Pubdate: Sun, 12 Jan 2014
Source: Buffalo News (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The Buffalo News
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/GXIzebQL
Website: http://www.buffalonews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/61
Page: H4

POT AND COMPASSION

Cuomo Putting Needs of Patients First in Allowing Medical Use of
Marijuana

Any loosening of laws governing marijuana use remains a politically
charged subject, but a new proposal by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is
creative, narrowly scaled and compassionate to New Yorkers who are
suffering from debilitating conditions that some version of marijuana
could help to alleviate. It's the right move.

Cuomo's plan is to make use of the Antonio G. Olivieri Controlled
Substance Therapeutic Research Program, an obscure 1980 law that
allows for the use of controlled substances for "cancer patients,
glaucoma patients and patients afflicted with other diseases as such
diseases are approved by the commissioner." With that, Cuomo is able
to circumvent the need for legislative approval. Measures to allow the
medical use of marijuana have passed in the Assembly in recent years,
but always stalled in the Senate.

Olivieri was a New York City councilman and state assemblyman who died
in 1980 at age 39. He had a brain tumor and used marijuana to overcome
some of the discomfort inflicted by chemotherapy. Until his death, he
lobbied for legislation to legalize its medical use. More recently,
Buffalo News readers learned about an 8-year-old Orchard Park girl who
suffers from severe epileptic seizures of a kind that has been eased
for another child in Colorado, where medical marijuana was legal, even
before the loosening of laws to allow its recreational use. In the
Colorado case, it is important to note, the child's suffering was
alleviated not by smoking marijuana, but by mixing cannabis oil into
her food. Who could be against that?

Cuomo is pursuing this program as a test, insisting that he have
control over its implementation. That's reasonable, but he needs to
move quickly on having Health Commissioner Nirav R. Shah identify the
conditions for which marijuana use will be permitted.

The benefits of marijuana for pain relief are reported only
anecdotally, but the anecdotes are sufficient to be persuasive. It
would be a cruel punishment to New Yorkers who suffer from chronic,
severe pain to continue denying them what benefits they may receive.
Even though marijuana is a political hot button, its use is pervasive
and, in New York, casual use is only lightly punished. It's time to
allow some form of controlled medicinal use.

Nevertheless, further research should be encouraged. What if certain
blends of marijuana are more effective for pain relief? What if
ingesting cannabis oil is generally more useful than smoking the
leaves? What if, with certain medical conditions, it causes unwanted
side effects?

Lawmakers continue to push for legislation to formally legalize the
medical use of marijuana. Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan,
called Cuomo's move "an important interim step," but he said the 1980
law Cuomo is implementing is "limited and cumbersome" and says it
won't benefit enough New Yorkers. With some 20 states allowing for the
medical use of marijuana, it is time that New York caught up.

The state doesn't have to follow the California model, which is a
thinly disguised bid to allow its widespread use, but it needs to shed
the vestiges of its draconian past, as exemplified by the desperately
cruel Rockefeller drug laws. Those laws were eased in 2009. If
recreational drug users were due a break - and they were - than surely
New Yorkers suffering debilitating pain deserve a little
consideration, too.
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