Pubdate: Sun, 19 Oct 2003
Source: Republican, The (MA)
Copyright: 2003 The Republican
Contact:  http://www.masslive.com/republican/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3075
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MEDICAL MARIJUANA: IS NATION GOING TO POT?

The Bush administration's efforts to ban the medical use of marijuana may 
have just gone up in smoke.

The Supreme Court last week let stand a ruling that bars the federal 
government from punishing doctors who recommend it to their patients.

This should clear the path for Congress to reclassify marijuana, allowing 
for its use when prescribed by a doctor.

Doctors should decide whether pot is good or bad for a patient, not the 
Bush administration's lead man in the war against drugs, who wouldn't know 
an ulcer from heartburn.

President Bush's drug czar, John P. Walters, who believes medical marijuana 
will turn the U.S. into a nation of potheads, rails against doctors who 
prescribe pot as passionately as he does against drug lords who grow coca 
in the jungles of Colombia.

The hospital room of a cancer patient should not be made a battlefield in 
this nation's unsuccessful war on drugs, nor should the doctor who treats 
the patient be treated as an enemy soldier.

The refusal of the justices to even hear the federal government's challenge 
should send a signal to anyone who thinks that marijuana invariably leads 
to abuse of more dangerous drugs. There is no evidence of that. Studies by 
the federal Institute of Medicine, the American Medical Association and the 
New England Journal of Medicine recognize the benefits of marijuana when 
prescribed by a doctor to relieve pain and nausea.

We hope this opens the door to the doctor's office for tens of thousands of 
ill people who might benefit.

Federal law categorizes marijuana as a "schedule 1" drug under the 
Controlled Substances Act, but it is clearly time that Congress amended the 
legislation. Lawmakers are sensitive to the political ramifications of such 
a change, but we doubt a majority actually believes that medical marijuana 
undermines the nation's war on drugs.

It is worth repeating that the United States has the best hospitals, the 
finest doctors and the most modern medicines in the world, but its views on 
marijuana are primitive.

The sky will not fall, nor will the nation go to pot if doctors are able to 
give ill patients some relief from the symptoms of their diseases or 
treatments.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens