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Now that the federal government has said it won’t prosecute medicinal marijuana users and providers in states where it is legal, we should be taking a hard look at what implications its use might have on our society and our medical system.
I, for one, am not opposed to a system that allows the medicinal use of marijuana, because I believe that its benefits – as a prescription drug – outweigh its negatives, at least in comparison to other legally available drugs.
I’m not a medicine-taker. I take a pill if I have a horrible headache and can’t move, but my personal philosophical choice is to let my immune system work naturally and suffer through minor pains and the bug of the month. I’m not saying everyone should do what I do, but for most of my life I’ve been averse to taking prescription medicine.
For those suffering intractable pain or coping with the other ailments for which medicinal marijuana may be prescribed, though, I don’t think it’s within the government’s scope of responsibilities to decide which safe, effective drug is best for consumers. It should be left up to doctors.
The government should, however, regulate medicinal marijuana in the same way that it regulates any other prescription drug to ensure that use of the drug is only by those who really need it. That is where I believe the system in California in particular is lacking.
Do a Google search for medicinal marijuana and one of the ads that comes up next to your search results may be from “Greenway University,” a “college” that licenses medicinal marijuana growers, dispensers and users. The Internet is chock full of people willing to give you your pot card. If pot is going to be legal for medical use, I think it should be prescribed the same way any other drug is prescribed – by a doctor – and sold through a legitimate pharmacy, not in a converted Burger King with pot leaf insignias on the door.
Our country’s doctors can currently prescribe some extremely powerful drugs – pills that dull severe pain, “help” with depression and usually have some kind of side effect. I’ve suffered from restless leg syndrome since I was a teenager, and the prescription drug on the market for my affliction (which I’m not taking) “may result in an increased desire to gamble.”
Marijuana definitely has its side effects – many coming from the action of smoking alone – but every drug does. Want to take Ambien CR to help your insomnia? You might be at risk of walking, eating or driving while not fully awake with no memory of the event, according to the manufacturer. Want to take Vasotec to treat your high blood pressure? Some users have reported losing their sense of taste. Planning a trip to Africa and taking Lariam to prevent malaria? One of the reported side effects is hallucinations and feelings that people are against you.
You can also get paranoia from pot, but if the most common short-term side effect is an increased urge to watch “Spongebob Squarepants” and eat marshmallows, I think a terminally ill cancer patient will be OK with that.
The way I see it, there are two major problems with medicinal marijuana: that the only seemingly effective way to ingest it currently is to smoke it, and that since it has been a recreational drug for so long, it may be difficult to keep legally grown pot confined to only legal users. Certainly some of it will slip into the hands of illegal users.
But then, we aren’t doing a great job of keeping illegal pot out of the hands of illegal users anyway.
According to government surveys, nearly 25 million Americans have used marijuana recreationally in the last year. Worldwide it is the fourth most popular drug of choice, behind alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. I don’t support legalization of marijuana for recreational use, but I don’t believe that a comparatively small number of legal, medicinal users will adversely affect the number of illegal users.
Most importantly, though, a growing number of doctors, including the American College of Physicians (the second-largest group of medical doctors in the country), have said that marijuana should be available to patients with certain afflictions. It makes more sense to me to allow doctors to make decisions as to what is best for their patients than a government panel of bureaucrats. If an individual doctor doesn’t believe in prescribing medical marijuana, then he doesn’t have to prescribe it if there is an alternative that he feels is better.
Bryan Clapper is general manager of Leader Publications. He can be reached at 687-7700 or at bryan.clapper@leaderpub.com.