Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jul 2003
Source: New York Daily News (NY)
Copyright: 2003 Daily News, L.P.
Contact:  http://www.nydailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/295
Author: Richard Brookhiser
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Note: Brookhiser is a senior editor at National Review and author of
"Gentleman Revolutionary - Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the
Constitution."

LEGALIZE MEDICAL POT IN N.Y.

Earlier this year, the New York State Association of County Health Officials
- - as cautious a bunch as you will find in the medical community - urged New
York lawmakers to pass legislation to legalize the medical use of marijuana.
Unfortunately, the legislative clock ran out on the measure, despite three
overwhelmingly positive committee votes.

That must not happen again. It is past time to remove patients fighting
cancer, AIDS and other scourges from the battlefield of the war on drugs.

"The legalization of medical marijuana would be a step forward for the
health of all New Yorkers," the association declared. "Marijuana has proven
to be effective in the treatment of people with HIV/AIDS, multiple
sclerosis, cancer and those suffering from severe pain or nausea."

I discovered marijuana's benefits while receiving chemotherapy for
testicular cancer in 1992. Part way through my treatment, the conventional
anti-nausea drugs prescribed by my doctors stopped working. Marijuana was
the only thing that kept my head out of the toilet.

I was lucky. As a member of the media elite, I probably wasn't at huge risk
for a drug bust. Living here, I was able to obtain my herb under the cover
of urban anonymity. But people shouldn't have to depend on professional
status or the luck of geography. Putting such patients in jail for the
"crime" of trying to relieve some of the misery caused by their illnesses is
cruel.

The consensus regarding marijuana's medical value grows every day. Just this
May, The Lancet Neurology noted that marijuana's active components are
effective against pain in virtually every lab test scientists have devised,
and even speculated that it could become "the aspirin of the 21st century."

Marijuana does have risks, but so do all drugs. The biggest health concern -
potential irritation to the lungs and airways caused by smoking - has been
largely solved: Recent research has documented that relatively simple
vaporizers can allow users to inhale the active ingredients with almost none
of the irritants in smoke.

Eight states now have laws allowing medical use of marijuana with a
physician's recommendation, and those laws have been successful. Last year,
the General Accounting Office interviewed 37 law enforcement agencies in
four of those states, reporting that the majority of those interviewed
"indicated that medical marijuana laws had had little impact on their law
enforcement activities."

As a conservative - a truer one, evidently, than the New York Conservative
Party, which opposed the medical marijuana bill - I'm not surprised that
common sense is bubbling up from the state level, while federal marijuana
laws remain stuck in the 1930s. Federal law will change eventually, because
science, common sense and human decency require it.

In the meantime, New York should do what it can under state law to make sure
that the sick are no longer collateral damage of the war on drugs.
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