you know I find this "legal for medical reasons" thing quirky. So many Americans i have spoken to smoke the stuff. in fact many to my surprise and bemusement have been people who otherwise appear to be quite conventional and a little on the conservative side. This is in contrast to here where it is associated with "ratbag uni students" or somebodies lesbian hippy artist great aunt. Like wacky breakfast cereals, new york city and the Ripleys beleive it or not museum this is one of the things that make America great.
If most people in the US without cancer apparently smoke dope for the same reasons i like a g &T on a summer day why not just make it legal for harm minimisation & libertarian reasons instead of claiming medical necessity. Call a spade a spade already :wink:
Damn right! Claiming medicinal necessity is pointless when so many people smoke it anyways, and it detracts from the real issue i'd like to see addressed: the right to my own body!
Sadly, weed
isassociated in the American consciousness with "ratbag uni students" even though most that smoke it blend in quite well otherwise. Why the association? Good question.
Consider this: marijuana, if out and out legalized would do more than just hurt the pharmaceutical industry. It would hurt the doctors who make a killing off prescribing medication as well. I meet with a doctor once a month who prescribes aderall (required for "controlled substances"). He makes $160 on each and every appointment for simply asking "how are things going... ok... here's your prescription".
The government, by regulating what
I can put in MY own body makes it necessary for me to either feed into the system, or risk criminal penalties by breaking the law. If I could simply eat a brownie in the morning to deal with my ADHD, the necessity would disappear (as in, my doctors appointments would become optional, rather than a procedural, beaurocratic mockery) along with my financial contributions to the drug comanies. That isn't even to mention all the other things that have been
verified to be helped by marijuana. and we all know big corporations have absolutely no say at all into what goes into our legislation.
Consider this: Marinol, which contains the same active ingredient as weed (THC), but is manufactured by the drug companies, is considered a Schedule III drug (low penalty) while marijuana is a Schedule I drug, in the same class as heroin.
Consider this: Marijuana was originally made illegal not based on any sort of scientific study, but rather on racism towards blacks and Mexicans.
Consider this: drug testing as part as a "drug free workplace" is rarely done to the higher echelon of employees, even though they have potentially could do more damage if they were in fact the "drug fiend" stereotypes the media portrays them as. Why are only the low paying jobs drug tested? Could it be that the underlying issues of racism are still alive and well?
When I was working for a government contractor, supposedly working on "secret" (as in, don't tell the auditors how much we're charging) contracts, yet I was not drug tested, and neither were any of my coworkers. On the other hand, if I were to apply for a job at the local McDonalds (where, of course, many minorities work), they'd send me straight to pee in a cup (and I refuse to do that after my humiliation at Benchmark... I can't even pee in a urinal anymore.. too exposed).
Consider this: When I have been "on marijuana" before, nobody has ever been able to notice (not even cops, not even my own parents). People make comments, but they're all overwhelmingly positive. It's an effective treatment for ADHD. My coordination goes up, not down, on pot (and my psychiatrist explained this is not uncommon). Unoffically, he acknowledges that pot is an effective treatment for a host of disorders... why? I'm guessing because a whole bunch of his patients have reported the same to him. The evidence
isn't purely anecdotal. There are mountains of studies saying
just that <-- good book! Effects are largely dosage and strain Dependant. Coordination goes UP unless you "smoke your brains out", in which case you're probably going to take a nap anyway.
I don't know what else to say but that what the government says pot does is
absolute fucking bullshit... If you want to find out what pot really does do, smoke, and videotape yourself doing very complicated things stoned (that way you can't say you were imagining doing things better later). At least with me, I can
prove that I perform better in pot. That's a fact (not that i currently smoke, since it's illegal...)
