Lothar121

Should Medical Marijuana Be Legalized?
Doctors should be free to prescribe pain medication that works
Diane Glass and Shanti Feldhan | Fort Wayne Journal Gazette | 06/25/2005

Conservatives’ defense of states’ rights over the Goliath of federal government intervention verges on the pathological. So it seems a teeny bit hypocritical for Republicans in Congress to suddenly support the recent Supreme Court ruling that federally outlaws medical marijuana in the 10 states that had legalized it for medicinal purposes.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Enlightened conservative discourse on the topic of marijuana harkens back at least to 1937, when Harry Anslinger, U.S. commissioner of narcotics, testified: “marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Now, I’m not arguing that conservatives today would still champion Anslinger’s view, but our perceptions of marijuana remain laden with prejudice that should not be allowed to hinder medical progress. There’s a dark side to every medical issue.

But conservatives are so overly concerned with the “slippery slope” that they assume complex issues are unmanageable and that evil will undoubtedly triumph. That may be true in the pages of the Old Testament, but much of medical history is based on risk and experimentation. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have vaccinations, heart transplants or any number of routine medical procedures we benefit from today.

Administered under a doctor’s care, marijuana alleviates pain and the nausea experienced by cancer and AIDS patients, according to Institute of Medicine research. Admittedly, research on the therapeutic benefits of marijuana is still thin. Richard Cohen, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says that marijuana research is “blocked at every turn” and adds that renowned AIDS doctor Donald Abrams couldn’t obtain approval for research on marijuana as an appetite stimulant in AIDS patients for five years.

While some argue that medical marijuana can be addictive, few would contend it has the same dependency risk as the medications hospitals routinely administer for debilitating pain. Conservatives aren’t clamoring for hospitals to turn off the morphine drip for dying cancer patients because there’s a heroin problem in the world. But they want to draw a line in the sand over medical marijuana? Please. Show me the logic.

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