Are we sick enough yet?
Users of medical marijuana took some blows recently, and not just from their vaporizers.
On June 6, the United States Supreme Court upheld federal authority over marijuana, even in states where its use for medical purposes is legal. On June 15, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated, by a vote of 161-264, an amendment that would have stopped the executive branch from arresting and prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers.
I’m not a big fan of medical marijuana legislation because marijuana prohibition is much more than just medical abuse. It’s an affront to our health, enterprise and environment. It is also an insult to human rights because it violates, among other things, the rights of people over their own bodies and property.
One of the most important human rights issues involving marijuana concerns the power of government over plants grown for private, personal and non-commercial uses. If government has the legitimate authority to outlaw people growing marijuana for themselves, then theoretically nothing can stop it from outlawing any and all foods, herbs and the like in our gardens - including the gardens themselves. The power to destroy one plant is the power to destroy all of them.
I have combed Indiana’s two constitutions, and there simply isn’t any authority given to bullies who don’t like the fruits of gardening. Whether in 1816 or 1851, the idea of government telling agrarians what NOT to grow would have been considered egregious - just as it should be today.
But today, in contrast, we debate on what grounds government agents can enter our states and our homes to jail us and confiscate our property for their anti-plant programs. Today Indiana’s senior senator opposes marijuana, though he calls himself a farmer. Our other U.S. senator is a former user of the beloved thistle.
Medically, marijuana is used to fight nausea from chemotherapy, to gain hunger against wasting-away syndrome, and to fight some kinds of cancer. Its seeds are the most complete plant source of essential fatty acids, which are the key to healthy hearts.
The plant also has the strongest tensile fiber of any plant, making it a source of durable cloth, paper and building materials, without cutting down trees. It can readily be converted to methanol and biomass fuels. Government’s prohibition of marijuana has ensured our dependence on pharmaceuticals, synthetics, trees and fossil fuels. Thanks prohibitionists!
I’m for treating marijuana as we do tomatoes. I don’t know if you call that legalizing the plant or decriminalizing it, but I think our constitutions guarantee people the exercise of such natural God-given rights as putting a seed in the ground, watering it and watching it grow for their own use - whether it becomes a tomato, a marijuana plant or a Chia Pet. And I believe that people have a right to use reasonable force to protect their plants and other property from people who wish to take them.
This is antithetical to the medical marijuana movement. Proponents for medical marijuana advocate that sick people should ask government-licensed medical agents for permission to purchase and use plants over which government has no inherent jurisdiction. That’s a backward and ineffective way to argue for the rights of people, particularly sick people.
Asking government for permission to use marijuana is like asking government for permission to eat tomatoes. We would laugh in the governor’s face if he told us we needed a prescription to buy Brandywines, Early Girls and Romas, yet we don’t even blink when our state legislature denies doctors power to prescribe marijuana and when 750,000 Americans - a fraction of American users - are arrested each year for illegally possessing the plant.
Even wackier is that some state governments would force the sick to get their marijuana prescriptions from doctors. During my entire life, the medical industry and government has conspired to keep doctors ignorant and misinformed about the plant.
The bottom line is that no one should have to be sick to use marijuana, and no one should have to ask government’s permission to grow anything in his or her own garden. But prohibitionists have convinced most of us that our society is different than that when our constitutions were written, and therefore our unalienable rights should be different also.
On June 6, the United States Supreme Court upheld federal authority over marijuana, even in states where its use for medical purposes is legal. On June 15, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated, by a vote of 161-264, an amendment that would have stopped the executive branch from arresting and prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers.
I’m not a big fan of medical marijuana legislation because marijuana prohibition is much more than just medical abuse. It’s an affront to our health, enterprise and environment. It is also an insult to human rights because it violates, among other things, the rights of people over their own bodies and property.
One of the most important human rights issues involving marijuana concerns the power of government over plants grown for private, personal and non-commercial uses. If government has the legitimate authority to outlaw people growing marijuana for themselves, then theoretically nothing can stop it from outlawing any and all foods, herbs and the like in our gardens - including the gardens themselves. The power to destroy one plant is the power to destroy all of them.
I have combed Indiana’s two constitutions, and there simply isn’t any authority given to bullies who don’t like the fruits of gardening. Whether in 1816 or 1851, the idea of government telling agrarians what NOT to grow would have been considered egregious - just as it should be today.
But today, in contrast, we debate on what grounds government agents can enter our states and our homes to jail us and confiscate our property for their anti-plant programs. Today Indiana’s senior senator opposes marijuana, though he calls himself a farmer. Our other U.S. senator is a former user of the beloved thistle.
Medically, marijuana is used to fight nausea from chemotherapy, to gain hunger against wasting-away syndrome, and to fight some kinds of cancer. Its seeds are the most complete plant source of essential fatty acids, which are the key to healthy hearts.
The plant also has the strongest tensile fiber of any plant, making it a source of durable cloth, paper and building materials, without cutting down trees. It can readily be converted to methanol and biomass fuels. Government’s prohibition of marijuana has ensured our dependence on pharmaceuticals, synthetics, trees and fossil fuels. Thanks prohibitionists!
I’m for treating marijuana as we do tomatoes. I don’t know if you call that legalizing the plant or decriminalizing it, but I think our constitutions guarantee people the exercise of such natural God-given rights as putting a seed in the ground, watering it and watching it grow for their own use - whether it becomes a tomato, a marijuana plant or a Chia Pet. And I believe that people have a right to use reasonable force to protect their plants and other property from people who wish to take them.
This is antithetical to the medical marijuana movement. Proponents for medical marijuana advocate that sick people should ask government-licensed medical agents for permission to purchase and use plants over which government has no inherent jurisdiction. That’s a backward and ineffective way to argue for the rights of people, particularly sick people.
Asking government for permission to use marijuana is like asking government for permission to eat tomatoes. We would laugh in the governor’s face if he told us we needed a prescription to buy Brandywines, Early Girls and Romas, yet we don’t even blink when our state legislature denies doctors power to prescribe marijuana and when 750,000 Americans - a fraction of American users - are arrested each year for illegally possessing the plant.
Even wackier is that some state governments would force the sick to get their marijuana prescriptions from doctors. During my entire life, the medical industry and government has conspired to keep doctors ignorant and misinformed about the plant.
The bottom line is that no one should have to be sick to use marijuana, and no one should have to ask government’s permission to grow anything in his or her own garden. But prohibitionists have convinced most of us that our society is different than that when our constitutions were written, and therefore our unalienable rights should be different also.
posted by Kurt St. Angelo at 3:50 AM
5 Comments:
The Clinton Administration started the same type of movement against tobacco; because, Billy-boy wanted to take attention away from his drug use and his women chasing and there was not much printed against that! Tobacco users are discriminated against and over charged; because, research was cooked in favor of the Clinton Administration. There are those that are not around tobacco and get the same type of cancers; so, evidence points to other causes; yet, tobacco users are forced to pay for these also. Research has also proven that mary-jo is more dangerous to the brain and body, than tobacco and booze; so, why should it be legal?
The illegalization of marijuana is unconstitutional. The 9th and 10th amendments clearly state that. The Feds have no constitutional authority in that area. Even when they banned booze, there was an amendment to the constitution in order to do that. Now that we are in a post constitutional time, there is no incentive to decriminalize it. The FDA and big pharma are attached at the hip and doing research on an herb that grows naturally doesn't produce big bucks for the Medicine companies.
Discount Hydro!
I agree with you. In the best of all possible worlds, we should have the right to put any seed in the ground that we want to and nurture it and watch it grow. However, the reality of people coping with chronic or terminal illness is that they are in pain NOW, and not at some later date. Not in some utopia!
This is why I support the medical marijuana movement. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who are coping with a huge daily dose of pain. Pain so excruciating that if you haven’t experienced it, your can’t imagine it. To give you an idea, take a mousetrap, cock it and release it on your thumb. You’ll feel something similar, but only for five minutes! I have to live with pain like that day after day.
Diagnosed with MS at age 35, I am in my forties now and I attribute my survival to medicinal marijuana. I live in California, where we managed to get medpot legalized by way of a referendum in 1996. Marijuana has been a reliable pain reliever for thousands of years.
The shortsightedness of the U.S. government of the day is inexcusable. Not only are they keeping a valuable medicine from thousands of people in pain, but they are also blocking research into the therapeutic use of cannabis. This borders on the criminal, if you ask me.
“What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top,” sang Bob Dylan some years ago. He could have been thinking about the hypocrisy of a government that allows dangerous prescription medications, permits the use of tobacco and alcohol, ignores the death of more Americans on our highways that have been killed in all the wars combined, and then classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug. The mind boggles!
I have become a reluctant horticulturalist. Never having been an enthusiastic gardener, I had to plant some marijuana in my sheltered back yard, in order to insure a steady and pure, not to mention uninterrupted, supply of my medicine. The DEA busted the only compassion club in my county, even though they obeyed all California laws. Where is the Terminator, when we need him?
A website supplied me with much needed advice and guided me to products that insure a robust and plentiful harvest, year after year. After years of research, Advanced Nutrients Medical has released a product called Sensi Pro, which contains tailor made macro and micro nutrients, as well as all sorts of organic growth enhancers, packaged to be fed to my garden week by week. For a novice like me, it saves the hassle of measuring and getting it wrong.
I also use Voodoo Juice, made by the same company, billed as a Microbial Rhizosphere Colonizer. It contains 200 beneficial microbes that colonize my root systems and enable them to absorb nutrients more efficiently.
Whether we like it or not, the existence of government is a fact of life. We have to ask for permission to drive a motor vehicle, to own a dog, or to keep our kids home and homeschool them. If I want to sell snake oil or to play music on urban streets, I have to get a permit. Try driving a cab in a large city without a cab license. It just doesn’t work.
I know it’s a hassle, but I am grateful for the insightfulness of the state government of California and ten other states, who allow the use of medicinal marijuana within their borders. Instead of waiting for utopia, I am doing something about exercising my freedoms right now.
Our unalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of a painless existence. To me happiness is the absence of pain.
I'm grateful too that California allows medical marijuana. That's more liberty for people in pain than in other states. As author of "Are we sick enough yet?," I was really just calling for more freedom for all people, not just those in pain. Until that degree of liberty happens, long live the medical marijuana movement.
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