One of my biggest disappointments with President Obama's transition to his second term was the announcement that Holder would be staying on, instead of turning the Justice Department over to someone else. I don't personally dislike Holder (I've never met the man), but I do strongly question his priorities during his time as the nation's Attorney General.
Granting New York physicians, PAs and NPs the authority to certify appropriate patients with debilitating conditions to use marijuana medicinally is the right thing to do. Here's why I, as a resident physician, think so.
Millennials, with their progressive political leanings, are voting alongside baby boomers, whose past experiences are leading them to question whether we should be following a different path with regard to marijuana.
President Obama made a joke about his marijuana use at last week's White House Correspondents' Dinner. It was just one joke, and it was actually pretty funny, but let's consider the context.
What started out as a plea for medical care to better serve patients has come down to dollars and cents.
Ultimately, the Congress must reform or repeal the marijuana laws, but elected representatives still feel no pressure to do so. There are 36 U.S. Senators that represent medical marijuana states, but none of them have ever supported a bill to allow their state's law to operate effectively.
Throughout early American history, marijuana use was legal under both federal and individual state laws. In fact, from 1850 to 1941, cannabis was included in the United States Pharmacopoeia as a recognized medicinal. By the end of 1936, however, all 48 states had enacted laws to regulate marijuana.
Just as Prohibition did little to stem the flow of alcohol into Americans' gullets, its repeal did little to resolve the problems that alcohol abuse bestows upon our collective psyche. Which is why, when I think about the future of marijuana in this country, it is with a devil on one shoulder, and an angel on the other.
Schedule I drugs have "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" and "a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision" -- a classification that holds marijuana more dangerous than cocaine, morphine, or methamphetamine.
For all these reasons and more, we celebrate the courage, humanity and optimism of Louis Rosner. We surround Larraine, his friends and family (including his much-adored Kira), in a cocoon love, admiration and unending appreciation.
Smoked cannabis, it turns out, is not medicine. We don't need to derive whatever therapeutic benefit it might have by smoking it any more than we need to smoke opium to get the effect of morphine.
Marijuana decriminalization is a tiny Band-Aid that has been touted as a quick fix for state governments across the country. Want to deal with overflowing prisons? Decriminalize. Want to make citizens happy? Decriminalize. Unfortunately, a Band-Aid is pretty bad at healing a bleeding artery
Barack Obama and Eric Holder continue to fight the War On Weed as if Nancy Reagan were in charge. Or Harry Anslinger, for that matter. This fight has been very quiet, for the most part -- Obama has given no major speeches touting his crackdown on marijuana -- but it has been a fierce one nonetheless.
Law-abiding patients possessing well below the state-approved amount of medical marijuana are forced to defend themselves in court for following the law. The Linden arrest policy is seemingly bent on circumventing Michigan's medical marijuana law.
This mayor's assumption about any person starting up a compassionate care center is that they are fronting for the illegal behavior they really want to engage in. Pretty pessimistic, Mr. Mayor. And completely absurd as well.
Each year the federal government confiscates about 2.4 million pounds of marijuana, which is later burned at costly "drug burns." All we have to do, as citizens of LA, is convince Republicans in D.C. to box it up and send it to us. We will make sure it is burned (just a little more slowly).
