Pubdate: Mon, 11 Aug 2014
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Copyright: 2014 Sun-Sentinel Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/mVLAxQfA
Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159
Author: Rhonda Swan
Note: Rhonda Swan is a former editorial writer for the Palm Beach Post.
Page: 11A

MISINFORMATION AND FEAR INFILTRATE MARIJUANA DEBATE

When I asked my oncologist why she wasn't more familiar with 
alternatives to chemotherapy and radiation to treat breast cancer, 
she said she was too busy to learn about natural, holistic therapies.

They certainly don't teach them in medical school.

So it's not surprising the Florida Medical Association would come out 
against November's ballot question asking whether the state should 
legalize medical marijuana for cancer patients and others.

Dr. Alan Pillersdorf, a Wellington plastic surgeon and FMA president, 
said legal weed poses "a public health risk for Floridians" because 
the proposed amendment "would allow health care providers with 
absolutely no training in the ordering of controlled substances, to 
order medical marijuana."

So Pillersdorf and the 20,000 doctors the FMA represents would deny 
cancer patients and other ill Floridians access to a helpful 
treatment just because they haven't taken the time to learn about it.

Thousands of Floridians use marijuana recreationally with no threat 
to public health. Users include doctors, lawyers and other professionals.

And doctors deal with controlled substances-they're called 
prescription drugs- all the time. More Floridians are addicted to 
legal narcotics than illegal ones.

"The FMA also rejects a process," Pillersdorf said, "whereby 
initiatives to approve medicines are decided by methods other than 
careful science-based review." The science has been in for centuries. 
"As early as 2737 B.C., the mystical Emperor Shen Neng of China was 
prescribing marijuana tea for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, 
malaria and, oddly enough, poor memory," says a Time Magazine article 
on the history of medical marijuana. "The drug's popularity as a 
medicine spread throughout Asia, the Middle East and down the eastern 
coast of Africa, and certain Hindu sects in India used marijuana for 
religious purposes and stress relief. Ancient physicians prescribed 
marijuana for everything from pain relief to earache to childbirth."

Former surgeon general Jocelyn Elders wrote 10 years ago, "The 
evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of 
pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as 
multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS- or by the harsh drugs sometimes 
used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, 
marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians 
prescribe every day."

The Legislature legalized Charlotte's Web, a strain of marijuana that 
stops seizures in children but doesn't get users high, based on science.

The reasons not to legalize all strains of medical marijuana are 
political, not scientific.

The Florida Sheriffs Association is spreading fear in its campaign 
against Amendment 2. Association President Grady Judd called it a 
"wolf in sheep's clothing" that would lead to recreational use. He 
claims medical marijuana dispensaries would replace pill mills.

The Florida Department of Health would regulate the dispensaries. 
It's hard to imagine the state's health officials wouldn't use the 
lessons learned from Florida's pill mill crisis to create the rules.

The association leads the Don't Let Florida Go To Pot coalition, 
which claims "marijuana has a high potential for abuse with possible 
severe psychological or physical dependence." Funny, that's not 
backed by science. In fact, most marijuana users do so occasionally 
and exhibit no addictive symptoms.

The Sheriffs Association's real fear is that legalizing medical 
marijuana will lead to legalizing recreational weed. That would mean 
fewer people to arrest and fewer jobs for deputies.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a report last year that 
found Florida police made 57,951 arrests for marijuana possession-not 
trafficking-in 2010. That was 92 percent of all marijuana arrests.

Marijuana possession accounted for 41 percent of all drug arrests.

Is this really how we want our police spending their time and our money?

Legalizing medical marijuana is compassionate sensible. If it leads 
to the legalization of recreational weed, even better.

Our drug laws should be based on science and common sense not fear, 
ignorance and politics.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom