This week I introduced both my medical marijuana bill and my anti-Arizona immigration bill. My special in-box where all the mail with the terms "Communist" and "Scuzzball" in it is directed was getting depleted, and I felt the need to replenish.


I have previously blogged about immigration and how all those poor Nordic people in Arizona will be constantly beset with demands for their immigration papers. As a result, I've become a hero in Norway. They named me an "Honorary Norm" and sent me a large lute-fish. Plus, I've been told that my money is no good in Tvedestrand.

Medical Marijuana however remains unblogged. I would note at this point that those on non-medicinal marijuana might point out that if you say "unblogged" enough times, it doesn't sound like a real word. Plus, it's amazing how all five fingers can move in different directions at the same time.

First, some historical background: Marijuana was a very common and well respected medicine prior to 1937. Cannabis was the third most prescribed ingredient and was in 28 separate patented medicines that physicians routinely prescribed. Pretty impressive for a drug that causes people to name rock bands "Psychedelic Purple Castle Blob" and write songs called "Love is Mustard Frenzy".

This all changed in 1937 when a guy named Harry Anslinger, an obscure bureaucrat in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led a fervent drive to get Marijuana banned. He had a lot of interesting ideas. For example, he felt that Marijuana caused people to murder each other. The only thing I've seen pot cause to be murdered is a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips.

Mr. Anslinger also enjoyed injecting racial themes into his screeds. He said that pot caused "Negroes to behave disrespectfully to white people" and that black teenagers who smoked pot with white ones gained "sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result...pregnancy." I'm not an expert on what causes pregnancy, although I've seen some very moving demonstrations involving hand-puppets. But I'm pretty sure that it's not tales of racial oppression.

In any event this led to the passage of the "Marijuana Tax Act" which essentially banned all use and possession of pot. So just to be clear, the state of the law is that heroin, Oxycontin, morphine, etc. all have legally prescribed uses. But our little green plant friend is banned for all purposes.

Much of this is based on a deliberate demonization of cannabis. It started with Anslinger, but was perpetuated by movies such as "Reefer Madness" and politicians such as Spiro Agnew. People were told that Pot was addictive, made you insane and violent, and was a "gateway drug" to the harder stuff, which incidentally you could still get a prescription for.

It is obviously easy to ridicule the notion that pot makes you insane or violent. I've actually been with people who smoked pot. I did it myself, as Bill Clinton said "a time or two." I even inhaled. In fact, I never exhaled. So I think I have some credibility when I say that unless you define "insanity" as a desire to listen to Pink Floyd's "Careful with that Axe Eugene" over and over again, it simply isn't a by-product of pot.

And as for "violent,"please. It was hard enough to get people motivated enough to turn off the blaring smoke alarm or to turn over the skipping record. And the "gateway drug" argument is particularly weak. They would say that "80% of people who shoot heroin smoked pot earlier in their lives." That may be true. But probably 95% of heroin users drank milk earlier in their lives, and certainly 100% at some point heard Celine Dion sing and said "what the hell is this crap?" That does not establish a cause and effect.

For years the government and the medical establishment aggressively opposed efforts to even conduct peer reviewed tests on the safety and effectiveness of marijuana. But eventually, the political winds changed and the anecdotal stories became too pervasive. Now there are hundreds of studies and thousands of articles in medical journals saying that marijuana is demonstrably and often uniquely helpful in treating the effects of chemotherapy, glaucoma, neuromuscular diseases, auto-immune diseases, etc.

Today, the arguments against giving sick people safe and effective medicine that will help them and make them feel better are merely updated versions of the lame refer-madness wives tales of yesteryear. Lets review a couple of them.

Opponents say that if you smoke marijuana you run the risk of hurting your lungs. Again, may I just point out for a moment that cigarettes are actually legal. It's true! Also, if the powers that be were so concerned about your lungs they might consider reducing the choking toxins they spew into the air manufacturing everything from hula-hoops to those other round things that look like hula-hoops but aren't.

Also, if you have, say...terminal lung cancer, the fact that smoking pot to help you not waste away might someday lead an increased risk of contracting lung cancer is kind of an empty threat. Finally, we routinely treat people with drugs far more dangerous and toxic than pot. You can't fatally overdose on pot, you can't become physically addicted. The side effects of pot compared to narcotics are next to non-existent. In short, its pretty difficult to say that by keeping medicinal pot illegal you are doing the patient a favor.

Opponents also say that sick people might not use it to treat their illness, but to get high. Again, this is a ridiculous argument. People with horrific diseases don't want to get high, they want to feel better. Plus, the alternatives also get you "high", although with, for example, Oxycontin, it is less of a "I am at one with the world and love everybody" kind of high and more of a "I want to pull my head off of my neck and light it on fire" kind of high.

I would also note that 15 states plus DC have already legalized this. This list includes some pretty wacky states. Want an example: Arizona, which recently passed our previously mentioned "Show-me-your-papers-Jose, and-put-your-papers-away-Hamlet"; Arizona, which recently passed a Birther bill requiring presidential candidates to show their birth certificates to get on the ballot in Arizona, because do we really know where Rutherford B. Hayes was born?; Arizona, which has a law saying you get 25 years in prison for cutting down a cactus (true). THAT ARIZONA, has legalized medical marijuana.

The fact is that if it was me, or you, or anyone we cared about, we'd want them to get the help they need, Spiro Agnew not withstanding. It's time for us to let patients and their physicians make these medical decisions without interference from politicians fighting some version of a culture war.



Daylin