.

__________________
Alien Space Signal

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.

 

Suetaz

WOOHOO! This is awesome news! Some smart cookie did their homework to find this Data Quality Act.

I hope they choke when they admit they have been lying. Pot could be a cure for cancer and yet all they want to do is tell people it has no medicinal value. Why wouldn't you want to believe in a cure for cancer and at least look into it? They won't even research it!

I love this! Finally, somebody is saying, "The proof is out there! You have to stop lying now!" Everyone signing the petition will be saying that to their government. Where do I sign?

Of course the government will start admitting that Marijuana has medical value, but they will find a way to mention more lies and possible harms from using it at the same time.

__________________

xxdr_zombiexx

KERRY OFFERS HOPE FOR MEDICAL POT OK
Jacki Rickert | www.immly.org |
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 | from - The Capital Times

Dear Editor: I'm very grateful to Doug Moe for again sticking up for people like his friend and myself who need medical cannabis to stay alive, "Medicinal pot, it's a good thing" (Sept. 25).

I do need, however, to correct an error that unfortunately keeps getting repeated whenever the story about my approval for federal medical Marijuana is discussed in the press, that I "had to provide (my) physician a safe weighing at least 700 pounds for storing the Marijuana until it was transferred to (me)."

The truth is the required double-locking safe had already been built into cement at my physician's office when the building was constructed in 1956 and had passed all approvals.

While George Bush the elder made sure patients like me would not get federal supplies of medical Marijuana and George Bush the younger flip-flopped on his 1999 campaign promise to let states set their own policies on it, there is hope in John Kerry. I attended his recent rally at the Alliant Energy Center and while my wheelchair prevented me from meeting him, a friend did and he asked Kerry when patients like me would receive legal access to medical Marijuana. Kerry replied, "When I'm president."

It seems more than the laws need changing.

And if you really want to hear from patients themselves how important medical cannabis is to their health and well-being and how urgent changing the law is, please come down to the Cardinal Bar Friday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Jacki Rickert
founder & executive director Is My Medicine Legal YET? www.immly.org

psthbng

I'm all for the nationwide legality of medical marijuana, even the decriminalization of recreational use. Bush lied about letting the states decide, thats true. But, even if Kerry swore on a stack of bibles about "when I'm elected", I still reject what he has planned for our country. Handing over our sovereignty to the United Nations, fighting a more sensitive war and swearing to raise taxes?? Think People!!

-=SpIkE=-

Omg thats awesome! Finally somebody is telling the truth!!! I am so happy , I hope they finally prove that Marijuana is nothing but a helpful herb!! I just hate when people tell me weed does all this **** to your brain penis etc etc etc! ARGH SOMEBODY PROVE THESE PEOPLE WRONG!

PS. Im high :P

 

Suetaz

New Initiative Planned to Get Marijuana Curbs Eased

By Rick Weiss | Washington Post | October 4, 2004

Convinced they have sound science on their side, advocates for the medical use of Marijuana plan to launch a novel effort today to get the federal government to ease restrictions on the illicit drug.

Americans for Safe Access, a Berkeley, Calif., coalition of patients and doctors wanting easier access to pot for research and patient use, plans to file a petition with the Department of Health and Human Services charging the agency with spreading inaccurate information about the drug's medical value.

Unlike previous efforts to ease Marijuana access, which relied on the courts and have dragged on for years, the petition invokes the Data Quality Act, a little-known but powerful law that gives people the right to challenge scientific information disseminated by federal agencies. The law demands that agencies respond to petitions within two months.

The act's use by Marijuana advocates represents a peculiar political twist. The act was written by a tobacco industry lobbyist and slipped into a huge piece of legislation after the 2000 election without any congressional discussion or debate. It has been used almost exclusively by corporations challenging the validity of scientific information that they fear might lead to costly regulations.

Many consumer groups want the act repealed, saying its wording -- and the fact that it is, by law, coordinated by the White House -- makes it easy for companies to dismiss as "junk science" damning evidence that their products are harmful.

But in one of the first uses of the act on behalf of a liberal, consumer-based cause, the new petition seeks to dismiss government assertions that Marijuana is dangerous and medically useless, saying they contradict findings of the Institute of Medicine and other authoritative sources.

"The government's position on medical Marijuana is out of touch with public opinion, but most important it's out of touch with the science," said William Dolphin, a spokesman for the Berkeley group, which plans to announce its action today. "It's time the federal government gets out of the way and lets doctors make decisions for their patients."

The petition calls for the government to correct "scientifically flawed statements" about Marijuana published in the Federal Register, a move that would allow -- though not compel -- the Drug Enforcement Administration to declare it a "Schedule II" drug. That would allow it to be prescribed for specified conditions and more easily obtained for research.

Schedule II drugs, including cocaine and morphine, are tightly controlled because of their high potential for abuse, but less stringently than Schedule I drugs (LSD, peyote and Marijuana among them), which by definition have no accepted medical use.

The petition challenges the government contention that "there have been no studies that have scientifically assessed the efficacy of Marijuana for any medical condition." In fact, the group notes, a 1999 Institute of Medicine report concluded that studies have found Marijuana helpful "for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation."

The institute called for clinical studies to identify pot's beneficial ingredients and to create drug delivery systems safer than smoking.

David Murray, a policy analyst with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, agreed it is "beyond dispute" that Marijuana's efficacy has been assessed and potential benefits identified. But he dismissed as "lame" another of the Berkeley group's assertions: that pot has "currently accepted" medical uses in the United States -- a key requirement for reassignment to Schedule II.

The Safe Access group cited a survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine finding that more than 40 percent of cancer doctors had recommended the drug to patients to relieve nausea from chemotherapy. The group also noted pot's emerging popularity among people with multiple sclerosis after studies suggesting the drug can reduce muscle spasticity.

But Murray said it is up to the Food and Drug Administration to decide when a drug has "accepted" medical use. To leave that up to doctors and patients, he said, is like "leaving it to fans in the Redskins' end zone to call a touchdown, instead of the referees."

Murray emphasized the negative health effects of Marijuana smoke (studies show a possible increase in oral cancers) and concerns about effects on the brain.

But Safe Access's executive director, Steph Sherer, and the group's San Francisco attorney, Joe Elford, pointed to a DEA administrative law judge's conclusion that pot was far safer than aspirin.

"A smoker would have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of Marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response," Judge Francis L. Young determined in 1988. Marijuana, he concluded, "has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States . . . and it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II."

The ruling was upheld by a federal appeals court but was overturned on procedural grounds.

Schedule I drugs are eligible for study under grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and pot from a government farm in Mississippi is occasionally provided for experiments. But advocates say the hurdles to winning a grant are extreme.

[Suetaznote: The pot from that Mississippi farm also goes out to 7 medical patients every month and has been for 22 years! Every 25 days, the patients get 300 pre-rolled joints. How can they give it out to 7 people and no one else?!]

"I can't understand why it isn't rescheduled," said John A. Benson Jr., the University of Nebraska Medical Center professor who led the institute study. Research on Marijuana could probably lead to an array of useful new medicines, he said in a telephone interview. "But politically, socially, and in general, there's just a reluctance to take this on."

[Suetaznote: So speak up and do your part to help get Marijuana re-scheduled. Phone/ Fax Slam to Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health & Human Services - Tuesday, Oct 5]

Mamabudz