March 8, 2010 -I’ve never been a big fan of illegal drugs, let me say that up front right now. I hate to even take aspirin for a headache. However, after some careful reading on the subject, aided and abetted by some of my older pot-head friends, I am changing my mind about just why legalizing pot is an idea whose time has come. There are a lot of very good reasons – moral, ethical and economical – why this should be done now and as soon as possible.

Currently, the Controlled Substances Act does not recognize the difference between medicinal and recreational use of marijuana. For a surprisingly large number of Americans, though, marijuana is just like any other prescription; it’s a way to escape from chronic pain. And, given the stupidity of the FedGov law as it is currently written regarding sale and possession of pot, even patients who obtain marijuana legally in their state can face federal prosecution.

Cannabis has been used to treat HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, chronic pain, arthritis and pains associated with aging. Something else that pot helps with is asthma prevention, and it also eases glaucoma. Especially for older Americans, cannabis can be the best prescription for their pain. Something else that people overlook with pretty appalling regularity is that being in chronic pain also robs a person of not only the will to eat, but also the will to live. “Marijuana munchies” is not just a figure of speech; using marijuana to help control chronic pain also helps to ease the truly horrific estivation that comes with being a victim of the diseases mentioned above. Using pot makes you hungry. When you’re hungry, you eat. When you eat regularly, you tend to live longer. That’s one of the best side effects that I personally can think of for a non-addictive drug. SO, you’re zoned out for a while. A person using narcotic painkillers is just as zoned, and the narcotics kill appetite.

In a study conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, doctors found that nicotine was far more serious than marijuana on many levels. So, if marijuana were objectively and fairly compared with the effects and side effects of many other prescription drugs, it would become clear just how beneficial of a substance it is. Other countries are recognizing the benefits of medicinal cannabis as well. Canada, Chile and the Netherlands have decriminalized or legalized medical marijuana, and countries such as Australia and Belgium are conducting trials on the benefits of medical marijuana. It’s time for the United States to shed its stereotypical view of marijuana and recognize the many medicinal benefits.

Morally speaking, using pot is a LOT less bad for the person using it than smoking cigarettes. It’s a LOT better than drinking. Ethically speaking, anything that relieves pain and suffering without making the person taking the drugs worse in a good many ways is good. Then, too, there are the economic benefits.

I can just hear the squawking now. ECONOMIC BENEFITS?

Yes, ECONOMIC BENEFITS. Let me repeat that: MONEY. Lots of money.

The late, great Milton Friedman, the Nobel Laureate, former Reagan advisor, and esteemed scholar associated with the very conservative Hoover Institution, was among hundreds of important economists who argue that pot should be legalized and taxed, and that the income from such taxation could generate billions in new revenues and billions more in enforcement savings. If you live in California, what would you rather have? Pot smokers whose cases are tying up the legal system? Or better health care and roads thanks to a marijuana tax? The economic case for legalizing marijuana is as compelling as it has ever been and, in a time of great changes in the interaction between government and the governed, it would not be the worst thing in the world to have a serious national debate on the topic.

Currently over 100 million Americans have used or have admitted using pot. Thinking people do their own research, and, many times, have concluded that the laws against marijuana are arbitrary. It has been proven that legalizing will cost taxpayers far less than we have to pay currently in order to keep marijuana illegal. In fact, Portugal legalized marijuana in 2001 and it has since proven effective, in that crime rates and drug use among youth have significantly decreased. In fact, most who supported legalization were middle-aged citizens, rather than young adults.

So, who’s really holding up the legalization of pot? Aside, that is, from the FedGov and the National Drug Czar, that is?

Well, for one thing, cigarette companies and Big Pharma; my guess is that they’d be the ones most concerned. Big Pharma does NOT want people to have access to benign naturally occurring substances that provide much the same relief, without side-effects or breaking the bank that their reconstituted synthetics might provide. Think about it: sell a carton of 200 joints for $50.00, and throw out the narcotics. Might cost the drug companies a bit, wouldn’t you think? The FDA has recently claimed that there are no medical benefits to marijuana use. However, at the same time, the FDA has approved synthetic versions of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active ingredient in marijuana, for use in high-priced prescription drugs. Surprisingly, the FDA also lists marijuana to be as dangerous as heroin & PCP. If nothing else, this would convince me that the so-called experts are either stupid, blind, or, in all probability, so deep in Big Pharma’s hineys that the agency heads are actually eating breakfast, lunch and dinner out of Big Pharma’s stomach.

Why bother with a cheaper, more cost-effective REAL substance when you can make a synthetic for 5 times the price? Where’s the benefit to the general public in *THAT*?

Also, let’s not forget that the tobacco industry won’t just step aside to let a brand new business take over the market. Should marijuana become legal, who do you think will first start the mass manufacturing? My guess of Marlboro is a good one. Camel is a decent choice, too. Only problem that I can see with this is that all cigarettes have additives, including an extra jolt of nicotine to keep you puffing. What’s to stop the tobacco companies from doing the same thing with a commercially marketed joint?

“Stoned” Joe Camel, anybody?

And then, of course, there’s the FedGov’s interest in keeping the War on Drugs going. The only violence associated with pot is the extreme violence used by Mexican drug traffickers to get it into this country. Legalize pot, and one of their most lucrative markets is gone. The DEA and other agencies have grown fat over the last 30 years fighting their phony “war on drugs.” Trillions in tax payer dollars have been doled out to agencies to wage their war. The so-called “war on drugs” has become a massive government funded industry that jealously guards its funding. Any talk of legalizing pot sends the bureaucracies into an uproar as they foresee dramatic funding cuts, and fewer thermal gizmos that detect leafy green plants in someone’s backyard. We can start by playing the war on drugs game a lot smarter. We can stop the stupid, hysterical silliness and legalize pot. Then, and only then, MAYBE the DEA can focus its attention on real drugs like meth, cocaine, crack, heroine, ecstasy, and the growing prescription drug problem.

Marijuana should be legalized, taxed, and fall under the same rules as alcohol. That means 21 and up to buy it. Those under 21 found with it should be ticketed as they are for alcohol. Those found to be driving under the influence of marijuana should be given DUI’s as they would have been had they been drinking.

The horrific violence of Mexican cartels, which make perhaps as much as 75 percent of their money from marijuana (in Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard’s estimation), the budget meltdown in California, overcrowded prisons and overstretched law enforcement, all of these should be factored into legalization. In April of 2008, Representative Barney Franks co-sponsored, with Ron Paul, the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008, which would have lifted federal penalties for possessing 3.5 ounces or less. That bill never made it to committee. However, Frank and Paul introduced another bill that did reach the committee stage: the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009, which would end the ban on cultivation of non-psychoactive hemp. “I think people have gotten more skeptical of government intervention,” Frank said. “And I think people have seen the ineffectiveness of the all-out-war approach to all this.”

“Change we can believe in – and it all starts with just a TINY bit of common sense. Source.

As an $8.7-million state research effort comes to an end, investigators report that cannabis can significantly relieve neuropathic pain and reduce muscle spasms in MS patients. More research is urged.

February 18, 2010 – With an innovative but little-known state program to study medical marijuana about to run out of money, researchers and political supporters said Wednesday the results show promise.

“It should take all the mystery out of whether it works. We’ve got the results,” said former state Sen. John Vasconcellos, who led the effort to create the 10-year-old Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research.

The center has nearly spent its $8.7-million allocation, sponsoring 14 studies at UC campuses, including the first clinical trials of smoked marijuana in the United States in more than two decades.

Much of the research is still underway or under review, but five studies have been published in scientific journals. Four showed that cannabis can significantly relieve neuropathic pain and one found that vaporizers are an effective way to use marijuana. Another study, submitted for publication, found that marijuana can reduce muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis patients.

Dr. Igor Grant, a neuropsychiatrist at UC San Diego who is the center’s director, called the pain studies “pretty convincing” and urged the federal government to pay for additional clinical studies.

With the state stuck in a daunting budget crisis, even the center’s advocates do not expect more support. “There is no state money at this time, unfortunately,” said state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

Since the center opened in 2000, medical marijuana use has spread rapidly in California, driven largely by doctors’ willingness to recommend it for a wide range of ailments. But little research has been done on its effectiveness, in part because researchers must win approval from federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Grant said federal officials did not try to thwart the research, but noted that approval typically took 18 months. “We basically did a lot of the work for investigators in terms of jumping through the hoops,” he said.

The unusual scientific program, approved by the Legislature in 1999, was the result of negotiations between Vasconcellos and former Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. The two were vigorous adversaries in the contentious debate over the 1996 initiative that approved the use of medical marijuana.

Lungren, now a Republican congressman from Gold River, argued that Californians were moving ahead without the research needed to show whether marijuana was useful as a medicine. “I said at that time, if we had scientific evidence, we ought to be guided by scientific evidence,” he said.

“I was shrewd enough to pick up on Lungren’s ‘Let’s do research,’ ” Vasconcellos said. Lungren said he was shrewd enough to accept.

Lungren said the results are helpful, but underscore that medical marijuana should be more tightly controlled and used only where it has been proven effective.

The center funded a range of research, including six studies of whether marijuana reduces neuropathic pain, which is caused by a damaged or abnormally functioning nervous system. A UC San Francisco study of patients with HIV-related pain found that 52% of those who smoked marijuana experienced significant relief.

“I think that clearly cannabis has benefits,” said Dr. Donald I. Abrams, a San Francisco oncologist who led that study. “This substance has been a medicine for 2,700 years; it only hasn’t been a medicine for 70.”

Abrams doubts that the research will alter the debate over marijuana. “Science has not been driving this train for a long time now. I think it’s all politics,” he said.

Grant was more optimistic: “We have a different administration, and they are looking at the science basis of many things.”

He said the research shows marijuana should no longer be classified as a Schedule I drug. “It is not a drug without value,” he said. By John Hoeffel. Source.