Today, in the historic first online town hall, President Obama fielded questions from nearly a hundred thousand people online. One of the most popular questions, and indeed, one of the most popular questions in any forum that lets people vote on what matters to them, was about whether legalizing marijuana would help improve the economy and job creation.
Chuckling, the President said: "I don't know what this says about the online audience, but [laughing] this was a fairly popular question, we want to make sure it was answered. The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy."
I've never smoked pot in my life, indeed I've never smoked anything at all. Despite that, a couple years ago, I needed a double lung transplant. My lungs were scarred beyond repair due to side effects from radiation treatments I'd had nearly a decade earlier in my two battles with cancer.
I lost a lot of weight in this process, to the point where it was life-threatening. My lung doctor suggested "marinol," the synthetic (and legal) version of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. I laughed at him, and asked "Was this going to make me stupid? I don't want to be a pothead!" He said one of his patients put on 40 pounds with it. I didn't have any other option.
It worked. Marinol allowed me to put on enough weight to get me out of the danger zone until we figured out the underlying problem was a bleeding ulcer in my stomach, a reaction to one of the anti-rejection drugs I was taking for the transplant.
Pot saved my life. It's a miracle drug, even the crappy non-organic kind made in a lab.
The President will be asked this question again, and maybe next time he won't laugh at us.
UPDATE: Here's the video:
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"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts
to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime
out of things that are not crimes."
Abraham Lincoln
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Abraham.Lincoln.Quote.
563D
"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which
our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Abraham.Lincoln.Quote.410A
is it because of the timber industry?
is it because of the cotton industry?
is it because of the pharmaceutical industry?
YES.
LEGALIZE IT ! DECRIMINALIZE IT !
-boggle-
Marijuana has the medical properties to help millions of people in a way that other methods don't do as well. (ie take a pill that gives you a whole slew of other problems) I don't think a society is free if we limit it to what people with addictive personalities can handle.
You are arguing a perfect example of why we need government regulation, age restrictions, quality and potency labeling, all of the things that an illicit market will never achieve.
This is an issue he will never touch. As there are many closet pot smokers in this country, there are also a lot of closet legalization proponents.
You don't have to be black to support civil rights
You don't have to be homnosexual to support gay rights
You don't have to be pregnant to support abortion rights
AND you don't have to use pot to support decriminalization of a weed.
My doctor proscribed Marinol for my sleeping problem. Ten capsule cost $300.00. And the capsules were effective for a couple of three hours, My pension check barely covers my living expenses so I could not afford the Marinol, so I suffer from constant fatigue because a lack of sufficient sleep.
And I am reluctant to buy the real marijuana and risk jail time.
The pharmaceutical companies are gangster organizations that control a beneficial herb that grows like wildfire in almost any climate, and the politicians have been reaping fortunes by keeping it limited from a free capitalistic market; another victory for free capitalism like the Oil cartels blocking renewable energy projects or the Federal Reserve System manipulating our monetary system with which they are sucking the wealth from Americans a decade at a time so as to be non perceptual by the average working Middle class, and all the other benefits of a free capitalistic market like wars for oil and imprisoning half the prison population for non violent crimes like smoking weed.
Hooray for Capitalism and Boo for humanism.
I've known pediatric cancer patients who've taken Marinol and while it's helped them, there are some side effects and the good effects doesn't last very long. The major Children's Hospital here in Chicago doesn't use it because these effects can get pretty bad in certain individuals. With organic THC, you can control the dose you get. People in the UK have access to an oral THC spray that is extracted from real plants and it works great. This would be a good substitute for people that would rather not smoke.
I hope you can get some relief. Consider moving to a state where they legalized medical marijuana or reach out to NORML.org in your state to help change that laws there.
http://www.mpp.org/legislation/state-by-state-medical-marijuana-laws.html
and they're NOT getting any more from me until pot is nationally decriminalized, at the least.
[can i do that?]
The tendency of allopathic medicine to isolate a single compound from an herb is driven by the profit motive: plants cannot be patented, but single chemicals can. The other driving force behind this is the desire to make more powerful drugs, e.g. heroin in place of tincture of opium poppy, as allopathic medicine has always valued the "heroic" modalities of treatment for their dramatic effect - enemas and blood-letting were once popular.
In the case of cannabis, CBD (cannabidiol) has a modulating action that reduces the anxiety and dysphoria sometimes seen with pure THC (Marinol), and so makes the effect tolerable for many people who do not respond well to THC alone. CBD also plays an important immune modulating role, and seems to be important in the benefits of cannabis currently being studied in inflammatory bowel disease as well as certain types of cancers.
There is nothing more "scientific" about giving isolated chemicals in place of whole herbs or extracts, and in many cases means throwing away much of the therapeutic effect. It simply fits better with our (clearly unsuccessful) inclination to reduce complicated problems to fit our mechanistic, reductivist model of human health and physiology.
is that what you want ?
Control is an icy road.
Tobacco on the other hand. A drug that they admit is "The Most Addicting Drug Known To Man" by their own admittion, remains legal, over taxed and does anyone question this?
This "War on Drugs" is the one of the many ways that the American people have been scammed by a government that is obviously working hand and hand with the South American drug cartels to keep drugs illegall. If they were legal the drug cartels would fall apart. Truth or not I ask You!!
"Do you so soon forget, that this nation was built and formed by people who sought to escape the same oppressive government that you yourselfs have managed to re-create?"
and you were already lucky to have a neurologist like her!!
most teachers and neighbors that I know enjoy the social aspect of smoking weed..
instead we are all closet cannabis smokers
In 1980 the US had 41,000 prisoners. Today we have over 1/4 million. Thank you DEA for filling our prison with non-violent citizens who were minding their own business hurting no one!
The DEA=Amerikan Gestapo!
America, free my ass!!!!!
My understanding is that Federal law supersedes state law, in this case. You'd think our anti-federal, Republican pals would support state law in this case...