Pubdate: Sun, 05 Apr 2006
Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA)
Column: Cannabinotes
Copyright: 2006 Anderson Valley Advertiser
Contact:  http://www.theava.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667
Author: Fred Gardner
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Mikuriya (Tod H. Mikuriya, M.D.)

DR. TOD UPDATE

Tod Mikuriya, MD, his energy on the upswing, plans to appear at the 
"Patients  Out of Time" conference April 7-8 at Santa Barbara City 
College. Last-minute arrangements to attend can be made by contacting 
organizer Al Byrne at 434-253-4484 or emailing Dr. Mikuriya strongly suspects that Lipitor, Pfizer's blockbuster 
statin drug, had a deleterious effect on the lining of his biliary 
tract. He was put on Lipitor three years ago to lower his cholesterol 
following coronary bypass surgery.

He has had three patients who attribute similar adverse effects to 
Lipitor, including itching, a feeling of cold, and digestion problems.

A lawsuit filed last week by a Teamsters health-insurance fund 
charges that Pfizer execs promoted sales of Lipitor for off-label 
uses. They certainly succeeded -since 2001 they've sold $46 billion 
worth, including $12.1 million last year, making Lipitor the world's 
best-selling drug. The suit, according to the Wall St. Journal, 
"cites internal Pfizer marketing documents, Pfizer-funded studies and 
physician-education programs that encourage doctors to use Lipitor 
early in treatment, despite the risk of side effects in some 
patients. Pfizer says side effects with Lipitor are generally mild, 
such as stomach upset, but the drug has been associated in rare cases 
with muscle damage and liver problems."

"Rare cases" of a drug taken by millions equate to thousands of 
individual catastrophes. The pharmaceutical manufacturers claim that 
the benefits their compounds confer on many far outweigh the damage 
they cause a few. (The WSJ piece flatly asserts that Lipitor "has 
helped millions of people avoid or manage coronary artery disease, 
including heart attacks and strokes.")  Our corporate masters are 
willing to see thousands of individuals suffer and die to achieve 
these alleged benefits (that could be achieved by other means). "The 
Sanctity of the Individual" could stand up to Collectivism but it 
can't stand up to cost-benefit analysis.

Czech Reality Check

Kirk Muse muses: "There is only one country in the world where adult 
citizens can legally use, possess and grow small  quantities of 
marijuana: The Czech Republic. (In the Netherlands,  marijuana is 
quasi-legal, not officially legal.) The Czech overall  drug-arrest 
rate is 1 per 100,000 population. The United States'  overall 
drug-arrest rate is 585 per 100,000 population. The Czech  robbery 
rate is 2 per 100,000 population. The United States' robbery  rate is 
145.9 per 100,000 population, according to the FBI... Could it be 
that when people can legally obtain marijuana at an 
affordable  price, they tend not to use or desire any other 
recreational drugs?  Could it be that marijuana legalization actually 
creates a blockade to hard-drug use -not a gateway?"

A Brief History of the U.S. Left

A federal prisoner who gets the AVA sent us a hearty right-on in 
response to the 3/15 column on single-issue opportunism. He wrote 
that he had "no knowledge of the 'movement' other than my own life 
experience, first as a marine during Vietnam and then as an anti-war 
activist.  I was pro-Roe v. Wade back when Roe v Wade first happened, 
as well as pro civil rights, pro economic parity for all, pro 
nationalized healthcare, and pro environment. Experience in these 
areas has brought me to the conclusion the best way to achieve 
patient rights is to form common cause with people for civil rights, 
people for prison reform, people against the war in Iraq, and people 
against the war on drugs.

"I am amazed at the vastness and fertility of disaffected, 
unattached, yet keenly interested citizens who would readily attach 
to a 60's style movement as you describe.  Wouldn't it be an 
exquisite irony if medical marijuana patients could save the movement 
and bring to reality the promise that once was?  I think we can do 
it, and with a minimum of compromise.  I think we can mobilize huge 
numbers of voters, many of whom have been prevented by apathy from 
ever voting before.  I want to help shape and lead such an 
endeavor.  I want to do this, not because it is simply the right 
thing to do, but even more significantly, because it will work, and 
we can make it happen!"

I realized that what I'd written about the movement of the '60s was 
romanticized.  What I really think is... The American "left" is now 
in its third wave of opportunism.  From c. 1925-1950 it was dominated 
by the "Communist" party, which treated rank-and-file workers as 
pawns (as if the CPers were smarter than and couldn't level with 
"ordinary" workers about their ultimate goal of taking power).  The 
leaders of the "new left" of the '50s and '60s knew that the CP was a 
failure so they decided, consciously or otherwise, to not build a 
party but to build a movement with analogous goals.

McCarthyism was a factor, too. Membership in the CP had cost people 
their jobs and their freedom, while lefties who had stayed out of the 
CP in the '30s and '40s generally were unscathed.

So the new lefties stayed loosely organized for safety's sake. This 
facilitated the fractionation into hundreds of single-issue groups 
that started at the end of the '60s and continues today.  The new 
lefties had thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

The fact that the CP was elitist, dishonest, undemocratic, 
anti-working-class, subservient to Moscow, etc. etc. doesn't change 
this simple historical fact: it takes a party to organize the kind of 
social transformation our country needs, a transfer of power from the 
corporate owners to the hands-on workers. We need a party that 
operates on democratic principles and doesn't lie about its goals.

I don't know how we in the medical marijuana movement can help launch 
the party.

Few people who are currently making a good living in the medical 
marijuana industry will have any interest in such an effort (except, 
of course, to try and co-opt it).
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom