Captain Ed has an interesting piece on the same issue over at Captain's Quarters, where he makes what I think is an important point about the right way to go about getting marijuana legal for sick people verus the fast way.... I'm interested as to what your take on his reasoning is.
I think all the hyped-up blather about medicinal uses of cannabis has been promoted by people who will use any excuse whatsoever to promote social use of a potentially dangerous controlled substance that has been rightfully outlawed by the US government.
If usage of this drug does indeed have curative effects beneficial to patients with supposedly otherwise incurable brain tumors or other maladies, then let these people be treated in proper medical clinics with tested drugs utilizing THC extracted from the cannabinol which is the presumably active component of various grades of hemp.
And if such a beneficient drug can be adsorbed into the body through the lungs in the form of smoke fumes, (which I suspect is a dubious form of treatment as likely to induce lung cancer in the same way that smoking tobacco does) then the same effect can be achieved by injection or injestion, administered by trained and licensed personnel in a medical clinic or hospital.
Or, for that matter, it could even be inserted into the body in the form of suppositories. Which is perhaps more appropriate for those following this utterly ridiculous argument of legalizing it as a form of treatment. One could even name these "Preparation M", and envision the following clinical dialog:
PATIENT:
"Well, doctor, do you have my marijuana prescription ready, so that I can treat my incurable (brain tumor, stomach cancer, etc, etc, whatever)?
PHYSICIAN:
"Yes, ma'am. Pick up your Preparation M prescription from the clinic's pharmacy. Take two, shove them up you ass, and call me in the morning."
"Thank you, doctor."
"You're welcome."
But you say you want to treat your unfortunate, dying self amidst the love of your support group, lounging around '60s style on the living room floor, while the sounds of the Grateful Dead waft through your ears and into your consciousness? And clinical treatment settings of your favorite drugs are too cold, institutional and sterile? To which I reply,
Of course many of the proponents of medical marijuana want marijuana completely legal. What of it? Ours is a consitutional democracy, not a despotic democracy.
Whatever advocates are also advocating doesn't change the fact that in banning marijuana the way that Congress has done is using such a ridiculous definition of "interstate commerce" that they might as well just repeal the 10th amendment.
"I think all the hyped-up blather about medicinal uses of cannabis has been promoted by people who will use any excuse whatsoever to promote social use of a potentially dangerous controlled substance that has been rightfully outlawed by the US government."
Are we talking about cannabis or tobacco? Just checking. Cause if the federal government actually knew that smoking was potentially dangerous to its citizens, how could they NOT outlaw it.
I agree with Dean on this one. It is immoral to oppose medicinal marijuana, and flat out hypocritical if you are a smoker or drinker and oppose its legalization and regulation for recreational use.
Arnold, define "rightfully." The commerce clause doesn't say anything now that it didn't also say in 1919, when everyone knew the federal government needed a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol. Was there a marijuana amendment that I missed?
Marijuana is hardly a dangerous substance. Far more crime is caused by users of alchohol, even when considering that more people use alcohol, than users of marijuana. As far as I'm concerned, the federal government(emphasis on FEDERAL) has no authority to legislate the use of any such substance - if you disagree please point out where in the Constitution that it is given that authority. If states want to do it, fine, I still think it's stupid to ban such a substance, especially when the ban does more harm than good.
Back during FDR's day the Fed's stopped following the Constitution with regard to interstate commerce. The only thing about marijuana that the Fed's can constitutionally regulate is when someone crosses a state line to produce, consume or trade it.
Arnold is correct that folks are using medical treatment as a way to bring recreational use in. OK. People recreationally abuse 'ludes, oxy-contin, etc. These matters should be handled by the states, not the Feds. It a state decides it wants to allow recreational uses of drugs, so be it. The only thing the Feds can do is control interstate commerce.
Why do you think we had to amend the Constitution to prohibit alcohol at a Federal level?
I'm with Dean, here. Conservatives need to follow the law.
"Don't blame me for all the tobacco and liquor wipeouts. I haven't ingested tobacco smoke for 32 years, drink only with my wife at home, and even that is limited to an occasional beer or shot of slivovica. You want ban alcohol again? Be my guest. I don't give a damn. But controlled substances? Forget it. Now and forever."
My libertarian self says:
"Okay. Those are your bodies. Go do with them whatever you like. Ingest whatever substance you want. Which is okay, so long as I don't ever have to pay for picking up your OD'd corpse from the street and parking it in some morgue.
And as long as you can guarantee a lot better than the lushes do, that you never ever will operate a motor vehicle, pilot an aircraft, or handle a loaded firearm, while under the influence of your favorite recreational whizbang drug."
But there's another Arnold Harris that says:
"More than anything in this life, I hate bullshit in all its forms. So just don't lie about your motives. Want to get stoned? Fine. Just don't come up with some line of shit about the wondrous way that playing Captain Toke with the hippies is going to cure your malignant ailment any better than some authenticated medical treatment."
Call it a trivial point, but advocates of medical marijuana don't claim it cures anything. They make two claims - first, that it helps terminally ill patients deal with the side effects of chemotherapy, and second, that it provides relief from pain without the side effects of other medication. I'd agree that many pushing the issue are looking for a back door to legalization, and it would be better if they were honest about their motives. But if the people of California want to legalize pot smoking for anyone having a bad hair day, I don't see anything in the text of the Constitution giving the federal government the power to say nyet. Either federalism is important or it isn't.
I never expected to find myself disagreeing with Arnold Harris while agreeing with Xrlq, but here I must agree with Xrlq, Wince and Nod, Chris Lansdown, Tim the Soldier, and Dean.
I can see that Arnold does not like hippies. I can understand that very well. I prefer to be "square" myself. I do not smoke marijuana, and only have a gin and tonic on rare occasions these days. I keep my hair extremely short. I prefer Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Wagner to "rock" music.
But if somebody wants to smoke dope or be a hippie, that's their right, the government has no right to stop them. If a woman want to be a prostitute, I think she should be free do it. I don't have to approve of it, but the government has no business telling people how to live their lives.
And, most definitely, the federal government has no such business. The Tenth Amendment explicitly limits the functions and powers of the federal government to those specifically delegated to it in the Constitution and leaves the rest up to the states or to the individual.
The much-hated Ninth Amendment, in addition, sets other, even more powerful and stringent limits on government vis-a-vis the individual and his or her inalienable rights. But, even if you won't respect the Ninth Amendment, you must at the very least respect the Tenth instead of grabbing for an all-powerful federal super-state to micro-manage our lives. That's the kind of thing our Founding Fathers rebelled against in the first place.
As to the medical uses of marijuana, I'm going to defer to those who have far more authority in that area than I do: the doctors.
I personally have no issue with marijuana legalization. Don't know as I'd use it even then, but feel the laws governing marijuana are ridiculous, as I've known many very successful, motivated, decent individuals who use it. Whereas harder drugs can seriously and permanently impair brain function, reasoning, and even result in genetic damage, marijuana is about as unsafe as either alcohol or tobacco.
As for its medical value, thats for physicians to decide as a professional matter, as most politicians are hardly competent to judge pharmaceutical benefits.
JFH: I can't see why it'd be unconstitutional to ban people using it in certain jobs, any more than it's unconstitutional to ban people (via regulation or company policy, say) from piloting aircraft while drunk.
As for "conservatives", well, I'm sure plenty of them are anti-pot, but William F. Buckley and the National Review folks are at least pro-legalisation.
MJ's time of action in humans is around 4 hours. About 30% of MJ users become addicted. MJ addiction, however is more akin to tobacco addiction, rather than cocaine or heroine in terms of type of mechanism (even though they all effect different neurotransmitter systems)
As far as function is concerned, it is a mild depressant and a mild hallucinogen that may act by mimicing the effects of endocannabinoids, which are chemically similar to delta-9-THC and made by the body and may be involved in the "pleasure system", WETF that may be.
Aside from it's drug activity, because MJ is smoked, it also has similar if not greater somatic consequences than tobacco because there are no regulations on what you can use in growing buds, so you'd probably be inhaling lots of nasty sh*t along with your THC.
caltechgirl - MJ smoking is generally less dangerous than tobacco smoking. In general, MJ does not have stuff added to it like cigarettes(such as tar, one of the worse carcinogens in them).
"If marajuana is legal, would it be unconstitutional for an employer or the government ban it for certain jobs?"
Yes and no. Just as a brain surgeon can't show up wasted before he or she probes into my melon, they won't be allowed to be stoned on duty. Drunk on duty, high on duty, all the same. You could use it off duty, but certain professions that ban the use during or hours prior to work would still apply to marijuana.
Use of psychotropic drugs would disqualify someone from serving in certain military occupational specialities.
On a lighter note, Walmart shelf stockers would benefit greatly from recreational use as it would take the edge off. Damn, those 10 gallon jugs of Cranapple-Orange Whip/Whizz Frappe sure put a hurtin' on my back.
If it ever became legal, I personally wouldn't use it, but I would open an all-night snack food delivery service immediately.
As far as sick people are concerned, the idea is that MJ can disconnect the experience of pain with the emotional consequences of pain. That is, you feel pain, but could care less (at least some MDs and researchers think so). Patients report less pain and nausea and better qulity of life after they toke up.
These are desperately ill people, for the most part. As far as I know, MJ is only prescribable for end-stage terminal cancers (where pain makes life unbearable) and glaucoma, which is the only disease that I've read about where delta-9-THC specifically may help with the actual disease, although I don't recall how.
I'm all for any kind of palliative care that helps these people live out the ends of their lives more fully.
That being said, there should also be strict rules about sharing your prescription buds as long as it is illegal. I'm a fan of legalizing MJ and regulating it and taxing the crap out of it, myself, but as long as it remains illegal, we better make sure that medical MJ isn't just an end around the current laws on the books.
I'll all for the States rights aspect and hope the USSC strikes a blow against big government. I think medical marijuana is a scam intended to provide a legal loophole, but since I don't mind legalizing pot, who cares? It wouldn't bother me one bit to see marijuana regulated and taxed the way alchohol is. I draw the line on the next tier of drugs however, although I don't think we'll see any states legalizing the harder drugs.
JFH, Sigivald and Tim: it's not "unconstitutional" for an employer to ban anything. Subject to very few exceptions, none of which apply here, the Constitution does not apply to private individuals. It may well be illegal for employers to prohibit employees from using legally-prescribed medicine on their own time, but if so, I'd be willing to bet there's an exception for drugs that interfere with one's ability to do one's job.
Sigivald: I know Buckley is pro-legalization, but I don't think everyone at NRO is.
CTG: I don't think it makes sense to compare the relative dangers of smoking pot vs. tobacco, as smokers don't consume the two in equal or even comparable quantities. If you smoke two joints a day, you're a hard-core pothead. If you smoke two tobacco cigarettes a day, you barely qualify as a smoker at all.
I'll be watching this decision too, Dean. I'm an ex-Democrat, thinking about registering Republican (if only to fight to limit the influence of the social conservatives in the party).
You know, though, the social conservatives, the vast majority anyway, aren't a bunch of frothing Torquemadas. They're the sweetest people you'd ever want to meet...
...but they're still wrong about some of this stuff.
"Republicans: All of us are wrong on tons of small things, but we don't really get worked up about it so long as you agree on one or more of the Really Big Things"
That seems to describe the Party that can run the gamut from John Derbyshire to Bob Novak to George W. Bush to Arnold, to me. Does it seem (approximately) accurate to other Republicans than myself? Howabout those who are 'non-Democrats', or Disenchanted Democrats?
I think I'll join the no bullshit forum of one of the other commenters and as well perhaps join in with a few choruses of Mick Jagger singing,
"I can't get no satisfaction stupefaction.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no."
"When I'm watchin' my TV
and that man comes on to tell me
how white my shirts can be.
Well he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say."
"I can't get no satisfaction stupefaction.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no."
What a stupid song that was.
Okay back to the MJ debate.
Medical marijuana as a plausible pharmeceutical medical treatment is like driving a car with no chrome on it down a one way street that is a dead end. MJ has no future in the medical field.
It keeps coming up politically because hundreds of thousands of americans have been conditioned to the notion that Uncle Sam (our Daddy) is going to
solve the quandry for medical treatment conditions particularly those which some will declare as a constitutional right if they don't get there share of whatever is currently popular.
It is rather offensive to suggest that people like me only advocate medical marijuana because we will use "any" sneaky means possible to legalize the stuff.
Pretty typical kneejerk stuff if you ask me.
The shit works. It doesn't "cure" anything, but it is exceptionally effective for alleviating nausea for chemotherapy patients and has been shown to be useful for alleviating pain for certain forms of muscular disorder.
Furthermore, pot is no more addictive, and has no more "get you stoned" potential than literally dozens of perfectly legal narcotics (and pot isn't even a narcotic).
STILL FURTHER: there are drugs on the market which use most of the same chemicals as found in pot. If you take those pills, you get even more stoned than if you smoke pot. If you take those pills, you test as positive for marijuana in your system. Yet doctors can prescribe them no problem.
The problem? Those drugs--which I repeat GET YOU MORE STONED THAN POT, and which cause you to test positive for pot in your system anyway---are not as effective for some patients. And they also get you more stoned and make you less functional, which is why some patients would rather use the pot than take the pills.
As for the objection about employers: once again this is a complete red herring. It is already perfectly legal to throw someone off a workplace or fire him if he shows up drunk. It is already perfectly legal to do the same if they show up to work stoned on prescription drugs. I had to take a piss test to get my current job, and they checked for Xanax, valium, codeine, and a host of other perfectly legal tranquilizers--and if I could not produce a prescription from a doctor, I would not be hired, and if I showed up stoned on same after hire, and I could not produce said prescription from a doctor, I could be fired.
In other words, once again, conservatives are NOT being rational, they're being EMOTIONAL. They just don't like pot. Their reason? I assume it's because they associate it with people they don't like.
I make no bones about it: I think outlawing pot in general is stupid. But then I think a lot of things are stupid. Making pot legal for medicinal purposes is no more of a "slippery slope" than making morphine legal for medicinal purposes is a "slippery slope" to making morphine or heroin legal for general use.
The arguments against this are entirely irrational. (And yes, Arnold Harris, I'm saying that you and your ilk are entirely irrational on this point.)
$78 a month? I guess he ain't a hardcore user. Last I heard it was about $60 for 1/4 (of an ounce). Maybe you get better rates on the West Coast. Still, only a 1/4 a month is very little for a pothead, IMHO.
Caltechgirl: Sorry, forgot to answer you. Captain's Quarters' argument is that, basically, for California to exercise its soveriegn rights it needs to get the FDA's approval. Bollox is all I can say.
The people of several states now, including California, have made it clear, through amendments of their state Constitutionis in some cases, that they want marijuana available medically. Any so-called "conservative" who approves of running to the Federal government to try to overrule that shows that he's a liar if he claims he respects the concepts of states' rights--or at least he shows he only cares about it when it's convenient for his own arguments.
Do you have any idea what a month's supply of morphine costs? Or a month's supply of a half-dozen other far more potent, far more inebriating painkillers or other drugs cost?
$78 would be Godsend-cheap for a lot of people currently spending hundreds or even thousands for their monthly prescription drug bills.
Argh. What is it with people being impervious to fact?
Marinol: It's perfectly legal. It has the same basic chemicals as pot in it, and if you take it you get a lot more stoned than you do if you just smoke pot. If you take it, you show up positive for pot use in drug tests--and you're a lot more stoned on it. Doctors can prescribe it.
Several far more addictive and powerful narcotics are perfectly legal.
You guys have no problem with that, but because you don't like the dirty smelly lazy hippies, you want to punish 'em by keeping the vile weed out of the hands of sick people.
I've never seen a more emotional or juvenile position in my life (and I don't care that some of you making it are over 70. It's still emotional and juvenile.)
For those so inclined, here is a short little history of nonmedicinal drugs in US history. It was on Instapundit a while ago.
What i have to contribute to the debate is too long for a comment post. The original laws were apparently passed in a most demented manner, and no, i don't think the Feds have any business putting their noses into state laws. But I'm in Oregon, and the Feds have continually put their noses in our business. It's annoying
"Any so-called "conservative" who approves of running to the Federal government to try to overrule that shows that he's a liar if he claims he respects the concepts of states' rights"
And if he's a states' rights liberal, he's not a liar?
Yeah, I know. Purely hypothetical situation....
Maor: Okay, I'm a state's rights liberal. So what? I'm pro-choice but I'm willing to say abortion should be a state issue. I'm pro gay marriage and I'm willing to say that should be a state issue. Is there some inconsistency here?
Catch: What do you suppose the drug bill looks like for, say, your average morphine addict? Although most morphine addicts graduate to heroin from what I understand.
I have family members who are severely addicted to perfectly legal prescription drugs, which they buy on the streets: Percodan, Xanax, Valium, and quite a few others I can think of off the top of my head. Is there any evidence at all that these people using prescription drugs illegally are a greater threat than those using a non-prescription drug illegally?
Where's your common sense man? Your lotus-eater relatives are no reason to tell people in cancer wards they can't have something that everyone in oncological circles knows damn well works better than those pot-laced pills?
Before you devolve off into twisty argument about the heroism of pot advocacy please be advised my sole interest in this discussion stems from two irresponsible adults one of whom is a pothead. If it weren't for the fact that 11 year old has just been pushed out of his house to live with an ex-boyfriend apparently for the forseeable future, I probably wouldn't even join the commentary.
My other concern is that MJ is quack medicine at its best. Millions of cancer victims have had their symptoms and pain alleviated without handing them a joint. Arnold Harris gets it. See Preparation M above.
Others don't seem to get it, then advocate some particular heroism to pot usage. And how about coffee enemas. That was the big cure-all in the
alternative clinic south of San Diego some time back. And apricot pits helped also back in the Laetrile days.
As stated before, Marijuana does not have a medical future except for political propaganda.
The issue isn't really about recreational use of drugs. It's about how you treat your own bodies, the only ones you shall ever have. And it's about how you utilize your precious liberty.
The United States of America of my childhood and young manhood was a country of heroes. They, the great generation of the world wars of the 20th century, were the children and grandchildren of the hardened men and women typified by those who settled the Dakota frontier, and of whom George Will wrote about in his Thanksgiving message last week.
They built a country on the basis of self-respect, personality responsibility, and lives focused on using their liberty to produce a better way of life.
That generation of Americans would have curdles their lips in disgust over most of what you people are lauding in this discussion.
One of the concepts of America's christians -- including the old-time catholics, at least to the extant that I understood them -- was their attempts to build a society of disciplined men and women to properly utilize the freedoms that came with birth or residence on this new continent.
Sometimes I think we are descending into the status of a commonwealth of self indulgence. Islam will find this place easy pickings as its tentacles grow.
I think a few myths need to be cleared up. The biggest one is that all marijuana users are irresponsible good-for-nothings - this is blatantly false. The opposite also applies - some are irresponsible good-for-nothings, and anyone who tells you otherwise is an idiot or a liar. In my experience, most users are responsible and do not use pot more than a couple times a week - the same exact thing can be said of most users of alcohol, which probably causes more good-for-nothings than pot does.
In my experience, I would say I have known at least six users of pot in my life. The first I met was my father, whom I only found out about years after his death(you woulnd't have even guessed he was a user) - for some years he ran his own appliance repair service, and if he wasn't doing that he was always employed, and he was very intelligent and well-liked by all(even people he couldn't stand thought he was their best friend). The second, third, and fourth was my uncle, aunt, and her husband - my uncle has run his own business since before I was born, my aunt works as a nurse in a prison, and her now ex-husband was a truck driver(he has a number of health problems due to obesity, and a number of other problems, he's probably the only person who could come close to good-for-nothing on this list). They have all quit in the last few years as I understand it. The fifth was a friend of mine in high school, who did have a part-time job at the time and made decent grades for his intelligence level, and he eventually quit. Lastly there is my neighbor, who has held a job, paid his taxes, and been a good family friend as long as I've known him - and low and behold I find out a couple months ago that he uses pot. Adding a seventh to the list, now that I think about it, is another neighbor's son, who got arrested for possession a few years back, but is a generally responsible father now. I've known all these people, and yet not one is a dirty hippie. Go figure.
And by the way, I do not use pot nor do I plan on ever using it, even if legal.
Now I have to respond to a couple things said:
"The issue isn't really about recreational use of drugs. It's about how you treat your own bodies, the only ones you shall ever have. And it's about how you utilize your precious liberty."
"They built a country on the basis of self-respect, personality responsibility, and lives focused on using their liberty to produce a better way of life."
You talk of 'liberty' and 'personal responsibility', two things I am in support of. However, a ban on a substance is a restriction on liberty. Personal responsibility requires that you have the liberty to make your own decisions and deal with the consequences yourself - a ban does the opposite, it tells you that you don't have the liberty to make a choice. Without choice, you don't have liberty. Will people make bad decisions if you give them a choice - hell yeah, but they still make those same bad decisions even told they don't have a choice plus society has to deal with the negative costs of prohibition.
"However, a ban on a substance is a restriction on liberty. Personal responsibility requires that you have the liberty to make your own decisions and deal with the consequences yourself - a ban does the opposite, it tells you that you don't have the liberty to make a choice."
Yeah, take off your motorcycle helmets and put the lead back into paint.
In fact, Arnold, what was all that bullshit you were trying to sell us about caring about "justice" and not enforcing irrational prejudices on others because of that poor lady who hosted Romper Room but lost her job over having an abortion?
What meaning did all that rhetoric you espoused about decency and justice then? Eh? But now some poor woman dying of bone cancer, unable to hold down so much as a sip of water or a bite of cracker and literally starving to death because the chemotherapy she's taking won't allow her to keep food down--THAT is merely political propaganda, self-indulgence, and emotionalism?
Can you not see the cognitive dissonance in what you're saying here?
"Yeah, take off your motorcycle helmets and put the lead back into paint."
Two things mostly unrelated to the subject, especially the second, but I'll still take them on.
Motorcycle helmets - I'm absolutely fine if some idiot wishes to ride around without a helmet. If they are stupid or reckless enough to do so, let them deal with whatever damage may come if they do so - the consequences are theirs to deal with, and if they die it's one less idiot in the world. That being said, I know a number of bikers, and not one of them would ride their motorcycles without a helmet, even given a choice in the matter.
Lead in paint - not allowing lead in paint is not the same thing as not allowing marijuana. On the one hand you can still legally buy, possess, and use paint and you can still make it if it does not have lead, and on the other you can't legally buy, possess, use, or make marijuana. See the difference, one is only a partial regulation on production and the other is a complete ban. I am not against some marijuana regulation if it is made legal - in fact it would probably be good if we did have some, for instance I think if pot is legal it should be illegal to sell it on the streets, only legal behind the counter somewhere ID will be checked. For a more similar comparison in the situation where pot is legal, it should be illegal for pot producers to dip their product in embalming fluid before selling it.
Let me preface this by saying:
1) I am not a constitutional scholar
2) I am a conservative (with a strongish libertarian streak).
3) I do believe that states have the right to make their own laws. Those laws may be wrong, but they have the right to be wrong.
However, where I have a problem with this is that "medical" marijuana isn't. I have no more a problem with truely medical marijuana than with morphine. Put it through the FDA's clinical trials to determine efficacy, proper dosage, side effects, delivery method (IV, pill, IM, even smoked), indications, contra-indications, drug-drug interactions, etc. etc. etc. just the same as is done with every other medicine that is legal to prescribe. So far none of this has been done. Calling this "medical" marijuana is fraud, and I believe fraud trumps states rights.
If you want marijuana treated like morphine, then treat it like morphine and you'll get no argument from me.
What I think should have happened is that the state supreme court had stricken it down as conflicting with existing law prohibiting pot (or stricken the prohibition to remove the conflict) or stricken it due to the fraud arguement. Since that didn't happen, it's a bad law, but it is the state's bad law to make.
The U.S. Supreme court, unless someone can show me otherwise, can only justly overturn the ruling on the fraud argument. Absent this reasoning, however, I don't see any other justification for ruling other than that it's none of the feds business.
For those of you who say the FDA can't/won't do it, I say, "Call your congressman". Address the problem and not the symptom. I would argue that a lot of the gov't growth/bloat/intrusion is made by well intentioned people trying to fix symptoms and not problems.
A thing that frustrates me here is that we really DO need to separate out medicinal use from everyday use.
Morphine is an incredibly addictve, debilitating opiate. It is completely illegal, a felony to possess, without a prescription.
This does not mean doctors can't prescribe it.
Some would say that legalizing pot for medicinal use is a "first step" toward full legalization. Bullshit. If it were, then morphine would be legal now. Demerol would be legal now. Codeine and heroin and cocaine would all be legal now, since doctors can prescribe all of those legally now.
But they aren't.
Saying that making pot legal for medicinal, prescription use is a "first step" toward legalizing for general consumption is like saying that making morphine is the "first step" toward making morphine legal to sell over the counter. It's never happened like that, and no rational reason to think it will be.
Do I personally think pot should be legal for general recreational use? Hell yeah. Regulate its sale, tax the hell out if it, and make it available over the counter, but illegal to sell to minors just like booze.
BUT BUT BUT--that is a truly different subject. It just is. I'd say the same damned thing about heroin. I think the best fix for the heroin junkie problem is to require heroin users to register as junkies, restrict their driver's licenses, have special tags on their license plates, make it clear that if they're caught driving under the influence of heroin or giving it to children they get 10 years in jail minimum---but otherewise let the junkies have their fix.
But THAT IS A DIFFERENT SUBJECT.
When I had surgery on my nose four years ago, do you know what the surgeon did? At the end of the procedure he put two big fat flakes of COCAINE up my nose. Then shot me up with MORPHINE.
Perfectly legal for him to do that. And a felony if I then left and went and tried to get some cocaine or morphine for medicinal use.
Look up any book on elemental logic the term NON SEQUITUR. "Approved for medicinal use" DOES NOT create a "slippery slope" toward approval for general rectational use. It never has been and it never will be.
Indeed, I would love to see anyone point to me ANY SINGLE EXAMPLE of a psychotropic drug that was first approved for medicinal use that subsequently became available for general recreational use. Because I can't think of a single one. Is there even one such example?
This fear by the right of a common weed that grows just about everywhere simply must end.
"A thing that frustrates me here is that we really DO need to separate out medicinal use from everyday use. " (Dean)
"However, where I have a problem with this is that "medical" marijuana isn't." (Masked Menace)
"My other concern is that MJ is quack medicine at its best." (Catch 22)
All three statements are correct. The point is pot is not medicine. Marijuana clubs are not medical treatment facilities. There is no medical oversight. Anyone with a piece of paper walks in and buys his daily smokes. This is not medical practice, its quackery.
Not only do we need to separate out medicinal use from everyday use; we need to separate out medicine and medical practice from the notion that pot is a the medicine and a pot house is the treatment facility.
The social implications are important societal concerns. One such example is in today's
San Francisco Chronicle -- article by Matier and Ross.
Dean, part of the fear is based on nearly 100 years of misinformation. Certain parts of the population need to get over their preconceptions, preconceptions that were sort of programmed by that century of misinformation. You people have been had. And i think some people keep believing the misinformation because they don't like the idea that maybe they've been had.
an interesting tidbit about Oregon's medicinal use program- it's the only state program that ran in the black last year. In fact it was so successful that the state reduced the program fees for participants. Patients in Oregon are also allowed to grow a certain amount for themselves. They are allowed to have caretakers who can grow it. Some caretakers grow for more than one patient. They are allowed, i think, six plants per patient.
The problem being that your Olympiam Pronunciation that medical pot is "quack medicine" is a bunch of bullshit, Catch. And one that belies a deep ignorance of both science and the art of medicine.
The simple fact of the matter is that for 30 years now the government has refused to allow any serious clinical study of marijuana use. They have simply made it impossible to do in any truly controlled fashion.
That being the case, the only thing we have left are clinical reports. And clinical reports are considered valid science, merely sub-optimal. And the clinical reports are damn near universal: for chemotherapy patients, for whom the #1 complaint is incredibly debilitating nausea, AIDS hospice doctors and oncologists all but universally report that their patients who are SO NAUSEATED THEY CANNOT HOLD DOWN FOOD are able to hold down food when they use marijuana.
The clinical support for this is so overwhelming that the FDA has approved a drug called Marinol which basically has the most potent active ingredients in marijuana in pill form. The drug is prescribed for that specific purpose: to alleviate the symptoms of acute, debilitating nausea in chemotherapy patients.
So again I repeat for you Catch: SAME ACTIVE INGREDIENTS AS WHAT IS IN MARIJUANA. In fact they have to use marijuana plants just to make it.
Follow me here? It's pot in pill form. And it's LEGAL TO PRESCRIBE.
So what's the problem here? Why not just give the patients Marinol and be done?
Well first it doesn't contain all the ingredients in marijuana. Second, as I said before, patients who take it get much more stoned and are much more debilitated than marijuana smokers. It takes longer to take effect and once it takes effect, they're GONE--they're high as kites. The still test positive for marijuana on the standard piss and blood tests, too.
But they're a lot more high, they're a lot more out of control--and a lot of them report that the nausea-alleviation effects are still sub-optimal.
Clinically, the patients who smoke the weed note that they can just take a few puffs and the effect is instantaneous. They can also stop puffing fairly quickly, well before they get unreasonably stoned and out of control. Suddenly they can just eat and drink again. And they don't have to let themselves get high as kites just to do it.
You want FDA-approved studies on all this? Well I'd like them too, but guess what? THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS REFUSED TO ALLOW ANY SUCH STUDIES FOR OVER 30 YEARS.
Doctors are saying it's working. Patients aged 9 to 90 are saying it's working, and the fucking Federal government WON'T ALLOW ANY SERIOUS STUDIES TO BE DONE. ANYONE WHO TRIES TO CONDUCT THEM IS ARRESTED.
I note to you again, just in case you still haven't gotten it: I challenge you to go to ANY cancer ward in your state, ANY cancer hospice in your state. If you are familiar with the smell of marijuana (it's fairly hard to miss once you recognize it), you will smell that smell. It is ubiquitous. That is because the doctors, the nurses, the nurses aids, and the orderlies all know that this stuff is helping people, and they ALL look the other way and pretend they don't notice this smell.
Indeed, the orderlies and the medical assistants are usually the ones to quietly find a way to help the patients find their way to the stuff because EVERYONE working there knows that it's helping people from the debilitating side-effects of chemotherapy, and knows that if they "officially notice" it they'll get in trouble. So they all play games and look the other way.
And here's the other truth about modern medicine: tones of what goes on in doctors' offices is cases where doctors recommend treatments and protocols that are NOT FDA approved or that people realize are questionable because NO ONE KNOWS the most effective treatment. So they do their best with what they know and what they see in their daily practice.
And again: the governmente WILL NOT ALLOW these FDA studies that you say you want. Even though they already acknowledge the 30+ year old studies which recognize that it has some benefit for glaucoma and a few other conditions, before the government chopped off any other effective research.
And so I say to you: I agree that I would like to see the studies done. In the meantime, we have endless reports from oncologists as well as AIDS specialists saying that this stuff is remarkably effective at alleviating nausea for chemotherapy patients. It's so widespread its a running joke in this area of medicine, and the government won't even allow the studies to be done.
I suggest to you that it is irrational resistance based on FEAR OF A COMMON WEED that is causing this problem.
And I ask you once again: what the hell is is about marijuana that scares you more than MORPHINE or CODEINE or DEMEROL or VALIUM, anyway?
Section. 8.
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Actually, from my perspective all the talk of the merits or lack thereof of medical marijuana is moot. The Constitution only grants Congress the right to regulate commerce among the States. FDR wanted pretty fine control over the economy, however, so he rammed some intrastate regulations through Congress. The Supreme Court declared this Constitutional on the basis that intrastate commerce effects interstate commerce.
What arrogant jerks. I find it rather dubious that the Foundering Fathers, who vigorously traded intrastate, interstate and internation, did not take this into account. Not to mention that the states also engaged in vigorous trade wars under the Articles of Confederation. Since essentially ALL commerce effects interstate commerce this judicial innovation made the distinction embodied in the Constitution oddly pointless. The Constitution does not read "To regulate Commerce;".
The question is, do we follow the Supreme Law of the Land or not.
I say follow the Constitution, limit the power of the Federal government and let the states decide such questions. That way blue states can be blue, red states can be red and people can start caring more about their State Legislature and less about Congress. Local control is responsive. Even so, companies which want to sell their products outside their home state will have to follow the Federal regs.
If you want the Feds to control drugs, amend the Constitution.
The cocaine wasn't just placed in my nose because it's an excellent local anasthetic, although it is. It was primarily placed there because it causes severe localized constriction of the blood vessels, which is useful right after they've taken a knife to your sinus tissues.
So far as I know, the latter has never been proven by double-blind study. Just clinical reports. Just like a lot of medicine. And just exactly like the clinical reports that say that chemotherapy patients report drastic reductions in otherwise-out-of-control nausea from marijuana use.
Dean, I do not agree that limiting ingestive access to alcohol and controlled substances is an injustice. A woman about to give birth to grossly malformed child that society will not allow her to abort is a gross injustice. Limiting access to dangerous drugs is a major condition of societal justice, and in the long run, to having a society at all.
And I think that this entire smokescreen about medicinal uses of cannabis is just an argument to obtain overall societal acceptance of usage of this and other illegal drugs.
As for your poor, suffering, pitiful old ladies with untreatable maladies, I am certain that appropriately licensed pharmaceutical laboratories could find ways to isolate THC compounds from the basic cannabinol from the hemp plant, and use these to create medicines which patients could ingest under control and supervision of trained and licensed medical personnel. If anyone needs it that badly, they will need it no less if it is injected into them in a hospital, rather than laying around their livingroom carpet getting stoned with their "treatment".
The emphasis the pseudo-scientific potheads put on smoking the stuff in the form of a chopped up weed is to me a clear signal that they mostly wish legalize and normative access so they can use it as a recreational drug under veiled cover of its ostensible medical "need". The same way their counterparts in the 1920s purchased "medicinal" alcohol in quantities out of all proportion to any real treatment usage.
So stop blowing smoke at me. I've been around for a long time, and I've heard it all before.
And I shall stick to what I wrote earlier. That this is rapidly becoming a society of the whining, non-productive or semi-productive self-indulgent. In other words, a society that will not likely be around in it present form many more centuries.
You want FDA-approved studies on all this? Well I'd like them too, but guess what? THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS REFUSED TO ALLOW ANY SUCH STUDIES FOR OVER 30 YEARS. - Dean
So let me get this straight, since the system hasn't produced your result for the last 30 years, to hell with it, let's back door it any ol' way we can? The ends justify the means?
I'm sorry, but I've been reading here long enough that this seems a little out of character.
I agree the marijuana can be useful medicine, just that it isn't as practiced today. My fear is that a glaucoma patient being treated with pot dies because it interferred with his heart meds. On top of that the doctor, pharmacist, nurse and the hospital get sued for malpractice because the side-effects (death) were worse than the disease (blindness).
Also your statement belies a bigger issue: Gov't banning medical research over politics. This seems to me to be a more important issue than this one symptom. As I said before, fix the problem and the symptoms take care of themselves.
"A decade ago, when Daniele Piomelli went to scientific conferences, he was often the only researcher studying cannabinoids, the class of chemicals that give marijuana users a high.
His work often drew snickers and jokes -- but no more. At the annual Society for Neuroscience conference last week, scientists delivered almost 200 papers on the subject."
Excerpt:
"Advocates of medical marijuana have long argued that the drug can be useful for treating many conditions, particularly chronic pain, nausea and glaucoma. In the latter, marijuana works by temporarily decreasing pressure around the eye.
Although they don't dispute this view, most researchers believe there are better, more precise ways to stimulate the cannabinoid system. They believe marijuana has too many negatives to be a truly effective drug, with side effects that include memory problems, decreased immunity and possibly addiction. Some researchers dispute this.
Marijuana has another drawback. From a scientific standpoint, Giuffrida says, it's "a very dirty drug."
Well, Arnold, Catch and others, you have failed to answer Dean's original question, to wit, where do you stand on the Constitutional issue? Do we follow the Constitution when we disagree with the results we get, or do we reinterpret it to get the results we want? Are we more concerned about the proper role of each level of government, or is it something we really don't care about. Should the Supreme Court follow it's earlier innovative interpretation, or should it revert to the original meaning of the document?
If you can't guess, I consider this question to be FAR more important and certainly more far reaching than any comparatively piddling drug debate.
"As for your poor, suffering, pitiful old ladies with untreatable maladies, I am certain that appropriately licensed pharmaceutical laboratories could find ways to isolate THC compounds from the basic cannabinol from the hemp plant, and use these to create medicines which patients could ingest under control and supervision of trained and licensed medical personnel."
I agree that one day science will likely come up with a more suitable pill form of this, but the problem is 'ONE DAY'. There are people suffering NOW. If smoking a couple puffs of pot - not even enough to really get high - is a viable, affordable solution and I see no reason why we should deny it to them until that alternative can be found.
Are there side effects? Of course, but considering the alternative - aka unnecessarily forcing people to continue to suffer - I think allowing a little pot smoking would be far superior. We can work on more effective drugs - arguably the drugs we have today are much better and safer than the drugs of 50 years ago, but they didn't decide not to use those medicines simply because they could develop better ones later. All things considered, we should use what is best right now - which may very well be marijuana - and use what is best in the future at that point. Seriously, if you were sick, would you want the best treatment you could get today, even if it is imperfect and has side effects, or would you like to wait ten years for a better treatment with less side effects?
I can understand Arnold Harris's feelings on this. He likes women. He does not like hippies. Therefore, he favors legalized abortion but not legalized marijuana. I can see that. I respect his convictions but I have to disagree with him here. I agree instead with John Dibble (and with Frank S. Meyer) that freedom is the precondition of virtue. I agree with Dean and with Wince and Nod that the Constitution overrides writing our dislike of hippies into federal law.
Here's Jonathan Adler on the Constitutional question. Please note that ALABAMA wants the federal law to be limitied. Alabama is perfectly happy to prosecute these cases under state law and wants the system of fifty different legal laboratories to continue to function.
Seems the Alabama solicitor general is less worried about the relatively powerless pot heads, and more worried about the ever expanding powers of the Federal government. Good man.
“Well, Arnold, Catch and others, you have failed to answer Dean's original question, to wit, where do you stand on the Constitutional issue?”
Wince, that is an excellent question. And you’re right it hasn’t been addressed by myself.
My position is found in the US Constitution Article I Section I:
“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
This authority grants Congress the right to pass legislation. Such as:
“The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, is the legal foundation of the government's fight against the abuse of drugs and other substances. This law is a consolidation of numerous laws regulating the manufacture and distribution of narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and chemicals used in the illicit production of controlled substances.”
It also grants the DEA enforcement of the Act and the Department of Justice to oversee it..
And as Zell Miller would say, “ so who cares about that its not in the Constitution.”
So yes, I can understand your saying,
“If you can't guess, I consider this question to be FAR more important and certainly more far reaching than any comparatively piddling drug debate.”
Now regarding certain piddling drug debate:
The distinction between Dean’s position and my own isn’t a conservative vs liberal, bias,it comes from the fact that I hold a DEA license and pay very expensive liability insurance.
I think my position will become clearer when after said enactment of national ‘pot’ laws, consumers will start suing the feds as well as their doctors for bad pot laced with salmonella, or other stomach parasites that they received from the local cannabis healing center. I view these marijuana cafes as the equivalency of injecting freshly brewed coffee including the mouse droppings and all. Then of course, all research in these matters is the proper function of THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
And as well, I do have respect for serious researchers that make statements like:
Printed below is my perhaps the best reason of all that our society at large, as represented by the US government, has determined that we do not want usage of cannabis to grow among any segment of the US population, be they youths, old ladies in agony, or whomever. (You can find the orginal yourselves under WebMD on FoxNews.)
------------------------------------------------
Smoking Pot Raises Psychosis Risk in Youths
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
By Miranda Hitti
Smoking pot increases psychosis risk in young people, especially among those who are already vulnerable to psychosis.
That’s the conclusion of a study of more than 2,400 German teens and young adults aged 14-24.
Participants’ substance use and psychosis symptoms were tracked for about four years. Psychologists interviewed participants at the study’s beginning and end.
The research was conducted by experts from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, including Jim van Os, a professor in the university’s psychiatry and neuropsychology department. Their study appears in today’s edition of BMJ Online First.
At the study’s start, 13 percent said they had smoked marijuana at least five times. Four years later, about 17 percent of all participants had had at least one psychotic symptom.
Psychotic symptoms include hallucinations, such as seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there, and delusions, which are false beliefs that do not go away with logical or accurate information. Other possible psychotic symptoms are incoherent speech, confused thinking, and strange behavior. The most common psychotic disorder is schizophrenia.
Pot smokers were more likely to have psychotic symptoms than those who didn’t smoke pot. The more pot that participants smoked, the greater their chance of having at least one psychotic symptom. The risk held after screening out other influences including alcohol and other drugs.
Pot had “a much stronger effect” on psychotically predisposed participants, say the researchers. People who have a family member with psychotic symptoms are more likely to suffer similar symptoms themselves.
It’s not the first time that marijuana has been linked to psychosis. But until now, no one knew which came first -- the psychosis or the pot use. Were participants using pot to soothe their psychological problems?
Probably not, say the researchers. Psychotic predisposition wasn’t a good predictor of future pot use, they note.
Youth may be a particularly risky time for pot use.
Puberty is “a vulnerable period” for pot’s negative effects, say the researchers, citing studies of lab rats. Pot’s active ingredients may interact with brain chemicals to create negative psychological side effects, they say.
In 2002, a study published in the British Medical Journal linked frequent marijuana use at a young age – more than 50 times -- to an increase in schizophrenia later in life. Similar to the current study, this previous research showed that the more pot people smoked, the more likely they were to suffer psychosis.
Another study published in the same issue showed that daily pot smoking as a teen increased the risk of depression as an adult. When that study was released in 2004, researcher Louise Arseneault, PhD, told WebMD that their research suggested that there is a direct causal link between pot smoking and psychological problems that cannot be explained by tendency toward mental illness.
By Miranda Hitti, reviewed by Michael W. Smith, MD
SOURCES: Henquet, C., BMJ Online First, Dec. 1, 2004. News release, BMJ Online First. WebMD Medical Reference provided in collaboration with The Cleveland Clinic: "Psychotic Disorders." WebMD Medical News: "Pot May Cause Depression, Schizophrenia."
-----------------------------------------------
So, all you pot-lovers out there. How many drivers, pilots, policemen, equipment operators, or best of all, gun owners do you want out there with schizophrenia, psychotic symptoms, psychological problems "that cannot be explained by tendency toward mental illness", etc, etc? Maybe a few more hunters shot dead in the North Woods for no explainable reason? Teenagers going berserk, again for little or no other explainable reason?
What in hell is wrong with the lot of you? You are beginning to sound like petulant toddlers who want to flakes of old paint in their mouths. Even if they are coated with leadbased paint.
"All legislative Powers herein granted" does not mean "any law Congress wants". It means only the powers granted in the Constitution and no others. You can't ignore the herein granted bit. The Constitution in fact does not grant all powers to Congress. It has a list of the granted powers. Regulating ingested substances is not among those powers. Regulating commerce among the states is. That is why, when you read the text of these laws, they refer to that power. The clue in the text you quoted is "manufacture and distribution", which are commercial activities. Try again, and consider the entire Constitution this time.
My answer to Zell, if he actually unjokingly said such a thing (which I doubt) would be, "I care, you old coot. You are either incompetent or unscrupulous and if you don't like me saying so, since duels are illegal, a boxing ring should do nicely." I take the Constitution seriously and often wish our Government officials did likewise. Grrr.
Arnold,
What the hell is wrong with me is that I believe in following the law of the land, not warping it to suit. As an example, although I am pro-life, I am against the Federal Partial Birth Abortion prohibition, because I think it is unconstitutional. Abortions are not interstate commerce either, unless you cross a state line to perform or receive one. I want every state to pass such a ban. Do you support a constitutionally limited federal government, or not?
I'm reserving judgement on whether marijuana should be illegal, not because I think using it is a good idea, but because making it illegal doesn't seem to work and has had noxious side effects. Weigh your psycotic effects against all the crime, including gang slayings financed or caused, not because of illegal drugs, but because drugs are illegal. Then factor in all the nasty things done in the name of the War on Drugs, including, for example, confiscation of property without trial. We are in the exact same situation which lead us to give up on Prohibition. We cannot enforce a law which is so often broken. At the same time, recreational drug use is a horrible scourge and a permissive disaster. It's a mess.
So, all you pot-lovers out there. How many drivers, pilots, policemen, equipment operators, or best of all, gun owners do you want out there with schizophrenia, psychotic symptoms, psychological problems "that cannot be explained by tendency toward mental illness", etc, etc? Maybe a few more hunters shot dead in the North Woods for no explainable reason? Teenagers going berserk, again for little or no other explainable reason?
I fail to see your point. Making pot is legal isn't going to do any of that, unless as your post indicates, they are already predisposed to mental illness. I mean seriously, that is a "no shit" statement. I wonder if taking legally prescribed pain killers would do the same.
I find it highly ironic that people who believe that I have the right to tell my doctor to plunge a scalpel through the skull of my child and suck his brains out, simply because I changed my mind and he is unfortunately a week away from birth - think it is perfectly okay to tell me that I am acting like a child for wanting an herb made legal so that maybe I or someone I love may smoke it to relieve pain and suffering. Or just for the fun of it.
It's still my body, is it not? I'm not running around town demanding that alcohol be made illegal because it's effects have wrecked havoc and killed more people than 9/11.
Arnold: And I think that this entire smokescreen about medicinal uses of cannabis is just an argument to obtain overall societal acceptance of usage of this and other illegal drugs.
So, in other words, folks like me are liars. Got it.
So let me get this straight, since the system hasn't produced your result for the last 30 years, to hell with it, let's back door it any ol' way we can? The ends justify the means?
No, fuckwit. Becuase the system makes doing the tests impossible, it's obscene for anyone to suggest "seek the tests before seeking the legalization." We can't do the tests, asshole. Are you not paying attention?
Catch: Almost none of the studies cited have been done in the United States because paranoid, ignornant fools have given us laws to make it impossible for researchers to do any of the research you're actually asking for domestically--and the FDA won't recognize any studies not done in the US.
It's called "Catch 22." You should recognize the phenomenon. Now they're starting to do tiny little studies with huge restrictions after decades of fighting--but still aren't allowed to test the cannabis directly.
I'm done with this conversation. There's an old saying: don't waste your time arguing with unreasonable people. This is something I am increasingly taking to heart.
A good point, one I agree with wholeheartedly. It is hypocritical to say that a woman has the right to control her own body and have an abortion, but she somehow does not have the right to put a substance in herself for medicinal or recreational use even though she owns her own body. And since citizens are no longer unequal based on sex, men have the same rights. You can't be for the position of people owning their own bodies without saying people can put what they want in them, otherwise you are saying that they do not own their own bodies and that those bodies are owned by the government.
No, fuckwit. Becuase the system makes doing the tests impossible, it's obscene for anyone to suggest "seek the tests before seeking the legalization." We can't do the tests, asshole. Are you not paying attention?
Dude, I didn't cuss at you or call you names. I pointed out what seemed to me to be a contridiction in reasoning and made a polite arguement for my side. If you disagree with my side (co-incidentally we're after the same goal, we just differ on how to get there), great, it's why we're here.
And to further clarify, I'm not saying seek the tests first... I'm saying CHANGE THE SYSTEM. DON'T SUBVERT IT WHEN YOU DON'T GET YOUR WAY. YOU'LL DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD. Fixing individual symptoms is one of the reasons we have a 60,000 page incomprehensible tax code. If you change the system to work properly then the symtom of banning this one drug goes away for all further research for all drugs. How many drugs in the future will have it's research banned due to a bad system? What's more important, winning the battle or the war?
BTW, the "don't subvert the system when you don't get your way" is exactly the same argument you were making to social conservatives who wanted to keep marijuana in all forms illegal by exerting federal power over states rights.
The FDA may want to consider testing MJ on same-sex marriage partners. Of course, if legalized, (gay marriages or marijuana, or even gay marijuana buds) taxes would be used to fund another anti-drug initiative. You know, the way Phillip-Morris is SOOOOOO concerned with the health of smokers.
'Motorcycle helmets - I'm absolutely fine if some idiot wishes to ride around without a helmet. If they are stupid or reckless enough to do so, let them deal with whatever damage may come if they do so - the consequences are theirs to deal with..."
Yeah, that's true if they don't die. Otherwise, they go paraplegiccoma ward where you're hard earned tax dollars help pay for independent motorcycle driver injuries. Then, guess who deals with it ?
That helmet argument is really nasty. In most cases we'll save more Social Security and Medicade/care spending than the paraplegiccoma ward costs, since people rarely stay hooked up forever. But we lose all the taxes from their pre-retirement productive behavior. Should we be slaves to the government, forced to work until age sixty-five, than forced out into the cold to starve? It'll cut tax rates!
I'm utterly leery of complaints that behavior X causes health care costs to rise and therefore should be banned. Why? I like a well marbled steak. I like target shooting. I don't want the food police, compulsory exercise and gun control. Let people ride motorcycles without helmets. If we went by safety/health cost concerns automobiles would be illegal and only mass-transit allowed.
Can we please give people the freedom to make stupid mistakes? Every time somebody makes a law to prevent a stupid mistake we end up replacing flexible brains with unbending rules. Which one gives stupid results more often? I'd say the rules.
Are you suggesting that motorcycle drivers that choose to drive without helmets that are unable to pay long term care health costs because of their iresponsible behavior that will ultimately be borne by local or state government or local hospitals is a freedom benefit we ought give the irresponsible ?
Should you wish to speak about unpaid health care provided by hospitals, I'd like to refer you to the San Jose Medical center which is closing down its facilities in downtown San Jose because they are operating in the red to the tune of 8 to 9 million dollars per year because of the demand to pay for undocumented illegals emergency treatment which will never be re-imbursed. In other words they are operating at a continuing loss.
So to your question: Can we please give people the freedom to make stupid mistakes ?
Yes, of course, you're right.
The burden for future emergency health care in San Jose will now be borne by Stanford Medical Center whose emergency room will increase by between 800 and 1000 patients per year and that is just the one's that cannot pay for any medical treatment.
Now, why do we have those stupid child seat belt laws ? They are so freedom restricting.
Wince,
If you get the gov't out of the equation then it becomes a moot point, no?
Otherwise, when the gov't will forceably take money from me to cover your idiocy, don't be surprised when I want a say in the matter. Utilitarian arguements may determine whether or not I get what I want, but I'll want it just the same.
Masked menace got it right: "If you get the gov't out of the equation then it becomes a moot point, no?"
I'm not for having government intervention in healthcare, for the large part at least. If you can't afford to pay for the consequences, well, sorry, but that means you couldn't afford to take the risk but you took it anyways.
However, in all likeliness we'll have government in healthcare for a long while. Under the current system, we could always put in stipulations - like if you don't wear your seatbelt or helmet, the government won't cover the damages. I don't see how that would be any different than how the federal government requires seatbelt/helmet/speed limit laws from the states in order to get federal highway funding.
I think I see a compromise. Make it illegal to skip the helmet without health insurance. But really it should be illegal to own a car, buy cigarettes, buy unhealthy foods without health insurance, same reason. But, in my opinion, all these strictures violate the ninth amendment, which basically says that people should be free to make their own choices.
We cannot just let people without health insurance die, folks.
The illegal aliens is a completely different problem. I'm all in favor of allowing local officials to arrest and deport illegal aliens, for example, as long as it's Constitutional.
We cannot just let people without health insurance die, folks. - Posted by Wince
You bring up an interesting question. This reasoning led to federal regulation that a hospital cannot turn away patients at the ER. Sounds like a good idea, right?
Let's face it, if you had been mugged and shot, when you show up at the ER unconscious they won't have a clue who you are or if you have insurance (Your wallet/purse were stolen, remember). Do you really want them withholding treatment until they can find the documents?
But the unintended consequence is that the uninsured use the ER as a walk in clinic. This means that the hospital must render care that they know they won't ever be paid for. My wife's hospital system has been operating at a loss for years for this reason and we're not sure how long they can afford to continue doing so. What happens in rural areas where the only hospital in the county closes shop and the next closest hospital is 30-45 minutes (or more) away?
The other problem is that people with colds and minor bacterial infections take spots and time away from real emergencies.
I don't know what the answer is, but something tells me gov't involvement isn't going to make it better.
No more off-topic stuff from me! Randy Barnett says that if the Court rules for the government in this case, the commerce clause can be used to justify almost any law, since every action has an economic impact. (Just ask any economist.) Do we really want to give the federal government the same police powers as our state governments? Do we really want to let Congress overrule state legislatures and state constitutions in every way?
Myself, I like the model of a limited Federal government. I don't like centralization for a country this vast. I think it produces unresponsive government, especially since each Congressional district encompasses over half a million people.
Constitutionally, fraud, unless it crosses state lines or involves a federal agency (mail fraud), isn't the feds business either. Neither murder nor burglary are federal matters, which is why the Partial Birth Abortion Act references Abortion as a commercial transaction, not as illegal force. I do not want broad police power at the federal level, and, according to every Constitutional scholar I've ever encountered, the Constituion does not provide such police power to the feds.
Expanding the commerce clause in such a way that any connection to economic activity allows federal involvement is a vast increase in federal power. Do we want the federal government to rewrite all the drunk driving laws? Just a clue, however. Remember the way the feds raised the drinking age? It was using the power of the purse. Yet there's plenty of commercial activity around alcohol. Now it may be that the wording of the 21st amendment prevents this. OK. Remember the 55 MPH speed limit? Also obtained using the power of the purse. So why can't the feds say that you can't purchase gasoline and use it to drive over 55? Because the commerce clause is NOT intended to stretch that far!
Constitutionally, fraud, unless it crosses state lines or involves a federal agency (mail fraud), isn't the feds business either.
Well, that is why I prefaced my earlier remarks with "I am not a constitutional scholar". I thought the federal gov't did have the right to legislate against fraud at the national level. Of course that probably came from the difference between what the federal gov't should and does do. If you are right then the U.S. SC should never have accepted the case to start with.
I am not a constitutional scholar, either. Just passionate.
Actually the SC should accept the case and tell the feds to butt out. IOW, the feds cannot outlaw marijuana, except when trafficked across state lines.
Frankly, I am not at all happy about the way the feds use the power of the purse to force the states into line, either. If the Court does tell the feds to butt out, Congress can always pass a law denying, say, Medicare funding to states which allow medical marijuana.
The power of the purse is another reason to limit federal programs. You can't addict states to small amounts of federal funding, then force them to toe the federal line, but big programs are almost impossible for a state to forgo. But then again, I'm not sure Medicare and a lot of other federal spending is Constitutional either.
And I'm having a real problem deciding whether or not to capitalize federal.
I wish Mrs. du Toit would weigh in here. I'm pretty sure she has the Constitution memorized.
If partial birth abortion is a commercial act, and subject to federal regulation solely because of its transactional characteristic, does that mean that the prohibition against it would be unenforceable if a physician performed it at no charge?
You and I might think so, but an economist would argue that, since this effectively lowers the price for all partial birth abortions, it is still a commercial act. You see there was this dastardly Supreme Court decision in FDR's day where a farmer who was growing grain to feed his own animals was nevertheless subject to federal grain regulations, since by increasing the supply of grain he was effectively lowering the price. Yeah, that's right, the FDR's hand packed Court decided that growing grain on your own farm and feeding it to your own cattle was interstate commerce. Jerks.
FDR was a great wartime President, but I sure hate what he did to the Constitution. Or, to put it bluntly, he repeatedly broke the supreme law of the land. But hey, maybe they all do. Clinton's War on Drugs laws allow police to seize property without due process. And those laws may violate certain search and seizure laws. The Patroit Act certainly does. Judge Andrew Napolitano has pointed out that it's National Security Letters are effectively search warrants which are written by the FBI without a judge's approval.
Yes, Bush and Ashcroft are also great wartime figures, but they, with Congressional sanction, just like FDR, are breaking the supreme law of the land. Jerks.
I want Gerry Spence for Attorney General. I'd like a Supreme Law of the Land Law and Order Guy, for once.
Now that the election is over, it's time for the Republicans among us to reign in our leaders and the Democrats among us to reign in theirs. This is not, and never has been, a case where one party has an advantage over the other. Instead politicians from both parties routinely try to violate the rights of the other party while protecting those of their own, except where their own party members don't care. Democrats don't seem to care as much about limiting the commercial power of the government and protecting their own property rights. Republicans don't seem to care as much about protecting their own free speech and free press rights. These are both generalizations and are wildly untrue for large minorities in both parties.
Excellent! I wish you were President, on the Judiciary Committee, or on the Supreme Court. It's time to get away from petty partisan politics and start getting back to the Supreme Law of the Land. I admire your consistent adherence to it. Thank you.
If usage of this drug does indeed have curative effects beneficial to patients with supposedly otherwise incurable brain tumors or other maladies, then let these people be treated in proper medical clinics with tested drugs utilizing THC extracted from the cannabinol which is the presumably active component of various grades of hemp.
And if such a beneficient drug can be adsorbed into the body through the lungs in the form of smoke fumes, (which I suspect is a dubious form of treatment as likely to induce lung cancer in the same way that smoking tobacco does) then the same effect can be achieved by injection or injestion, administered by trained and licensed personnel in a medical clinic or hospital.
Or, for that matter, it could even be inserted into the body in the form of suppositories. Which is perhaps more appropriate for those following this utterly ridiculous argument of legalizing it as a form of treatment. One could even name these "Preparation M", and envision the following clinical dialog:
PATIENT:
"Well, doctor, do you have my marijuana prescription ready, so that I can treat my incurable (brain tumor, stomach cancer, etc, etc, whatever)?
PHYSICIAN:
"Yes, ma'am. Pick up your Preparation M prescription from the clinic's pharmacy. Take two, shove them up you ass, and call me in the morning."
"Thank you, doctor."
"You're welcome."
But you say you want to treat your unfortunate, dying self amidst the love of your support group, lounging around '60s style on the living room floor, while the sounds of the Grateful Dead waft through your ears and into your consciousness? And clinical treatment settings of your favorite drugs are too cold, institutional and sterile? To which I reply,
Tough shit.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Of course many of the proponents of medical marijuana want marijuana completely legal. What of it? Ours is a consitutional democracy, not a despotic democracy.
Whatever advocates are also advocating doesn't change the fact that in banning marijuana the way that Congress has done is using such a ridiculous definition of "interstate commerce" that they might as well just repeal the 10th amendment.
Are we talking about cannabis or tobacco? Just checking. Cause if the federal government actually knew that smoking was potentially dangerous to its citizens, how could they NOT outlaw it.
I agree with Dean on this one. It is immoral to oppose medicinal marijuana, and flat out hypocritical if you are a smoker or drinker and oppose its legalization and regulation for recreational use.
WTF over.
Arnold is correct that folks are using medical treatment as a way to bring recreational use in. OK. People recreationally abuse 'ludes, oxy-contin, etc. These matters should be handled by the states, not the Feds. It a state decides it wants to allow recreational uses of drugs, so be it. The only thing the Feds can do is control interstate commerce.
Why do you think we had to amend the Constitution to prohibit alcohol at a Federal level?
I'm with Dean, here. Conservatives need to follow the law.
Yours,
Wince
"Don't blame me for all the tobacco and liquor wipeouts. I haven't ingested tobacco smoke for 32 years, drink only with my wife at home, and even that is limited to an occasional beer or shot of slivovica. You want ban alcohol again? Be my guest. I don't give a damn. But controlled substances? Forget it. Now and forever."
My libertarian self says:
"Okay. Those are your bodies. Go do with them whatever you like. Ingest whatever substance you want. Which is okay, so long as I don't ever have to pay for picking up your OD'd corpse from the street and parking it in some morgue.
And as long as you can guarantee a lot better than the lushes do, that you never ever will operate a motor vehicle, pilot an aircraft, or handle a loaded firearm, while under the influence of your favorite recreational whizbang drug."
But there's another Arnold Harris that says:
"More than anything in this life, I hate bullshit in all its forms. So just don't lie about your motives. Want to get stoned? Fine. Just don't come up with some line of shit about the wondrous way that playing Captain Toke with the hippies is going to cure your malignant ailment any better than some authenticated medical treatment."
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I can see that Arnold does not like hippies. I can understand that very well. I prefer to be "square" myself. I do not smoke marijuana, and only have a gin and tonic on rare occasions these days. I keep my hair extremely short. I prefer Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Wagner to "rock" music.
But if somebody wants to smoke dope or be a hippie, that's their right, the government has no right to stop them. If a woman want to be a prostitute, I think she should be free do it. I don't have to approve of it, but the government has no business telling people how to live their lives.
And, most definitely, the federal government has no such business. The Tenth Amendment explicitly limits the functions and powers of the federal government to those specifically delegated to it in the Constitution and leaves the rest up to the states or to the individual.
The much-hated Ninth Amendment, in addition, sets other, even more powerful and stringent limits on government vis-a-vis the individual and his or her inalienable rights. But, even if you won't respect the Ninth Amendment, you must at the very least respect the Tenth instead of grabbing for an all-powerful federal super-state to micro-manage our lives. That's the kind of thing our Founding Fathers rebelled against in the first place.
As to the medical uses of marijuana, I'm going to defer to those who have far more authority in that area than I do: the doctors.
BTW, having never taken drugs (except alcohol and tobacco) what is the half life of marajuana's effect on brain function and motor control?
As for its medical value, thats for physicians to decide as a professional matter, as most politicians are hardly competent to judge pharmaceutical benefits.
As for "conservatives", well, I'm sure plenty of them are anti-pot, but William F. Buckley and the National Review folks are at least pro-legalisation.
As far as function is concerned, it is a mild depressant and a mild hallucinogen that may act by mimicing the effects of endocannabinoids, which are chemically similar to delta-9-THC and made by the body and may be involved in the "pleasure system", WETF that may be.
Aside from it's drug activity, because MJ is smoked, it also has similar if not greater somatic consequences than tobacco because there are no regulations on what you can use in growing buds, so you'd probably be inhaling lots of nasty sh*t along with your THC.
Yes and no. Just as a brain surgeon can't show up wasted before he or she probes into my melon, they won't be allowed to be stoned on duty. Drunk on duty, high on duty, all the same. You could use it off duty, but certain professions that ban the use during or hours prior to work would still apply to marijuana.
Use of psychotropic drugs would disqualify someone from serving in certain military occupational specialities.
On a lighter note, Walmart shelf stockers would benefit greatly from recreational use as it would take the edge off. Damn, those 10 gallon jugs of Cranapple-Orange Whip/Whizz Frappe sure put a hurtin' on my back.
If it ever became legal, I personally wouldn't use it, but I would open an all-night snack food delivery service immediately.
These are desperately ill people, for the most part. As far as I know, MJ is only prescribable for end-stage terminal cancers (where pain makes life unbearable) and glaucoma, which is the only disease that I've read about where delta-9-THC specifically may help with the actual disease, although I don't recall how.
I'm all for any kind of palliative care that helps these people live out the ends of their lives more fully.
That being said, there should also be strict rules about sharing your prescription buds as long as it is illegal. I'm a fan of legalizing MJ and regulating it and taxing the crap out of it, myself, but as long as it remains illegal, we better make sure that medical MJ isn't just an end around the current laws on the books.
Sigivald: I know Buckley is pro-legalization, but I don't think everyone at NRO is.
CTG: I don't think it makes sense to compare the relative dangers of smoking pot vs. tobacco, as smokers don't consume the two in equal or even comparable quantities. If you smoke two joints a day, you're a hard-core pothead. If you smoke two tobacco cigarettes a day, you barely qualify as a smoker at all.
You know, though, the social conservatives, the vast majority anyway, aren't a bunch of frothing Torquemadas. They're the sweetest people you'd ever want to meet...
...but they're still wrong about some of this stuff.
That seems to describe the Party that can run the gamut from John Derbyshire to Bob Novak to George W. Bush to Arnold, to me. Does it seem (approximately) accurate to other Republicans than myself? Howabout those who are 'non-Democrats', or Disenchanted Democrats?
"I can't get no
satisfactionstupefaction.'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no."
"When I'm watchin' my TV
and that man comes on to tell me
how white my shirts can be.
Well he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say."
"I can't get no
satisfactionstupefaction.'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no."
What a stupid song that was.
Okay back to the MJ debate.
Medical marijuana as a plausible pharmeceutical medical treatment is like driving a car with no chrome on it down a one way street that is a dead end. MJ has no future in the medical field.
It keeps coming up politically because hundreds of thousands of americans have been conditioned to the notion that Uncle Sam (our Daddy) is going to
solve the quandry for medical treatment conditions particularly those which some will declare as a constitutional right if they don't get there share of whatever is currently popular.
Pretty typical kneejerk stuff if you ask me.
The shit works. It doesn't "cure" anything, but it is exceptionally effective for alleviating nausea for chemotherapy patients and has been shown to be useful for alleviating pain for certain forms of muscular disorder.
Furthermore, pot is no more addictive, and has no more "get you stoned" potential than literally dozens of perfectly legal narcotics (and pot isn't even a narcotic).
STILL FURTHER: there are drugs on the market which use most of the same chemicals as found in pot. If you take those pills, you get even more stoned than if you smoke pot. If you take those pills, you test as positive for marijuana in your system. Yet doctors can prescribe them no problem.
The problem? Those drugs--which I repeat GET YOU MORE STONED THAN POT, and which cause you to test positive for pot in your system anyway---are not as effective for some patients. And they also get you more stoned and make you less functional, which is why some patients would rather use the pot than take the pills.
As for the objection about employers: once again this is a complete red herring. It is already perfectly legal to throw someone off a workplace or fire him if he shows up drunk. It is already perfectly legal to do the same if they show up to work stoned on prescription drugs. I had to take a piss test to get my current job, and they checked for Xanax, valium, codeine, and a host of other perfectly legal tranquilizers--and if I could not produce a prescription from a doctor, I would not be hired, and if I showed up stoned on same after hire, and I could not produce said prescription from a doctor, I could be fired.
In other words, once again, conservatives are NOT being rational, they're being EMOTIONAL. They just don't like pot. Their reason? I assume it's because they associate it with people they don't like.
I make no bones about it: I think outlawing pot in general is stupid. But then I think a lot of things are stupid. Making pot legal for medicinal purposes is no more of a "slippery slope" than making morphine legal for medicinal purposes is a "slippery slope" to making morphine or heroin legal for general use.
The arguments against this are entirely irrational. (And yes, Arnold Harris, I'm saying that you and your ilk are entirely irrational on this point.)
Conservatives this and Conservatives that....
Plenty of us are not only for legalization of medical Marijuana but for complete legalization of it.
Got that you smelly Hippie Liberal?
Mi daughter's live-in is a regular pot type guy.
Only owes $17,000 on the credit cards to date.
You show me pot, I'll show you an irresponsible
adult attempting to act like a real parent/ guardian.
The people of several states now, including California, have made it clear, through amendments of their state Constitutionis in some cases, that they want marijuana available medically. Any so-called "conservative" who approves of running to the Federal government to try to overrule that shows that he's a liar if he claims he respects the concepts of states' rights--or at least he shows he only cares about it when it's convenient for his own arguments.
The Feds need to back off here.
Do you have any idea what a month's supply of morphine costs? Or a month's supply of a half-dozen other far more potent, far more inebriating painkillers or other drugs cost?
$78 would be Godsend-cheap for a lot of people currently spending hundreds or even thousands for their monthly prescription drug bills.
Argh. What is it with people being impervious to fact?
Marinol: It's perfectly legal. It has the same basic chemicals as pot in it, and if you take it you get a lot more stoned than you do if you just smoke pot. If you take it, you show up positive for pot use in drug tests--and you're a lot more stoned on it. Doctors can prescribe it.
Several far more addictive and powerful narcotics are perfectly legal.
You guys have no problem with that, but because you don't like the dirty smelly lazy hippies, you want to punish 'em by keeping the vile weed out of the hands of sick people.
I've never seen a more emotional or juvenile position in my life (and I don't care that some of you making it are over 70. It's still emotional and juvenile.)
For those so inclined, here is a short little history of nonmedicinal drugs in US history. It was on Instapundit a while ago.
What i have to contribute to the debate is too long for a comment post. The original laws were apparently passed in a most demented manner, and no, i don't think the Feds have any business putting their noses into state laws. But I'm in Oregon, and the Feds have continually put their noses in our business. It's annoying
And if he's a states' rights liberal, he's not a liar?
Yeah, I know. Purely hypothetical situation....
Problem is that is only the amount we're told is being spent. The amount is highly suspect since the same person in a peddler.
Catch: What do you suppose the drug bill looks like for, say, your average morphine addict? Although most morphine addicts graduate to heroin from what I understand.
I have family members who are severely addicted to perfectly legal prescription drugs, which they buy on the streets: Percodan, Xanax, Valium, and quite a few others I can think of off the top of my head. Is there any evidence at all that these people using prescription drugs illegally are a greater threat than those using a non-prescription drug illegally?
Where's your common sense man? Your lotus-eater relatives are no reason to tell people in cancer wards they can't have something that everyone in oncological circles knows damn well works better than those pot-laced pills?
My other concern is that MJ is quack medicine at its best. Millions of cancer victims have had their symptoms and pain alleviated without handing them a joint. Arnold Harris gets it. See Preparation M above.
Others don't seem to get it, then advocate some particular heroism to pot usage. And how about coffee enemas. That was the big cure-all in the
alternative clinic south of San Diego some time back. And apricot pits helped also back in the Laetrile days.
As stated before, Marijuana does not have a medical future except for political propaganda.
God bless the 10th amendment.
The United States of America of my childhood and young manhood was a country of heroes. They, the great generation of the world wars of the 20th century, were the children and grandchildren of the hardened men and women typified by those who settled the Dakota frontier, and of whom George Will wrote about in his Thanksgiving message last week.
They built a country on the basis of self-respect, personality responsibility, and lives focused on using their liberty to produce a better way of life.
That generation of Americans would have curdles their lips in disgust over most of what you people are lauding in this discussion.
One of the concepts of America's christians -- including the old-time catholics, at least to the extant that I understood them -- was their attempts to build a society of disciplined men and women to properly utilize the freedoms that came with birth or residence on this new continent.
Sometimes I think we are descending into the status of a commonwealth of self indulgence. Islam will find this place easy pickings as its tentacles grow.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
In my experience, I would say I have known at least six users of pot in my life. The first I met was my father, whom I only found out about years after his death(you woulnd't have even guessed he was a user) - for some years he ran his own appliance repair service, and if he wasn't doing that he was always employed, and he was very intelligent and well-liked by all(even people he couldn't stand thought he was their best friend). The second, third, and fourth was my uncle, aunt, and her husband - my uncle has run his own business since before I was born, my aunt works as a nurse in a prison, and her now ex-husband was a truck driver(he has a number of health problems due to obesity, and a number of other problems, he's probably the only person who could come close to good-for-nothing on this list). They have all quit in the last few years as I understand it. The fifth was a friend of mine in high school, who did have a part-time job at the time and made decent grades for his intelligence level, and he eventually quit. Lastly there is my neighbor, who has held a job, paid his taxes, and been a good family friend as long as I've known him - and low and behold I find out a couple months ago that he uses pot. Adding a seventh to the list, now that I think about it, is another neighbor's son, who got arrested for possession a few years back, but is a generally responsible father now. I've known all these people, and yet not one is a dirty hippie. Go figure.
And by the way, I do not use pot nor do I plan on ever using it, even if legal.
Now I have to respond to a couple things said:
"The issue isn't really about recreational use of drugs. It's about how you treat your own bodies, the only ones you shall ever have. And it's about how you utilize your precious liberty."
"They built a country on the basis of self-respect, personality responsibility, and lives focused on using their liberty to produce a better way of life."
You talk of 'liberty' and 'personal responsibility', two things I am in support of. However, a ban on a substance is a restriction on liberty. Personal responsibility requires that you have the liberty to make your own decisions and deal with the consequences yourself - a ban does the opposite, it tells you that you don't have the liberty to make a choice. Without choice, you don't have liberty. Will people make bad decisions if you give them a choice - hell yeah, but they still make those same bad decisions even told they don't have a choice plus society has to deal with the negative costs of prohibition.
Yeah, take off your motorcycle helmets and put the lead back into paint.
What meaning did all that rhetoric you espoused about decency and justice then? Eh? But now some poor woman dying of bone cancer, unable to hold down so much as a sip of water or a bite of cracker and literally starving to death because the chemotherapy she's taking won't allow her to keep food down--THAT is merely political propaganda, self-indulgence, and emotionalism?
Can you not see the cognitive dissonance in what you're saying here?
The fact that the overwhelming majority of physicians who actually work in this specialty don't agree with you just doesn't make a dent, does it?
Two things mostly unrelated to the subject, especially the second, but I'll still take them on.
Motorcycle helmets - I'm absolutely fine if some idiot wishes to ride around without a helmet. If they are stupid or reckless enough to do so, let them deal with whatever damage may come if they do so - the consequences are theirs to deal with, and if they die it's one less idiot in the world. That being said, I know a number of bikers, and not one of them would ride their motorcycles without a helmet, even given a choice in the matter.
Lead in paint - not allowing lead in paint is not the same thing as not allowing marijuana. On the one hand you can still legally buy, possess, and use paint and you can still make it if it does not have lead, and on the other you can't legally buy, possess, use, or make marijuana. See the difference, one is only a partial regulation on production and the other is a complete ban. I am not against some marijuana regulation if it is made legal - in fact it would probably be good if we did have some, for instance I think if pot is legal it should be illegal to sell it on the streets, only legal behind the counter somewhere ID will be checked. For a more similar comparison in the situation where pot is legal, it should be illegal for pot producers to dip their product in embalming fluid before selling it.
1) I am not a constitutional scholar
2) I am a conservative (with a strongish libertarian streak).
3) I do believe that states have the right to make their own laws. Those laws may be wrong, but they have the right to be wrong.
However, where I have a problem with this is that "medical" marijuana isn't. I have no more a problem with truely medical marijuana than with morphine. Put it through the FDA's clinical trials to determine efficacy, proper dosage, side effects, delivery method (IV, pill, IM, even smoked), indications, contra-indications, drug-drug interactions, etc. etc. etc. just the same as is done with every other medicine that is legal to prescribe. So far none of this has been done. Calling this "medical" marijuana is fraud, and I believe fraud trumps states rights.
If you want marijuana treated like morphine, then treat it like morphine and you'll get no argument from me.
What I think should have happened is that the state supreme court had stricken it down as conflicting with existing law prohibiting pot (or stricken the prohibition to remove the conflict) or stricken it due to the fraud arguement. Since that didn't happen, it's a bad law, but it is the state's bad law to make.
The U.S. Supreme court, unless someone can show me otherwise, can only justly overturn the ruling on the fraud argument. Absent this reasoning, however, I don't see any other justification for ruling other than that it's none of the feds business.
For those of you who say the FDA can't/won't do it, I say, "Call your congressman". Address the problem and not the symptom. I would argue that a lot of the gov't growth/bloat/intrusion is made by well intentioned people trying to fix symptoms and not problems.
Morphine is an incredibly addictve, debilitating opiate. It is completely illegal, a felony to possess, without a prescription.
This does not mean doctors can't prescribe it.
Some would say that legalizing pot for medicinal use is a "first step" toward full legalization. Bullshit. If it were, then morphine would be legal now. Demerol would be legal now. Codeine and heroin and cocaine would all be legal now, since doctors can prescribe all of those legally now.
But they aren't.
Saying that making pot legal for medicinal, prescription use is a "first step" toward legalizing for general consumption is like saying that making morphine is the "first step" toward making morphine legal to sell over the counter. It's never happened like that, and no rational reason to think it will be.
Do I personally think pot should be legal for general recreational use? Hell yeah. Regulate its sale, tax the hell out if it, and make it available over the counter, but illegal to sell to minors just like booze.
BUT BUT BUT--that is a truly different subject. It just is. I'd say the same damned thing about heroin. I think the best fix for the heroin junkie problem is to require heroin users to register as junkies, restrict their driver's licenses, have special tags on their license plates, make it clear that if they're caught driving under the influence of heroin or giving it to children they get 10 years in jail minimum---but otherewise let the junkies have their fix.
But THAT IS A DIFFERENT SUBJECT.
When I had surgery on my nose four years ago, do you know what the surgeon did? At the end of the procedure he put two big fat flakes of COCAINE up my nose. Then shot me up with MORPHINE.
Perfectly legal for him to do that. And a felony if I then left and went and tried to get some cocaine or morphine for medicinal use.
Look up any book on elemental logic the term NON SEQUITUR. "Approved for medicinal use" DOES NOT create a "slippery slope" toward approval for general rectational use. It never has been and it never will be.
Indeed, I would love to see anyone point to me ANY SINGLE EXAMPLE of a psychotropic drug that was first approved for medicinal use that subsequently became available for general recreational use. Because I can't think of a single one. Is there even one such example?
This fear by the right of a common weed that grows just about everywhere simply must end.
"However, where I have a problem with this is that "medical" marijuana isn't." (Masked Menace)
"My other concern is that MJ is quack medicine at its best." (Catch 22)
All three statements are correct. The point is pot is not medicine. Marijuana clubs are not medical treatment facilities. There is no medical oversight. Anyone with a piece of paper walks in and buys his daily smokes. This is not medical practice, its quackery.
Not only do we need to separate out medicinal use from everyday use; we need to separate out medicine and medical practice from the notion that pot is a the medicine and a pot house is the treatment facility.
The social implications are important societal concerns. One such example is in today's
San Francisco Chronicle -- article by Matier and Ross.
Pot clubs may be taking root near your own backyard
So there just might be a conservative position here that merits some insightful understanding other than to announce a "pot for all" agenda.
Its medical usage is however limited.
an interesting tidbit about Oregon's medicinal use program- it's the only state program that ran in the black last year. In fact it was so successful that the state reduced the program fees for participants. Patients in Oregon are also allowed to grow a certain amount for themselves. They are allowed to have caretakers who can grow it. Some caretakers grow for more than one patient. They are allowed, i think, six plants per patient.
The simple fact of the matter is that for 30 years now the government has refused to allow any serious clinical study of marijuana use. They have simply made it impossible to do in any truly controlled fashion.
That being the case, the only thing we have left are clinical reports. And clinical reports are considered valid science, merely sub-optimal. And the clinical reports are damn near universal: for chemotherapy patients, for whom the #1 complaint is incredibly debilitating nausea, AIDS hospice doctors and oncologists all but universally report that their patients who are SO NAUSEATED THEY CANNOT HOLD DOWN FOOD are able to hold down food when they use marijuana.
The clinical support for this is so overwhelming that the FDA has approved a drug called Marinol which basically has the most potent active ingredients in marijuana in pill form. The drug is prescribed for that specific purpose: to alleviate the symptoms of acute, debilitating nausea in chemotherapy patients.
So again I repeat for you Catch: SAME ACTIVE INGREDIENTS AS WHAT IS IN MARIJUANA. In fact they have to use marijuana plants just to make it.
Follow me here? It's pot in pill form. And it's LEGAL TO PRESCRIBE.
So what's the problem here? Why not just give the patients Marinol and be done?
Well first it doesn't contain all the ingredients in marijuana. Second, as I said before, patients who take it get much more stoned and are much more debilitated than marijuana smokers. It takes longer to take effect and once it takes effect, they're GONE--they're high as kites. The still test positive for marijuana on the standard piss and blood tests, too.
But they're a lot more high, they're a lot more out of control--and a lot of them report that the nausea-alleviation effects are still sub-optimal.
Clinically, the patients who smoke the weed note that they can just take a few puffs and the effect is instantaneous. They can also stop puffing fairly quickly, well before they get unreasonably stoned and out of control. Suddenly they can just eat and drink again. And they don't have to let themselves get high as kites just to do it.
You want FDA-approved studies on all this? Well I'd like them too, but guess what? THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS REFUSED TO ALLOW ANY SUCH STUDIES FOR OVER 30 YEARS.
Doctors are saying it's working. Patients aged 9 to 90 are saying it's working, and the fucking Federal government WON'T ALLOW ANY SERIOUS STUDIES TO BE DONE. ANYONE WHO TRIES TO CONDUCT THEM IS ARRESTED.
I note to you again, just in case you still haven't gotten it: I challenge you to go to ANY cancer ward in your state, ANY cancer hospice in your state. If you are familiar with the smell of marijuana (it's fairly hard to miss once you recognize it), you will smell that smell. It is ubiquitous. That is because the doctors, the nurses, the nurses aids, and the orderlies all know that this stuff is helping people, and they ALL look the other way and pretend they don't notice this smell.
Indeed, the orderlies and the medical assistants are usually the ones to quietly find a way to help the patients find their way to the stuff because EVERYONE working there knows that it's helping people from the debilitating side-effects of chemotherapy, and knows that if they "officially notice" it they'll get in trouble. So they all play games and look the other way.
And here's the other truth about modern medicine: tones of what goes on in doctors' offices is cases where doctors recommend treatments and protocols that are NOT FDA approved or that people realize are questionable because NO ONE KNOWS the most effective treatment. So they do their best with what they know and what they see in their daily practice.
And again: the governmente WILL NOT ALLOW these FDA studies that you say you want. Even though they already acknowledge the 30+ year old studies which recognize that it has some benefit for glaucoma and a few other conditions, before the government chopped off any other effective research.
And so I say to you: I agree that I would like to see the studies done. In the meantime, we have endless reports from oncologists as well as AIDS specialists saying that this stuff is remarkably effective at alleviating nausea for chemotherapy patients. It's so widespread its a running joke in this area of medicine, and the government won't even allow the studies to be done.
I suggest to you that it is irrational resistance based on FEAR OF A COMMON WEED that is causing this problem.
And I ask you once again: what the hell is is about marijuana that scares you more than MORPHINE or CODEINE or DEMEROL or VALIUM, anyway?
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Actually, from my perspective all the talk of the merits or lack thereof of medical marijuana is moot. The Constitution only grants Congress the right to regulate commerce among the States. FDR wanted pretty fine control over the economy, however, so he rammed some intrastate regulations through Congress. The Supreme Court declared this Constitutional on the basis that intrastate commerce effects interstate commerce.
What arrogant jerks. I find it rather dubious that the Foundering Fathers, who vigorously traded intrastate, interstate and internation, did not take this into account. Not to mention that the states also engaged in vigorous trade wars under the Articles of Confederation. Since essentially ALL commerce effects interstate commerce this judicial innovation made the distinction embodied in the Constitution oddly pointless. The Constitution does not read "To regulate Commerce;".
The question is, do we follow the Supreme Law of the Land or not.
I say follow the Constitution, limit the power of the Federal government and let the states decide such questions. That way blue states can be blue, red states can be red and people can start caring more about their State Legislature and less about Congress. Local control is responsive. Even so, companies which want to sell their products outside their home state will have to follow the Federal regs.
If you want the Feds to control drugs, amend the Constitution.
Yours,
Wince
So far as I know, the latter has never been proven by double-blind study. Just clinical reports. Just like a lot of medicine. And just exactly like the clinical reports that say that chemotherapy patients report drastic reductions in otherwise-out-of-control nausea from marijuana use.
And I think that this entire smokescreen about medicinal uses of cannabis is just an argument to obtain overall societal acceptance of usage of this and other illegal drugs.
As for your poor, suffering, pitiful old ladies with untreatable maladies, I am certain that appropriately licensed pharmaceutical laboratories could find ways to isolate THC compounds from the basic cannabinol from the hemp plant, and use these to create medicines which patients could ingest under control and supervision of trained and licensed medical personnel. If anyone needs it that badly, they will need it no less if it is injected into them in a hospital, rather than laying around their livingroom carpet getting stoned with their "treatment".
The emphasis the pseudo-scientific potheads put on smoking the stuff in the form of a chopped up weed is to me a clear signal that they mostly wish legalize and normative access so they can use it as a recreational drug under veiled cover of its ostensible medical "need". The same way their counterparts in the 1920s purchased "medicinal" alcohol in quantities out of all proportion to any real treatment usage.
So stop blowing smoke at me. I've been around for a long time, and I've heard it all before.
And I shall stick to what I wrote earlier. That this is rapidly becoming a society of the whining, non-productive or semi-productive self-indulgent. In other words, a society that will not likely be around in it present form many more centuries.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
So let me get this straight, since the system hasn't produced your result for the last 30 years, to hell with it, let's back door it any ol' way we can? The ends justify the means?
I'm sorry, but I've been reading here long enough that this seems a little out of character.
I agree the marijuana can be useful medicine, just that it isn't as practiced today. My fear is that a glaucoma patient being treated with pot dies because it interferred with his heart meds. On top of that the doctor, pharmacist, nurse and the hospital get sued for malpractice because the side-effects (death) were worse than the disease (blindness).
Also your statement belies a bigger issue: Gov't banning medical research over politics. This seems to me to be a more important issue than this one symptom. As I said before, fix the problem and the symptoms take care of themselves.
Researchers buzzing about marijuana-derived medicines Cannabinoids may help against many diseases
"A decade ago, when Daniele Piomelli went to scientific conferences, he was often the only researcher studying cannabinoids, the class of chemicals that give marijuana users a high.
His work often drew snickers and jokes -- but no more. At the annual Society for Neuroscience conference last week, scientists delivered almost 200 papers on the subject."
Excerpt:
"Advocates of medical marijuana have long argued that the drug can be useful for treating many conditions, particularly chronic pain, nausea and glaucoma. In the latter, marijuana works by temporarily decreasing pressure around the eye.
Although they don't dispute this view, most researchers believe there are better, more precise ways to stimulate the cannabinoid system. They believe marijuana has too many negatives to be a truly effective drug, with side effects that include memory problems, decreased immunity and possibly addiction. Some researchers dispute this.
Marijuana has another drawback. From a scientific standpoint, Giuffrida says, it's "a very dirty drug."
Cannabinoids may help against many diseases
If you can't guess, I consider this question to be FAR more important and certainly more far reaching than any comparatively piddling drug debate.
Yours,
Wince
I agree that one day science will likely come up with a more suitable pill form of this, but the problem is 'ONE DAY'. There are people suffering NOW. If smoking a couple puffs of pot - not even enough to really get high - is a viable, affordable solution and I see no reason why we should deny it to them until that alternative can be found.
Are there side effects? Of course, but considering the alternative - aka unnecessarily forcing people to continue to suffer - I think allowing a little pot smoking would be far superior. We can work on more effective drugs - arguably the drugs we have today are much better and safer than the drugs of 50 years ago, but they didn't decide not to use those medicines simply because they could develop better ones later. All things considered, we should use what is best right now - which may very well be marijuana - and use what is best in the future at that point. Seriously, if you were sick, would you want the best treatment you could get today, even if it is imperfect and has side effects, or would you like to wait ten years for a better treatment with less side effects?
I can understand Arnold Harris's feelings on this. He likes women. He does not like hippies. Therefore, he favors legalized abortion but not legalized marijuana. I can see that. I respect his convictions but I have to disagree with him here. I agree instead with John Dibble (and with Frank S. Meyer) that freedom is the precondition of virtue. I agree with Dean and with Wince and Nod that the Constitution overrides writing our dislike of hippies into federal law.
Seems the Alabama solicitor general is less worried about the relatively powerless pot heads, and more worried about the ever expanding powers of the Federal government. Good man.
Yours,
Wince
"Watch that broad brush painting there, Mister!
Conservatives this and Conservatives that....
Plenty of us are not only for legalization of medical Marijuana but for complete legalization of it.
Got that you smelly Hippie Liberal?"
HAIL TO THE QUEEN....!!!! AND HAIL TO THE KING!!!!
Wince, that is an excellent question. And you’re right it hasn’t been addressed by myself.
My position is found in the US Constitution Article I Section I:
“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
This authority grants Congress the right to pass legislation. Such as:
“The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, is the legal foundation of the government's fight against the abuse of drugs and other substances. This law is a consolidation of numerous laws regulating the manufacture and distribution of narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and chemicals used in the illicit production of controlled substances.”
It also grants the DEA enforcement of the Act and the Department of Justice to oversee it..
And as Zell Miller would say, “ so who cares about that its not in the Constitution.”
So yes, I can understand your saying,
“If you can't guess, I consider this question to be FAR more important and certainly more far reaching than any comparatively piddling drug debate.”
Now regarding certain piddling drug debate:
The distinction between Dean’s position and my own isn’t a conservative vs liberal, bias,it comes from the fact that I hold a DEA license and pay very expensive liability insurance.
I think my position will become clearer when after said enactment of national ‘pot’ laws, consumers will start suing the feds as well as their doctors for bad pot laced with salmonella, or other stomach parasites that they received from the local cannabis healing center. I view these marijuana cafes as the equivalency of injecting freshly brewed coffee including the mouse droppings and all. Then of course, all research in these matters is the proper function of THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
And as well, I do have respect for serious researchers that make statements like:
“Marijuana has another drawback. From a scientific standpoint, Giuffrida says, it's "a very dirty drug. It contains more than 300 compounds, 60 of which affect the cannabinoid system. Scientists don't understand what most of these substances do or how they work together. This complexity makes it hard for researchers to pinpoint marijuana's effects.”
Does that help clarify my position ?
------------------------------------------------
Smoking Pot Raises Psychosis Risk in Youths
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
By Miranda Hitti
Smoking pot increases psychosis risk in young people, especially among those who are already vulnerable to psychosis.
That’s the conclusion of a study of more than 2,400 German teens and young adults aged 14-24.
Participants’ substance use and psychosis symptoms were tracked for about four years. Psychologists interviewed participants at the study’s beginning and end.
The research was conducted by experts from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, including Jim van Os, a professor in the university’s psychiatry and neuropsychology department. Their study appears in today’s edition of BMJ Online First.
At the study’s start, 13 percent said they had smoked marijuana at least five times. Four years later, about 17 percent of all participants had had at least one psychotic symptom.
Psychotic symptoms include hallucinations, such as seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there, and delusions, which are false beliefs that do not go away with logical or accurate information. Other possible psychotic symptoms are incoherent speech, confused thinking, and strange behavior. The most common psychotic disorder is schizophrenia.
Pot smokers were more likely to have psychotic symptoms than those who didn’t smoke pot. The more pot that participants smoked, the greater their chance of having at least one psychotic symptom. The risk held after screening out other influences including alcohol and other drugs.
Pot had “a much stronger effect” on psychotically predisposed participants, say the researchers. People who have a family member with psychotic symptoms are more likely to suffer similar symptoms themselves.
It’s not the first time that marijuana has been linked to psychosis. But until now, no one knew which came first -- the psychosis or the pot use. Were participants using pot to soothe their psychological problems?
Probably not, say the researchers. Psychotic predisposition wasn’t a good predictor of future pot use, they note.
Youth may be a particularly risky time for pot use.
Puberty is “a vulnerable period” for pot’s negative effects, say the researchers, citing studies of lab rats. Pot’s active ingredients may interact with brain chemicals to create negative psychological side effects, they say.
In 2002, a study published in the British Medical Journal linked frequent marijuana use at a young age – more than 50 times -- to an increase in schizophrenia later in life. Similar to the current study, this previous research showed that the more pot people smoked, the more likely they were to suffer psychosis.
Another study published in the same issue showed that daily pot smoking as a teen increased the risk of depression as an adult. When that study was released in 2004, researcher Louise Arseneault, PhD, told WebMD that their research suggested that there is a direct causal link between pot smoking and psychological problems that cannot be explained by tendency toward mental illness.
By Miranda Hitti, reviewed by Michael W. Smith, MD
SOURCES: Henquet, C., BMJ Online First, Dec. 1, 2004. News release, BMJ Online First. WebMD Medical Reference provided in collaboration with The Cleveland Clinic: "Psychotic Disorders." WebMD Medical News: "Pot May Cause Depression, Schizophrenia."
-----------------------------------------------
So, all you pot-lovers out there. How many drivers, pilots, policemen, equipment operators, or best of all, gun owners do you want out there with schizophrenia, psychotic symptoms, psychological problems "that cannot be explained by tendency toward mental illness", etc, etc? Maybe a few more hunters shot dead in the North Woods for no explainable reason? Teenagers going berserk, again for little or no other explainable reason?
What in hell is wrong with the lot of you? You are beginning to sound like petulant toddlers who want to flakes of old paint in their mouths. Even if they are coated with leadbased paint.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
"All legislative Powers herein granted" does not mean "any law Congress wants". It means only the powers granted in the Constitution and no others. You can't ignore the herein granted bit. The Constitution in fact does not grant all powers to Congress. It has a list of the granted powers. Regulating ingested substances is not among those powers. Regulating commerce among the states is. That is why, when you read the text of these laws, they refer to that power. The clue in the text you quoted is "manufacture and distribution", which are commercial activities. Try again, and consider the entire Constitution this time.
My answer to Zell, if he actually unjokingly said such a thing (which I doubt) would be, "I care, you old coot. You are either incompetent or unscrupulous and if you don't like me saying so, since duels are illegal, a boxing ring should do nicely." I take the Constitution seriously and often wish our Government officials did likewise. Grrr.
Arnold,
What the hell is wrong with me is that I believe in following the law of the land, not warping it to suit. As an example, although I am pro-life, I am against the Federal Partial Birth Abortion prohibition, because I think it is unconstitutional. Abortions are not interstate commerce either, unless you cross a state line to perform or receive one. I want every state to pass such a ban. Do you support a constitutionally limited federal government, or not?
I'm reserving judgement on whether marijuana should be illegal, not because I think using it is a good idea, but because making it illegal doesn't seem to work and has had noxious side effects. Weigh your psycotic effects against all the crime, including gang slayings financed or caused, not because of illegal drugs, but because drugs are illegal. Then factor in all the nasty things done in the name of the War on Drugs, including, for example, confiscation of property without trial. We are in the exact same situation which lead us to give up on Prohibition. We cannot enforce a law which is so often broken. At the same time, recreational drug use is a horrible scourge and a permissive disaster. It's a mess.
Yours,
Wince
I fail to see your point. Making pot is legal isn't going to do any of that, unless as your post indicates, they are already predisposed to mental illness. I mean seriously, that is a "no shit" statement. I wonder if taking legally prescribed pain killers would do the same.
I find it highly ironic that people who believe that I have the right to tell my doctor to plunge a scalpel through the skull of my child and suck his brains out, simply because I changed my mind and he is unfortunately a week away from birth - think it is perfectly okay to tell me that I am acting like a child for wanting an herb made legal so that maybe I or someone I love may smoke it to relieve pain and suffering. Or just for the fun of it.
It's still my body, is it not? I'm not running around town demanding that alcohol be made illegal because it's effects have wrecked havoc and killed more people than 9/11.
Get some perspective, people.
So, in other words, folks like me are liars. Got it.
Conversation over.
No, fuckwit. Becuase the system makes doing the tests impossible, it's obscene for anyone to suggest "seek the tests before seeking the legalization." We can't do the tests, asshole. Are you not paying attention?
It's called "Catch 22." You should recognize the phenomenon. Now they're starting to do tiny little studies with huge restrictions after decades of fighting--but still aren't allowed to test the cannabis directly.
I'm done with this conversation. There's an old saying: don't waste your time arguing with unreasonable people. This is something I am increasingly taking to heart.
A good point, one I agree with wholeheartedly. It is hypocritical to say that a woman has the right to control her own body and have an abortion, but she somehow does not have the right to put a substance in herself for medicinal or recreational use even though she owns her own body. And since citizens are no longer unequal based on sex, men have the same rights. You can't be for the position of people owning their own bodies without saying people can put what they want in them, otherwise you are saying that they do not own their own bodies and that those bodies are owned by the government.
Dude, I didn't cuss at you or call you names. I pointed out what seemed to me to be a contridiction in reasoning and made a polite arguement for my side. If you disagree with my side (co-incidentally we're after the same goal, we just differ on how to get there), great, it's why we're here.
And to further clarify, I'm not saying seek the tests first... I'm saying CHANGE THE SYSTEM. DON'T SUBVERT IT WHEN YOU DON'T GET YOUR WAY. YOU'LL DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD. Fixing individual symptoms is one of the reasons we have a 60,000 page incomprehensible tax code. If you change the system to work properly then the symtom of banning this one drug goes away for all further research for all drugs. How many drugs in the future will have it's research banned due to a bad system? What's more important, winning the battle or the war?
The FDA may want to consider testing MJ on same-sex marriage partners. Of course, if legalized, (gay marriages or marijuana, or even gay marijuana buds) taxes would be used to fund another anti-drug initiative. You know, the way Phillip-Morris is SOOOOOO concerned with the health of smokers.
That sounds like its right out of Catch 22 as is much of this comment thread.
Its corollary is:
"But Yossarian knew he was right, because, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong."
Your Catch 22 reference applies here but it is over-arched by:
"The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970."
That's the one we all have to live with.
Yeah, that's true if they don't die. Otherwise, they go paraplegiccoma ward where you're hard earned tax dollars help pay for independent motorcycle driver injuries. Then, guess who deals with it ?
That helmet argument is really nasty. In most cases we'll save more Social Security and Medicade/care spending than the paraplegiccoma ward costs, since people rarely stay hooked up forever. But we lose all the taxes from their pre-retirement productive behavior. Should we be slaves to the government, forced to work until age sixty-five, than forced out into the cold to starve? It'll cut tax rates!
I'm utterly leery of complaints that behavior X causes health care costs to rise and therefore should be banned. Why? I like a well marbled steak. I like target shooting. I don't want the food police, compulsory exercise and gun control. Let people ride motorcycles without helmets. If we went by safety/health cost concerns automobiles would be illegal and only mass-transit allowed.
Can we please give people the freedom to make stupid mistakes? Every time somebody makes a law to prevent a stupid mistake we end up replacing flexible brains with unbending rules. Which one gives stupid results more often? I'd say the rules.
Yours,
Wince
Are you suggesting that motorcycle drivers that choose to drive without helmets that are unable to pay long term care health costs because of their iresponsible behavior that will ultimately be borne by local or state government or local hospitals is a freedom benefit we ought give the irresponsible ?
Should you wish to speak about unpaid health care provided by hospitals, I'd like to refer you to the San Jose Medical center which is closing down its facilities in downtown San Jose because they are operating in the red to the tune of 8 to 9 million dollars per year because of the demand to pay for undocumented illegals emergency treatment which will never be re-imbursed. In other words they are operating at a continuing loss.
So to your question: Can we please give people the freedom to make stupid mistakes ?
Yes, of course, you're right.
The burden for future emergency health care in San Jose will now be borne by Stanford Medical Center whose emergency room will increase by between 800 and 1000 patients per year and that is just the one's that cannot pay for any medical treatment.
Now, why do we have those stupid child seat belt laws ? They are so freedom restricting.
If you get the gov't out of the equation then it becomes a moot point, no?
Otherwise, when the gov't will forceably take money from me to cover your idiocy, don't be surprised when I want a say in the matter. Utilitarian arguements may determine whether or not I get what I want, but I'll want it just the same.
I'm not for having government intervention in healthcare, for the large part at least. If you can't afford to pay for the consequences, well, sorry, but that means you couldn't afford to take the risk but you took it anyways.
However, in all likeliness we'll have government in healthcare for a long while. Under the current system, we could always put in stipulations - like if you don't wear your seatbelt or helmet, the government won't cover the damages. I don't see how that would be any different than how the federal government requires seatbelt/helmet/speed limit laws from the states in order to get federal highway funding.
We cannot just let people without health insurance die, folks.
The illegal aliens is a completely different problem. I'm all in favor of allowing local officials to arrest and deport illegal aliens, for example, as long as it's Constitutional.
Yours,
Wince
We cannot just let people without health insurance die, folks. - Posted by Wince
You bring up an interesting question. This reasoning led to federal regulation that a hospital cannot turn away patients at the ER. Sounds like a good idea, right?
Let's face it, if you had been mugged and shot, when you show up at the ER unconscious they won't have a clue who you are or if you have insurance (Your wallet/purse were stolen, remember). Do you really want them withholding treatment until they can find the documents?
But the unintended consequence is that the uninsured use the ER as a walk in clinic. This means that the hospital must render care that they know they won't ever be paid for. My wife's hospital system has been operating at a loss for years for this reason and we're not sure how long they can afford to continue doing so. What happens in rural areas where the only hospital in the county closes shop and the next closest hospital is 30-45 minutes (or more) away?
The other problem is that people with colds and minor bacterial infections take spots and time away from real emergencies.
I don't know what the answer is, but something tells me gov't involvement isn't going to make it better.
Is the law preventing hospitals from "let(ting) people without health insurance die" legislating morality?
Myself, I like the model of a limited Federal government. I don't like centralization for a country this vast. I think it produces unresponsive government, especially since each Congressional district encompasses over half a million people.
Can we get back to that topic?
Yours,
Wince
It certainly isn't force. I claim (as it's currently practiced) it's fraud similar to fen-phen and redux, but absent that, it ain't the feds business.
Constitutionally, fraud, unless it crosses state lines or involves a federal agency (mail fraud), isn't the feds business either. Neither murder nor burglary are federal matters, which is why the Partial Birth Abortion Act references Abortion as a commercial transaction, not as illegal force. I do not want broad police power at the federal level, and, according to every Constitutional scholar I've ever encountered, the Constituion does not provide such police power to the feds.
Expanding the commerce clause in such a way that any connection to economic activity allows federal involvement is a vast increase in federal power. Do we want the federal government to rewrite all the drunk driving laws? Just a clue, however. Remember the way the feds raised the drinking age? It was using the power of the purse. Yet there's plenty of commercial activity around alcohol. Now it may be that the wording of the 21st amendment prevents this. OK. Remember the 55 MPH speed limit? Also obtained using the power of the purse. So why can't the feds say that you can't purchase gasoline and use it to drive over 55? Because the commerce clause is NOT intended to stretch that far!
Yours,
Wince
Well, that is why I prefaced my earlier remarks with "I am not a constitutional scholar". I thought the federal gov't did have the right to legislate against fraud at the national level. Of course that probably came from the difference between what the federal gov't should and does do. If you are right then the U.S. SC should never have accepted the case to start with.
Actually the SC should accept the case and tell the feds to butt out. IOW, the feds cannot outlaw marijuana, except when trafficked across state lines.
Frankly, I am not at all happy about the way the feds use the power of the purse to force the states into line, either. If the Court does tell the feds to butt out, Congress can always pass a law denying, say, Medicare funding to states which allow medical marijuana.
The power of the purse is another reason to limit federal programs. You can't addict states to small amounts of federal funding, then force them to toe the federal line, but big programs are almost impossible for a state to forgo. But then again, I'm not sure Medicare and a lot of other federal spending is Constitutional either.
And I'm having a real problem deciding whether or not to capitalize federal.
I wish Mrs. du Toit would weigh in here. I'm pretty sure she has the Constitution memorized.
Yours,
Wince
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Sorry, its been a cynical day today.
You and I might think so, but an economist would argue that, since this effectively lowers the price for all partial birth abortions, it is still a commercial act. You see there was this dastardly Supreme Court decision in FDR's day where a farmer who was growing grain to feed his own animals was nevertheless subject to federal grain regulations, since by increasing the supply of grain he was effectively lowering the price. Yeah, that's right, the FDR's hand packed Court decided that growing grain on your own farm and feeding it to your own cattle was interstate commerce. Jerks.
FDR was a great wartime President, but I sure hate what he did to the Constitution. Or, to put it bluntly, he repeatedly broke the supreme law of the land. But hey, maybe they all do. Clinton's War on Drugs laws allow police to seize property without due process. And those laws may violate certain search and seizure laws. The Patroit Act certainly does. Judge Andrew Napolitano has pointed out that it's National Security Letters are effectively search warrants which are written by the FBI without a judge's approval.
Yes, Bush and Ashcroft are also great wartime figures, but they, with Congressional sanction, just like FDR, are breaking the supreme law of the land. Jerks.
I want Gerry Spence for Attorney General. I'd like a Supreme Law of the Land Law and Order Guy, for once.
Now that the election is over, it's time for the Republicans among us to reign in our leaders and the Democrats among us to reign in theirs. This is not, and never has been, a case where one party has an advantage over the other. Instead politicians from both parties routinely try to violate the rights of the other party while protecting those of their own, except where their own party members don't care. Democrats don't seem to care as much about limiting the commercial power of the government and protecting their own property rights. Republicans don't seem to care as much about protecting their own free speech and free press rights. These are both generalizations and are wildly untrue for large minorities in both parties.
Yours,
Wince
Excellent! I wish you were President, on the Judiciary Committee, or on the Supreme Court. It's time to get away from petty partisan politics and start getting back to the Supreme Law of the Land. I admire your consistent adherence to it. Thank you.
Yours,
Wince