Pubdate: Wed, 19 May 2010
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2010 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Author: Erik Rush
Note: Fort Collins resident Erik Rush works in advertising and as an 
author and columnist. His column appears the third Wednesday of each month.

MEDICAL POT, LICENSING ARE JUST CON GAMES

Personally, I don't care if people use marijuana; my particular view 
of controlled substance laws probably leans more toward the 
libertarian than conservative, because I believe all they accomplish 
is the empowerment of organized crime. In addition, as an advocate of 
natural medicine, I do not doubt there are certain ailments for which 
patients utilizing cannabis have found relief where allopathic medicine failed.

That said, I don't hang out with people who use pot or other 
so-called "recreational drugs," and I believe people have a duty to 
raise their children to eschew both. Marijuana deserves its 
reputation as the "gateway drug," and there's more than enough 
evidence to support this.

Having some experience with addiction as well as with research 
science and physicians, my take is that the proliferation of medical 
marijuana use is far more about people getting high and other people 
profiting from this than the legitimate amelioration of otherwise 
desperate physical maladies.

As with abortion laws, which were sold in order to address the 
ostensibly "rare" instances of pregnancy by rape, danger to a 
pregnant woman's life and things of this nature, medical marijuana 
use was touted as a last-resort measure for patients who could not 
otherwise find relief for painful and debilitating chronic conditions.

As we've seen the pot shops spring up, it crosses one's mind that 
occurrence of the aforementioned conditions can't possibly be as 
common as the number of these shops suggest.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which 
administers the Medical Marijuana Registry program, maintained that 
(as of December 2009) approximately 30,000 Colorado residents had 
submitted applications to be included on the state's medical 
marijuana registry. Larimer County currently has the fourth highest 
number of marijuana card holders behind Denver, Jefferson and Boulder counties.

Harris Jensen, M.D., a board certified psychiatrist practicing in 
Fort Collins, witnesses the results of the abuse of "marijuana card" 
privileges by both patients and physicians on a regular basis.

"Addiction is complicated," Jensen said. "It involves dysfunctional 
behavior that all revolves around what is good for the addiction."

Jensen opposes medical marijuana use, largely because of the 
insidious nature of the addiction process, something from which even 
those who use it to relieve pain are not immune.

"It (marijuana) was originally prescribed for a pain problem, now 
long since gone, as the young woman was doing heavy lifting in her 
work," Jensen noted in his blog at 
gooddayjournal.com/medicalmarijuana. "But the back pain didn't bother 
her: she was using medical marijuana to cover it up, or so she said. 
It was all part of the con game of an addict."

There's nothing to prevent an individual from falsely claiming they 
have pain and that they've "tried everything." If the doctor is 
laissez-faire in his medical philosophy, believes people ought to be 
allowed to get high if they like or just plain unscrupulous, he's 
likely to prescribe.

So much for the rare, "untreatable" conditions for which we've been 
advised patients require marijuana, I suppose. I mean - pot for back 
pain from lifting? If you ask Jensen (and, according to him, many 
colleagues), doctors now see this sort of thing "all the time."

As he said, it's just a con game; the licensing issue is just a con 
on a larger scale.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart