Negative Space: medical marijuana
- Cannabis as a Medicine
- Amazingly, as early as 1972 doctors were for all practical purposes prescribing marijuana to cancer patients as a matter of course; or, they left it to nurses to do so. By that same year, glaucoma patients had realized it helped them, too.
- Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine
- Lester Grinspoon & James B. Bakalar write a fascinating combination of medical history and survey on the medical uses of marijuana. The descriptions by patients, especially cancer and glaucoma patients, of what happens when they lose access to marijuana are heart-breaking.
- Medical marijuana reform
- Medical use cases, California, the DEA, and even Ohio.
- Medical marijuana: a policy ripe for the harvest
- Enough weasel words to make a fur coat; that pretty much describes the new Justice Department guidelines.
- Misplaced compassion: more deaths, less dignity
- I fear that a successful “death with dignity” movement will only exacerbate the bad laws and choices that result in excessive pain, and will result in a slippery slope towards more and more assisted suicides.
- The Once and Future Medicine
- Study after study shows marijuana as safe; survey after survey shows that some patients improve after using it and that doctors will recommend it. But even in 1993 we were willing to pay billions of dollars a year to keep prohibition going.
- Raising Peter McWilliams
- The United States government killed an author over a book. Buy that book now.
- Robert Randall 1948-2001
- Robert Randall led the fight for medical marijuana, out of necessity: without marijuana, he would have gone blind in the early seventies. With marijuana, he retained some sight until he died in 2001.
- Supreme Court rules against patients and states
- During the early years of the Internet, I heard someone say that the drug war is the root key to the bill of rights. That seems to be all the more true this week as the Supreme Court chose to ignore the federalist arguments in Gonzales v. Raich in order to acquiesce to the drug war.
- Tianamen Square and the Drug War
- Peter McWilliams, outspoken critic of the war on drugs, became a casualty in that war on June 14, 2000.
- Uses of Marijuana
- Solomon H. Snyder writes about the history of marijuana use, with an emphasis on medical use and mostly from the 1800s up. One of the interesting points he makes is that the hypodermic needle was part of what reduced interest in marijuana as a medicine. Marijuana isn’t soluble in water, and thus isn’t injectable. A drug that can’t be injected is of less interest to doctors more and more interested in miracle drugs.
- Weighing the Risks
- It is difficult to measure the toxicity of marijuana in humans, because no human has ever died from its use. Data from other animals indicates that it would take tens of thousands of doses at once to result in a “marijuana overdose”.
More Information
- Gonzales v. Raich (dissent)
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“Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.”
- Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine•
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This is a fascinating combination of medical history and survey on the medical uses of marijuana. The descriptions by patients, especially cancer and glaucoma patients, of what happens when they lose access to marijuana are heart-breaking.
- Feds won’t overrule states on marijuana laws
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“Nevertheless, this is still a good development. Not only does this forgo the spending of massive amounts of money in these fourteen states, it serves as an acknowledgment that states have sovereign rights themselves, including the right to make decisions about the legality of intoxicating substances.”
