GARLAND, Texas – For 22 years, Tim Timmons has fought the pain of multiple sclerosis.

Prescribed medicine couldn’t stop the spasms or help him sleep, he said. Ultimately, Timmons said, relief came in the form of illegal marijuana, which is why he is now pushing for the drug to be legalized.

While 13 states have legalized medical marijuana, Texas isn’t one of them. Timmons said he wants that to change since he feels like he’s been forced to support organized crime.

“I have to support black market crime, but they’re the ones forcing me to do it,” he said. “I don’t want to support organized crime more than anyone would.”

Studies have shown that marijuana can ease muscle spasms and numb pain.

The Texas legislature voted down the last three medical marijuana bills that would have given doctors the authority to prescribe the drug.

In the past, lawmakers defended the ban on medical marijuana by citing the American Medical Associations’ position on the topic. But, after 72 years, that position may be changing. The AMA announced last Tuesday that it’s reversing its policy of classifying the drug as a Schedule 1 narcotic, stating that the issue needs to be reviewed. The announcement was in response to a new medical report by the AMA’s Council on Science and Public Health, which detailed various medical benefits.

Many pharmacists and doctors argue that those benefits can be obtained through legalized drugs that contain the active ingredient in marijuana, THC.

“What they fail to understand is there is THC available in a legal dose called Marinol,” said Donna Barsky, a Plano pharmacist. “It’s a prescription item. All a doctor has to do is write a prescription for it.”

Opponents of medical marijuana say it’s healthier because smoking the drug can pull unhealthy substances into the lungs.

“Marinol just plain doesn’t work, or causes worse situations than you had starting off,” Timmons said.

Another medical marijuana bill is expected to be filled in the Texas legislature in 2011. by Steve Stoler Source.

“If we were talking about medical use of marijuana, THC, or cannabinoids,” Clinton administration drug czar Barry McCaffrey said on CNN last week, “I’d be 100 percent for it.”

For anyone familiar with McCaffrey’s history, this opening whopper made it hard to pay attention to anything else he had to say. Here is McCaffrey in August 1996 on the subject of medical marijuana:

There is not a shred of scientific evidence that shows that smoked marijuana is useful or needed. This is not medicine. This is a cruel hoax that sounds more like something out of a Cheech and Chong show.

At a December 1996 press conference, McCaffrey was asked whether there was “any evidence…that marijuana is useful in a medical situation.” His reply was unequivocal: “No, none at all.”

While research since then has added to our knowledge of marijuana’s medicinal properties, there was plenty of evidence at the time McCaffrey made these dismissive remarks that the plant is medically useful, especially in fighting nausea and restoring appetite but also in treating various kinds of pain. You might conclude that McCaffrey just didn’t know what he was talking about then and has since read up on the subject, except that he is still playing the same games.

Although he’s “100 percent for” the medical use of marijuana, McCaffrey told Lou Dobbs it isn’t necessary to let patients use the plant because they already have access to the prescription drug Marinol, an FDA-approved capsule containing a synthetic version of THC, marijuana’s main active ingredient. (Marinol also was around back in 1996, and the double-blind clinical trials necessary to get it approved conclusively showed that McCaffrey was wrong when he insisted there was no evidence that marijuana is medically effective.) But right after presenting Marinol as a perfect substitute for marijuana, McCaffrey cut it down, saying “it’s available for patients” but “not much used” because “it’s not a very good drug.” In fact, that is an assessment you will often hear from medical marijuana users who have tried Marinol. But if McCaffrey delved into the reasons many patients prefer marijuana to Marinol—e.g., it’s easier for people suffering from severe nausea, it takes effect much faster, the dosage is easier to control, and the psychoactive effects are less disturbing—he would be making the case for medical marijuana. Which he would be totally for if he weren’t completely against it.

McCaffrey’s stance against medical marijuana went beyond denying the evidence in its favor. As the Cato Institute’s Tim Lynch pointed out in the same segment of Dobbs’ show, McCaffrey helped spearhead the Clinton administration policy of threatening to prosecute doctors or take away their prescribing privileges simply for discussing marijuana’s benefits with their patients. That policy, which in some respects was more extreme than anything the Bush administration later did in this area, was slapped down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on First Amendment grounds. Source.