“I know of no patient-only person sent to federal prison for use of marijuana,” said Law Professor Douglas Berman, a specialist in marijuana law at Ohio State University.
Even before states started legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use, the federal government didn’t throw defendants in prison simply for using marijuana Vanderbilt University Law Professor Robert Mikos explained. He added, that’s because prosecutors are focused on suppliers and distributors. This information is from an in-depth analysis of Politifact Florida, reports of the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald.
The Compassion Card and the Hoax
Why do marijuana advocates constantly play the compassion card? Or pretend we don’t care about children with epilepsy or cancer?
How is it medicine if they give it names like Purple Poison, White Widow, Body Buzz, Lemon Skunk? Why is it that only 2-5% of the medical marijuana patients are terminally ill with cancer or AIDs, the conditions that may benefit from the nausea and appetite stimulation of medical marijuana with its THC?
Why is it that so many patients have chronic conditions and “need their medicine” continuously. Is the industry trying to make them hypochondriacs, or are the marijuana providers (“caregivers”) nurturing dependence? Most medicine is supposed to cure a person and get them to the place where the medicine is not needed. Our view is that more precautions are needed for medical marijuana.
Fraudulent Practices
Once medical marijuana passes in a state, fraud is encouraged. For example in Michigan a doctor wrote medical marijuana prescriptions for more than 60 so-called people he never saw as patients. He made $16000 in cash, but the medical marijuana providers reaped more than $1.3 million in profits over 2 years.
Also, in Michigan (not one of the hotbeds of marijuana), 20-year old so-called patient recently started an explosion at his parents’ house, from trying to extract hash oil from marijuana. We need to ask ourselves why so many people who are so young are so disabled?
Recently, the Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that California needs to start regulating it’s medical marijuana or the federal government will do it. Legalizing marijuana doesn’t solve unregulated medical marijuana, as Washington proves.
Americans for Safe Access
A few months ago Americans for Safe Access sponsored some television ads suggesting that cancer patients go to prison. They specifically targeted members of Congress who did not vote in their favor. Representative Andrew Harris, one of the Representatives attacked in an add, explained in front of Congress that medicine was more precise than prescribing “two joints a day,” or “a brownie here, a biscuit there.” “This is not medicine,” Harris said.
“This would be like me as a physician saying, ‘you know, I think you need some penicillin. Go chew on some mold.’ Of course I wouldn’t do that. I write for 250 mg of penicillin, [every] 6 hours, times 10 days. I don’t write, ‘chew on a mold a couple of times a day.'”
Rep. John Fleming, another doctor who formerly worked in a chemical dependency program and has published a book about addiction, spoke, warning of what marijuana does to the brain development of young people. Recent medical studies and reports only clarify this message, making the warning stronger.
In Colorado all that its necessary to be a caregiver is that they are over age 21. Compare that to the training of a pharmacist, nurse practitioner and physicians.
We condemn the way Americans for Safe Access, United for Care and other lobbyists have been essentially dishonest about medical marijuana. They imply that having a different opinion shows a lack of compassion. We also blame them and other groups for not explaining that cannabidial oil which helps for seizure is a component of marijuana and not marijuana. We ask them to stop posturing for one thing when they really want something else. (Read Part 2 of the Medical Marijuana Hoax: Mental Health)