Do you think patients should have the right to use medical marijuana?

rninme · Jun 20, 2006

:biere: :biere:

Decriminalize it and tax it just like everything else!

Marinol works for some patients. For other patients it doesn't seem to help much. Legalization of other forms of medical marijuana makes sense to me. But I am sure there will always be people who will oppose it.....probably the same people who don't want terminally ill patients to get ADDICTED to morphine.....but then, that is JMO!

ZASHAGALKA, RN · Jun 20, 2006

:biere: :biere:
Marinol works for some patients. For other patients it doesn't seem to help much. Legalization of other forms of medical marijuana makes sense to me. But I am sure there will always be people who will oppose it.....probably the same people who don't want terminally ill patients to get ADDICTED to morphine.....but then, that is JMO!

And to rebut that opinion, I'm an aggressive pain management control nurse. I'm not the least bit hesitant about adequate pain control.

Marijuana is not even on topic. The push to legalize marijuana for 'medical' purposes is nothing short of the push to legalize marijuana for 'recreational' purporses.

Period.

That comparison is completely apples and oranges. In logic, that's called an ad hominem attack.

~faith,

Timothy.

Roy Fokker, BSN, RN · Jun 20, 2006

In logic, that's called an ad hominem attack.

Not to nit-pick (but you know I'm going to! :bugeyes:

) but that would be a strawman fallacy. Poster isn't attacking you in person but has "ignored a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position"

Personally - I think drugs ought not to be criminalized at all.

But we already know that :)

ZASHAGALKA, RN · Jun 20, 2006

Not to nit-pick (but you know I'm going to! ) but that would be a strawman fallacy. Poster isn't attacking you in person but has "ignored a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position"
Personally - I think drugs ought not to be criminalized at all.
But we already know that :)

I maintain it's an ad hominem attack: attacking the messenger instead of the argument. To wit: if you disagree with legalizing marijuana then you are the type of person that doesn't care if your patient is in pain.

And that does indeed sound like a 'personal' attack. Not at me specifically - as in a 'TOS' violation - which it isn't - but as an attack against the general character of someone that doesn't buy into 'legalization'.

~faith,

Timothy.

allnurses Guide · Jun 20, 2006

There have been so many of these threads and this one is so long I risk repeating this story.

But here goes . . .my nephew is a highway patrolman in Santa Cruz who pulled over a speeding car, noticed the scent of pot. The two young men whipped out their prescriptions for pot for supposed chronic pain and they were both able-bodied young men about 18 or 19.

Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

There is a doc down there who prescribes for anyone and everyone regardless of their medical condition, which kinda makes a mockery of the law.

I already voted on this one a long time ago - no, patients should not use it because it is just a ruse to get it legalized for everyone and I really don't believe in that.

(From experience being married to a pot head).

steph:monkeydance:

crazylilkelly · Jun 23, 2006

I also believe it should be decriminalized. I had to do a debate about in class a few yrs back. Originally, I thought I would be against making it legal b/c we're told it's o-so-bad. The research I did completely changed my mind. I mean why can we let alcohol & tobacco be legal KNOWING they kill thousands of ppl a year? That's doesn't make much sense to me. I interviewed some ppl who've done pot & drank & they said they thought alcholol made them lose control more than pot. I've tried it twice & completely agree. But I'm sure the actual experience varies for dif ppl. That being said, if it were legal the gov't could control it & have manufactured as a pill form. That way, the carcinogens that ppl inhale while smoking pot wouldn't be a problem. That would decrease cancer related problems.

I read a few posts saying there's some THC-type pill that pt's can take. Why are so many pt's doing MJ when that's available??? Is it b/c it's cheaper to buy mj off the streets than get the prescription for this other drug?? Does it affect the pt the same way as mj? Just curious.

PumpkinButt · Jun 28, 2006

Also, I'd rather see a pothead any day than a drunk. JMO though :)

In my experiences, those often go hand in hand. My brother is also a "pothead" and alcoholic. I found him once in the dead of winter sleeping in his truck in a county park because he had nowhere to go. He was afraid to run it because he had almost died the night before from CO poisoning. He lived in my basement for a few months but was given an ultimatum when he stole money from my children and also hocked jewelry left to me by my Mom. He chose pot/booze and I haven't seen him in 2 years even though he lives 4 miles from me in some guy's basement. Seeing how both have destroyed his life, I find myself hard pressed to say 'legalize it'. Yeah, he's going to do it anyway, but at least make it a little tougher to get. I'd love for him to go to jail and clean up.

Medically, I'm all for it, and I'm ashamed that the govt is stalling on this one. My Mom died of pancreatic CA and was in horrible, unrelenting pain. Her best friend confided to me a few years ago that she smoked pot towards the end and it helped. She was so ashamed to do it though, as she was a "pillar of the community". Very sad. We need to do more to help our dying patients.

PumpkinButt · Jun 28, 2006

But here goes . . .my nephew is a highway patrolman in Santa Cruz who pulled over a speeding car, noticed the scent of pot. The two young men whipped out their prescriptions for pot for supposed chronic pain and they were both able-bodied young men about 18 or 19.
Yeah, right.
There is a doc down there who prescribes for anyone and everyone regardless of their medical condition, which kinda makes a mockery of the law.
steph:monkeydance:

I'm sure the DEA would like his number. :uhoh3:

JohnBearPA · Jun 28, 2006

Totally agree with everything you said, and yeah...it is JMO too!

Just my opinion, but i see pot as alot less harmful than alcohol any day. Given that alcohol is legal, and the costs associated with it's improper use (DUI, traffic stops, road-blocks, court costs, jail time for offenders), why not make it legal and reap the benefits mentioned earlier? Makes no sense to me. Before anyone flames me as a pothead, I haven't personally done this since high school, a great many years ago, in a galaxy far away. lol

Justhere, BSN, RN · Jun 29, 2006

One of my friends brother had brain CA, and they gave him 6 weeks to live. When he died my friend told me what kept him alive for 2 years was that he smoked pot.

My father-in-law had pancreatic CA and a friend of his brought him a bag of pot, told him if he wanted or needed it he would bring him more. My mother in law said it helped until he could no longer light it himself. She was afraid of lighting and getting it started for him because she's also a nurse and was afraid of it showing up on a drug test.

bethin · Jun 29, 2006

Absolutely, 100%. It's not legal in my state even for medical use but if my mom, dad, or brother was dying and in extreme pain I would risk going out and buying it from a dealer. Odds are the people that are using it for medical reasons aren't getting in a car and they aren't selling their stash to the kid next door. I'm not familiar with the medical use, but I'm guessing they only give you so much at a time, so why would you sell your precious stash to the neighborhood kids?

My mom and I were just discussing this topic last night. We both had an agreement that if the other was dying that we would buy marijuana, even if it's illegal. Love to see the police carting off a woman on her deathbed in handcuffs.

Balder_LPN, LPN · Jun 29, 2006

From Medscape.com a paper entitled Medical Marijuana: Politics Trumps Science at the FDA

"Even the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) own Administrative Law Judge, the Honorable Francis Young, stated in 1988, "Marijuana is the safest therapeutically active substance known to man..." He went on to say, "The evidence clearly shows that marijuana is capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. . .it would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance."

and from the same paper "Does the agency (DEA) believe that arrest and imprisonment are appropriate ways of dealing with a patient's choice to self-treat with an herbal product not approved as a medicine by the FDA?

That sums it all up for me