My initial response to this argument is rage. I say "Tell that to Scott McKinney!" or any other person who is on their death bed and suffering, whether it be from AIDS wasting syndrome or from chronic vomiting induced by chemotherapy. Whether or not this is the first step in legalizing marijuana for everybody or not, there are people that are suffering from ailments that cannot be treated by any other medicine and they should absolutely not be denied medicine if it is availible. Please read more about illnesses that have been shown to have been helped by cannabis.
Many of the groups that support the legalization of medicinal cannabis are also in favor of total legalization, but that is not the goal of this page. Total legalization is a totally different issue. I merely want to see marijuana recieve the same treatment, and be subject to the same availibility as many other potentially dangerous drugs. A doctor can prescribe drugs that have been shown to be seriously dangerous, such as cocaine and opiates, but they cannot prescribe one that is a benign as marijuana. That is a crime.
One common question asked by legalization's opponents is, "Why can't these people just use Marinol (a synthetic version of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol that comes in a pill form)?" A simple answer, that is often given by chemotherapy patients, is that it is hard to get a pill to be effective when you can't stop vomitting. Bruce Bradley is an AIDS patient living in Portland, OR. He has been HIV+ since 1988 and when he was asked why he smoked marijuana he spread out his pill boxes on his coffee table. "This is AZT," he explained to a Willamette Week reporter. "This is Diflucan, an antifungal. This is Xanex, this is Zoloft, this is oral Gancyclovir...These drugs, what they do to your stomach and you appetite, you can just imagine. AZT is the drug from hell. If you can keep them down, you're lucky. The only thing that makes taking these drugs possible is marijuana."(citation) Dr. Tod Mikuriya wrote another article comparing Marinol and smoked cannabisthat explains this argument in more detail.
I ask the askers of this question, would moral, law-abiding citizens risk the serious consequences associated with marijuana use if they could get the help they need any other way? Founders of cannabis clubs across the nation are currently putting their lives at stake to provide sick people with medicine. Would this be done if Western medicine could provide an answer? No it would not.
Many of the people being treated for ailments varying from epilepsy to multiple sclerosis do not like the vast array of synthesized drugs that they must take to control their conditions. Is it morally wrong that these people desire a medicine that grows from the earth instead of being synthesized in a pharmaceutical company's laboratory? The many of synthesized medicines in our culture are imitations of compounds found in nature. In some cases carefully measured doses of a drug must be administered to assure positive results. It is virtually impossible to over-dose on marijuana,(citation) so why not let sick people take nature's course?
This is one of the arguments against rescheduling marijuana that has the least validity. The people that are seeking marijuana as medicine are doing just that and nothing else. Marijuana is already readily availible to recreational users on the street and at supposedly higher levels of quality. Robert Randall, the glaucoma patient who won international recognition after winning a case against the United States by using the defense of medical necessity when he was arrested for cultivating marijuana, and his practices effectively negate this argument. Though he is one of only 8 Americans that is legally supplied cannabis by the government, he smokes other marijuana he obtains from illicit sources because it is of higher quality.
By legalizing marijuana for sick people, we will send the message to our youth that we were wrong about our previous asessment of this drug and we are not above admitting past mistakes. We will tell them that sick people should not suffer for the sake of laws and that there are different types of drugs, some of which are very harmful and there are some that can be helpful if used properly.
The message we are now sending to the youth of America is one that is dangerously misleading. When we tell them that all drugs are bad and that they will all cause your ultimate demise, we are setting ourselves up to stumble. What happens when young Bobby, who has always believed what his teachers told him about marijuana and other drugs, sees one of his classmates at a party smoking a joint? Delinquent Danny, who smoked the joint, is captain of the football team and a member of the honor role. How can this be? "Maybe everything I've been told about drugs is a lie... I mean, they said marijuana kills brain cells and makes you lazy, but Danny seems to be doing just fine... Maybe cocaine and heroin aren't so bad either..." This is the dangerous kind of message we are currently sending our youth. Does it sound as confusing to you as it does to me?
Before penicillin, molds had never been used in Western medicine.
Look what it has done for us and where we might be if we had never
discoved its use. Just because something is different and new, doesn't
mean
it is necessarily wrong. Close-mindedness of this kind is what has kept
humanity from achieving its full potential in a number of arenas,
including medicine. There are other papers comparing
cannabis and penicillin that effectively illustrate this argument in
more detail.
Numerous studies have been done on the topic of alternate methods of smoked cannabis
ingestion. Marijuana doesn't have to be smoked from a cigarette, but
rather filtered through water or even vaporized rather than burned.