Pubdate: Wed, 29 Jun 2005
Source: Providence Journal, The (RI)
Copyright: 2005 The Providence Journal Company
Contact:  http://www.projo.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/352
Author: Bob Kerr
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Cited: Gonzales v. Raich ( www.angeljustice.org/ )

BEYOND THE MYTH, THERE'S RELIEF FOR THE PAIN

Someday, marijuana will probably be legal, and people will look back 
and laugh at those times when a benign backyard weed caused heavily 
armed men in black jumpsuits to leap from police vans and arrest 
local pot farmers and burn their crops.

But not yet. Marijuana is still illegal, still shrouded in 
well-tended myth and still reason enough to get a person sent to the slammer.

So there is a wonderful opportunity this week for state government in 
Rhode Island to come down on the side of compassion and common sense.

The medical marijuana bill would mean that very sick people could 
relieve their pain and suffering without fear of getting busted. It 
would mean the naturally grown substance that some doctors recommend 
for their patients could be used without the need to lock the doors 
and pull the shades.

Rhode Island would become the 11th state in the country to pass 
legislation that gives people approved for its use the right to keep 
a limited amount of marijuana on hand for those times when the pain 
threatens to shut them down.

Lawmakers have heard from people who have found relief from the pain 
of life-controlling illnesses in the puff of the weed. It works where 
other, officially approved things do not. It gets people through the day.

And it is illegal because it has always been illegal. The Reefer 
Madness cartoons have been laughed out of the room, but marijuana 
continues to claim a ridiculously large amount of money and time and 
resources. There are probably people high in the ranks in the war on 
drugs who sit around with a double Scotch or a couple of Budweisers 
and discuss how to cut down on the grass.

Cynical friends -- and I have a few -- suggest that marijuana can't 
be legalized because it is too easy to grow in the backyard and 
therefore too difficult for big business to turn into big business.

But as long as marijuana remains on the same list as substances that 
really can mess people up, it will continue to force people to make a 
painful and dangerous choice: go without and live with the pain or 
buy or grow marijuana and risk arrest.

There was a fine commentary in The Sunday Journal on June 5 by Polly 
Reynolds, a writer and mother of two from East Providence. She has 
multiple sclerosis. She smokes marijuana to relieve the pain. And all 
anyone really has to know about marijuana is what she tells us:

"The federal government's stubborn, hypocritical refusal to permit 
good citizens to use an herb with medicinal properties that makes 
them feel better is stupid, dictatorial and empirically mean. It is 
uncivil, inhumane and disempowering.

"The decision for me as my disease worsens has been either to smoke 
marijuana and keep functioning or to crawl under my bedcovers as a 
non-functioning, if socially acceptable, parent."

It's that simple. It really is. For those who need it -- those who 
would be officially certified by the state under the proposed law -- 
marijuana is the ticket to a fuller, richer, less painful life. It 
allows people with multiple sclerosis, AIDS, PTSD and a whole bunch 
of other spirit-sapping ailments to get up and get out and do things.

It is hard to imagine how anyone can say no. Federal law does not 
allow legal exemptions for those who use medical marijuana. But Rhode 
Island has the chance to be better than that. It can look past the 
smoke and see that marijuana can relieve the suffering of a 
considerable number of its citizens. It can make it possible to 
relieve the pain and the anxiety.

It would be kind, compassionate, even enlightened.
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MAP posted-by: Beth