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In BLACK & WHITE BBSNews Editorial By Michael Hess |
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BBSNews - 2005-06-07 -- Face it. The ruling on medical marijuana by the US Supreme Court is correct. It is the rule of law. Even in light of the dissents there is no judicial activism here. Americans should be proud of the judiciary and how American jurisprudence works. Anyone who has doubts should look at the recent decision in Libya. There five Bulgarian nurses had been forced to confess last year to infecting 426 children with AIDS and their torturers were reportedly cleared today.
In the United States the rule of law actually means something regardless of the characterization that some right wing folks have managed to cajole the media into extolling. And even some of those editors sympathetic to users of marijuana for relief of pain or wasting syndrome or the nausea of chemo have been critical of the supreme decision against medical marijuana users.
The problem however is the root of the law. There is a fiction that has been foisted upon the American people and most media reporters and editors are simply too lazy or biased or busy to be able to accurately report on it.
Marijuana, even used recreationally in the most creative ways, has never caused an overdose death by itself. That's right, try as people might to prove that statement wrong they have always failed. Because facts trump rhetoric every time and in every case.
What's more, marijuana activists have let prohibition hardliners co-op the truth time and time again by even letting medical marijuana be an issue. When we suggest that legislation should be enacted to show the dismantling of every medical marijuana patients life and marijuana use on video to be shown to school children, of course this is designed as a way to highlight the very real plight of these sick people. The Supremes themselves recognized their suffering. And they suggested the path to righteousness was gaining legal recognition of marijuana as a medically viable substance.
Those in the know will remember McCzar, (former drug czar Barry McCaffrey, does anybody ever worry about the connotations of "czar"?),
and his notion of medical marijuana being "Cheech and Chong medicine". The current Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
"czar", a man named John P. Walters, seems even farther out of tune with the American experience than McCzar. He and McCzar would be
the absolute last people on the planet that I would suggest my children or grandchildren listen to when it comes to "drug"
information. After all, how stupid does one have to be to claim that marijuana has no value when it's most demonized active
ingredient, THC, is a federally approved medicine marketed under the name of Marinol? As we've reported, this is the same as making
oranges illegal to grow, use and possess because of their Vitamin C value.
And this is because frankly, these people are nuts. Every parent knows the most important immediate reality is to keep our kids from drinking alcohol and driving. So they don't DIE. Or take friends (our children) with them. The second issue is keeping our children from starting to smoke tobacco cigarettes. Because that may very well lead to a life threatening life-long habit that will cause all sorts of problems later in life.
The fact is, marijuana use rates well below those two. And for good reason. Fully half of all American Twelfth Graders use marijuana at some point in their lives as shown in the Monitoring the Future Study (MTF) ever since 1978. Many of them try it, use it, enjoy it, and then move on to the rest of the panoply of life. Marriage, kids, bills and real-life set in for most people and the imperative becomes managing to keep a roof over our heads.
Others enjoy it exactly as a fine wine before or after dinner. Mass addiction to marijuana is a myth made up by bad reporting. Just like gambling or internet addiction. A more just explanation would be compulsive behavior. Most people who enjoy a three day weekend in Las Vegas do not go on to become "addicted" gamblers and neither do marijuana consumers. It's a myth created for certain policy goals and strategy. There is no scientific fact to back up these claims of addiction.
Emergency room visits were the first place anti-marijuana forces placed their fortunes and that failed; then they said "treatment admissions" were skyrocketing. But they left out one little pesky fact as reported in plain language in the Merck Manual, most of these admissions were a result of being faced with jail or "treatment".
In other words, politicians have made this whole so-called war on drugs up from whole cloth, and now have to stick to it. And they will stretch any fact to make it fit that model. Unforunately for millions, this model has 'worked' ever since alcohol prohibition ended miserably. A well known and terribly failed American experiment that required a constitutional amendment to start and to finish. Unlike the current prohibition of marijuana.
This is a result of poor reporting by the "press".
You remember, those folks who used to observe facts and report them. News. Headlines. Current Events as known to many schoolchildren.
The press has neglected to actually reflect reality when it comes to marijuana. Cutesy headlines have been the norm; if they can tie it in to tie-dyed "hippies" or Cheech and Chong so much better for the weekend edition. They somehow forgot that half of all "drug" users locked up in cages each year were marijuana offenders. They somehow forgot to tell you that three quarters of a million Americans are arrested for marijuana each year. They forgot to tell you of the job opportunities lost because of this witch-hunt. Those that have read the headlines now, know that the medical marijuana arrests number in the dozens compared to the hundreds of thousands of arrests for marijuana offenses for everyone else; and loss of college funds, and criminal records, and all the other needless hardships heaped upon people who were caught in patch-work, hap-hazard, and arbitrary and capricious laws designed to ensnare marijuana users as a whole.
If a sensible regulatory framework was in place for marijuana, there would be no question of placing in handcuffs someone in a wheelchair for simply trying to feel better from a naturally grown plant. They would be the most protected and the least worried. And Thomas Jefferson would then be proud. Instead of currently spinning in his grave over what has happened to his concept of science and democracy.