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MARIJUANA CAN BE A HELPFUL TO MEDICAL PATIENTS

Here's a refutation of claims by Terence Farley on medical marijuana:

1.  Marijuana mentions in hospital emergency rooms only mean that the person said they used it in the past 24-48 hours.  It doesn't mean that person is visiting the emergency room because they used marijuana. 

2.  Again, the fact that marijuana was detected in someone's blood or urine doesn't indicate that it was the cause of death.  Most automobile accidents involve alcohol or a combination of drugs.  It's only logical to conclude that since marijuana is one of the most used drug that it would be detected in a large number of citizens, dead or alive. 

3.  The number of admissions to treatment facilities for marijuana dependency is brought up every time our drug czar gives a speech.  I have to wonder if Farley is getting his drug war rhetoric straight from John Walters.  Marijuana is the most widely used substance, next to alcohol and tobacco. 

If alcohol or tobacco were criminalized, we would have our youth filling up the treatment centers for that and we could all sit around screaming about those numbers.  These statistics don't indicate that marijuana is a dangerous substance but rather that our government's drug war is dangerous to society. 

4.  How many were trying alcohol and/or tobacco? Have we criminalized those yet? They are, after all, much more deadly.  Where's the logic here? Am I missing something?

5.  If I'm not mistaken, one study he referred to was one in which drivers who were under the influence of alcohol were not recorded.  That means that the number of drivers that were recorded reflected an abnormally high number of marijuana users.  We wouldn't want to get those pesky drunken drivers involved in our anti-pot study now, would we?

6.  What research? Does anyone realize that many people use drugs, regardless of which drug, because they have some underlying mental problem?

Those who use drugs frequently or move on to harder drugs many times have more serious problems.  So, if I'm a more frequent marijuana user, perhaps that means I have serious problems that need to be dealt with.  So how does the criminal justice system help with those problems?

7.  Finally the smoking/cancer argument: More and more users are vaporizing or eating marijuana.  This eliminates all tar and cancer-causing agents. 

Marijuana smoke does not cause cancer the way tobacco smoke does.  Typically tar in smoke causes the carcinogen-metabolizing enzyme CYP1A1 to be produced, which, over time, causes cancer.  Research now shows that the THC competitively inhibits the CYP1A1 enzyme, reducing its ability to metabolize other substrates.  As for the HIV claim, a study at the University of California at San Diego proves that viral loads are not negatively effected by cannabis use. 

There are, of course, hundreds of other studies proving Farley. 

Whether he wants to believe it or not, cannabis is a wonderful medicine.  The only thing we should be debating is the cutoff age for it's use and the healthiest method of ingestion. 

SCOTT RUSS

Baton Rouge, La.