The Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment is up for a vote today. It is likely to fail, but we’re hoping to get an increase in votes from 152 votes in 2003 and 148 votes in 2004. MPP figures we’ll get about 160 votes, with 218 needed to pass. I will consider it a personal success if my Rep. Wu changes his NO vote to a YES.
NBC11.com: Advocates for medical marijuana hope a recent setback in the Supreme Court will boost their strength in Congress, and lawmakers from California and New York plan to force a House vote on the issue Tuesday.
Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, and Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., have long supported allowing patients to use marijuana in states where it can be legally prescribed by a doctor. They will offer an amendment to a spending bill Tuesday that would bar federal authorities from making arrests in such cases.
“This is a responsibility Congress should face up to,” said Hinchey. He said the court’s decision is a call for legislators to act.
How much more bi-partisan can a measure be? A Republican and a Democrat. West Coast and East Coast. A medical marijuana state and a non-medical marijuana state.
And California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has in the past supported pot use by the sick, said the ruling means “it is now up to Congress to provide clarity.”
Absolutely. Justice Stevens said as much in the Raich ruling.
Opposition to Hinchey’s amendment is being organized by Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who heads the House drug policy subcommittee.
Souder dismisses the effort as a political, not scientific, attempt to gradually legalize marijuana. The lawmaker argues that if scientific data supports marijuana as a pain medication, it should be studied and vetted through the regular FDA process.
Hinchey dismisses such arguments. He said even if Congress isn’t ready to accept it, public opinion in the nation has rejected past concerns about marijuana usage leading to other forms of drug abuse.
Souder’s position is typical among the anti-medical marijuana forces. “Vet it through the FDA,” they say, but they never point out how we’ve tried that, but the the DEA and NIDA block any attempts to secure permits and cannabis to actually perform the trials. “The science isn’t there to support medical marijuana,” they say, but they never point out how they stymie all attempts to provide some meaningful science and ignore all of the science already compiled.
Furthermore, the federal government figured there was enough promise in medical marijuana that they’ve had a federal program for over twenty years to provide government marijuana to patients. The US pot farm is at the University of Mississippi. The program was shut down in the mid-80’s during the Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” hysteria, but the remaining patients were allowed to continue in the program. Irv Rosenfeld is one of seven remaining patients who can smoke a medical doobie right out in front of the White House without fear of prosecution.
If Rep. Souder really thinks there needs to be more scientific study, then by all means, let it happen. But he won’t, because he knows damn well what the science will show — that people like Montel Williams, Dr. Lester Greenspoon, Angel Raich, and thousands of other patients aren’t bullshitting — marijuana is medicine.
The science Souder and the Drug Warriors are waiting for lies in finding ways to protect the profits and eradicate the free-growing of marijuana medicine. GW Pharmaceuticals is testing a cannabis spray called Sativex, which requires production, packaging, markup, and yummy corporate profits. It’s liquid marijuana, with the exact same medicinal properties as the raw plant you can grow for free.
Andrea Barthwell is a spokeswoman for GW Pharmaceuticals. She was hired by the UK company to push for trials and adoption of the Sativex product in the US. Here’s what she had to say:
“Having this product available will certainly slow down the dash to make the crude plant material available to patients across the country,” said Barthwell. “Comparing crude marijuana to Sativex is like comparing a raging forest fire to the fire in your home’s furnace. While both provide heat, one is out of control.”
The company that pays Andrea a handsome salary touts so many of the medicinal properties of the product:
[C]ertain cannabinoids have been shown to have analgesic, anti-spasmodic, anti-convulsant, anti-tremor, anti-psychotic, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-emetic and appetite-stimulant properties and research is ongoing into neuroprotective and immunomodulatory effects.
Data from GW’s clinical trials confirm that its medicines are generally well tolerated. The trials have generated over 600 patient-years of safety data and adverse events have been predictable and generally well tolerated.
The relationship between the dose required for medicine and the dose required to kill somebody is about 20-40,000 times. A standard pharmaceutical ratio might be in the order of 50 or 100, so cannabis is in relative terms very well tolerated.
So apparently, Andrea and her company believe this marijuana stuff is medically effective and incredibly safe. Hmm, that seems so different from what Andrea used to say about marijuana back when she was George W. Bush’s assistant drug czar* [Major hat tip to Pete Guither at the DrugWarRant]
“I doubt it was in the scheme that the Great Creator would put one plant on Earth that could cure everything wrong with you,” said Barthwell as the audience laughed. [link]
“It is not a medicine,” she said. “You don’t know what’s in it,” she said. [link] “If there were compelling scientific and medical data supporting marijuana’s medical benefits that would be one thing,” Barthwell said. “But the data is not there. The claim of one individual who has used marijuana does not medical data make. Marijuana has not gone through the test of science because it is a botanical and it doesn’t have the same effect on every individual.” [link]
“While there are no proven benefits to marijuana use, there are many short- and long-term risks associated with marijuana use,” said Dr. Andrea Barthwell of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Even if smoking marijuana makes people feel better, that’s not enough to call it a medicine.” [link]
“As a crude plant, marijuana is so complex, unstable, and harmful that sensible physicians and researchers consider it unethical to expose individuals to the risks associated with smoking it.” [link]
“The people that have this as an agenda are not concerned for the sick or dying,” Barthwell said. [link]
Dr. Andrea Barthwell, deputy director for demand reduction at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, rejects the term “medical marijuana,” instead calling it “medical excuse marijuana.” She says those who push for laws like Maryland’s are “feeding off the pain and suffering of people” in pursuit of their real goal: complete legalization of marijuana. “There’s no basis in medical [knowledge] for taking a crude plant material and providing it as medicine,” she said. [link]
Interesting how someone’s opinion can change so drastically when there’s profit involved, huh?
(Full disclosure: I do support the complete legalization of marijuana. But why should that mean I’m “using” medical patients? How could I not stand up for the people who need marijuana to live? Conversely, how could you deny relief to sick and dying people simply because you oppose healthy adults getting high?)
The drug warriors will only allow medical marijuana when three things happen:
- commercial cannabis products like Sativex are perfected, patented, marketed, and sold,
- marijuana plants are genetically modified (like FrankenCorn) so that the seeds only produce one crop, and those seeds are only available commercially
- methods of eradicating wild marijuana (pests, herbicides, fungi) are perfected.
It’s not marijuana’s medicinal properties that are in question; it’s the free-growing nature of the plant that resists commercialization and taxation that is a problem. When corporations can make 10,000% markup on it, it will be legal.
* Does it bother anyone else that these days Russia has elections and America has czars?
