Pubdate: Sat, 14 Aug 2004
Source: Rapid City Journal (SD)
Copyright: 2004 The Rapid City Journal
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/1029
Website: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/
Author: Bob Newland, who publishes the magazine "HEMPhasis.net" from his 
home near Hermosa.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

THERAPEUTIC USE OF CANNABIS NO MYTH

HERMOSA - "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." When 
Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger said that in 1943, 
he was trying to get Congress to give his agency more money to fight the 
largely unknown menace, "marijuana."

Worse than that, Anslinger claimed, dark-skinned musicians smoked 
"marijuana," then used their altered abilities to "insert extra notes into 
a measure of music," thus creating the abomination known as jazz. "They 
also give marijuana to white women to seduce them."

Using the twin tactics of advertising that women become helpless in the 
hands of men who give them marijuana (misleading, at best, based on my 
experience) and creating a market incentive for people to grow or import 
and sell marijuana, Anslinger and his successors managed to increase the 
rate of marijuana use from about one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans to 
about 20 percent in just 40 years. Very few ad campaigns have ever managed 
a 20,000 percent increase in market penetration. They also managed to cut 
by more than half the average age of first consumption.

More people smoking pot for more years. A dream for suppliers.

While public expenditures of $50 billion a year now help maintain a 
monopoly of the marijuana trade in the hands of outlaws, that figure is 
dwarfed by the untaxed profits created for those willing to take the risk 
of delivering the product.

One embarrassing consequence of the massive proliferation of marijuana use 
caused by the prohibition laws is that tens of thousands of sick, disabled 
and dying people have learned of the relief, comfort and healing cannabis 
can bring them. Their experiences render absurdly impotent the non-medical, 
uninformed, malicious declaration by federal and state legislatures that 
marijuana has "no medical use."

Medical cannabis patient Matthew Ducheneaux of Eagle Butte testified to the 
drug and alcohol subcommittee of the legislative Criminal Code Revision 
Commission in Pierre July 29. After describing how smoking cannabis 
marijuana safely relieves him of pain and life-threatening muscle tremors, 
Ducheneaux was asked, "What do you suggest we do to make marijuana 
available to people who need it, like you?"

"Jeez, just do it," Matthew said. After wrestling with their consciences 
overnight, the committee decided, in opposition to the subcommittee's 
chair, Rep. Tom Hennies, that it was too much trouble to try to allow sick 
people a medicine, safer than aspirin, that gives hope and comfort to 
people who live in constant pain without it.

At least four major U.S. government-sponsored studies in the 20th century 
concluded there is medical benefit in marijuana. Adding several dozen minor 
U.S. medical studies, and dozens in Europe, we have a body of research 
pointing to an inescapable conclusion: cannabis marijuana is of medical 
benefit to a wide range of patients with a wide range of medical conditions.

Then there's the inconvenient fact that the U.S. government has sent 300 
rolled marijuana cigarettes a month to each of seven medical patients for 
over 10 years, whose doctors have all acknowledged these folks would be 
dead (or blind) without cannabis.

Having listened to Matthew Ducheneaux describe to the subcommittee how 
muscle spasms in his back "feel like somebody's hitting me in the back with 
an ax, and the spasms keep me from breathing, like being squeezed by an 
anaconda," and having witnessed Matthew gain immediate relief from such a 
spasm provided by marijuana, I just don't get it. What kind of society 
rewards a South Dakota Judge Tim Tucker or a Minnehaha County Prosecutor 
Dave Nelson for maintaining that white is black, and for that reason you 
must either suffer or become a criminal?

Rep. Hennies asked the subcommittee to recommend that people arrested for 
small amounts of marijuana be allowed to argue in court that they did so 
because they have a medical condition, and marijuana alleviates it. That's 
all he asked for. To be allowed to say from your wheelchair, "Your honor, I 
use marijuana because without it I will die."

Nelson and Tucker, both subcommittee members, said such a proposal would 
cause problems. "If a medical defense is allowed in marijuana cases, it is 
tantamount to legalizing marijuana," Tucker said. He also said it would 
cause a "burden" on judges.

Apparently Tucker doesn't think the 43,877 marijuana criminal charges filed 
over the past five years in South Dakota, or the 18,328 resultant 
convictions are overly burdensome. But here I am trying to fathom the 
thoughts of an obviously enigmatic man.

Therapeutic use of the herb, cannabis, is not a myth. The evidence is there 
in overwhelming abundance. There is no evidence in opposition. For 
thousands and thousands of people who gain relief by using it, the law is 
relevant only inasmuch as they must live in fear of being imprisoned and 
separated from the remedy that works for them. Even Judge Tucker and 
Prosecutor Nelson would smoke marijuana if they were in Matthew 
Ducheneaux's wheelchair.