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. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk