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

[Brian]

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

Please post your opinions and reply to our survey. Thanks

[rward12]

A resounding YES!

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Also, I'd rather see a pothead any day than a drunk.

I think i'd rather not see either.

(ftr, i define a pothead as someone who uses for the heck of it)

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Lets all light one up and pass it around and we will all be happier

No thanks, i like thinking clearly at all times.

[rward12]

Lets all light one up and pass it around and we will all be happier

If you needed it for medicinal purposes, I'd be the first one there with a lighter...otherwise, no thanks!

[stpauligirl]

I think i'd rather not see either.

(ftr, i define a pothead as someone who uses for the heck of it)

thank you I am with you :)

[fmbaum]

Affirmative that patients should have the right to access medical marijuana. Personal research has indicated the two federal studies ignored by legislators were correct, that marijuana should be available over the counter to adults, also.

A non-potentiator of other drugs;

A non-synergistic material, thus no risk of unleashing a side-effect of another therapeutic agent nor skewing another therapy.

No physical addiction properties.

No known lethal dose level.

Overdose effect being only natural sleep.

There is no ascending tolerance level such as with the opiates causing ever inceasing dosage to cause desired therapeutic effect.

A cornucopia of beneficial effects quoted for thousands of years as also newer data discussing literal lower cost of health insurance costs for workers in repetitive task environments as stress is coped with in a superior manner.

A favored food source for fiber and seed fed to cattle, pigs, chickens and more until taxed and rendered coincidentally non-available

with an oil now known in modern day as excellent source of beneficial Omega Fatty Acid content higher than the fish sources.

Long known as a seed that could be used to make bread.

The original tax act of 1937 stated a public tax office would be opened soon after the legislation began. Study makes it look like they held off opening that office to justify keeping the Alchohol task forces on employee rosters since Prohibition's end left thousands of officers at risk of unemployment. The rationale - crime at the time was really on the rise, and it was. The economic Depression pushed a lot of people to look at alternative incomes. After WWII began legislators could have kept those task force members on the lists easily without artifice and opened the tax office. They did not. It looks like that's the hidden error, the secret, that fattened an investigative and interdiction force budget from that time onward.

The 1937 marihuana tax levy is still a legal contract with the public. The statement still stands that at some time the federal tax office will be opened. Violation of that agreement, that contract, needs be corrected.

The head of the anti-marijuana group, Harry Anslinger waged a media blitz. The interested should read some of his speeches. Hate, prejudice, anti-civil rights statements in nearly every paragraph. Decades later JF Kennedy heard one live speech of Anslinger's the same week he removed the man from his long tenure for being a menace to the American ideal and ethics which the Kennedy administration was based upon loudly, clearly, stated openly.

The 1970 reclassification of marihuana as a Class I schedule drug has no medical evidence describing the drug to match it with medically accepted characteristics of Schedule I drugs. That's one you'd miss on the nursing school pharmacology test of "match the drug with the schedule classification" based upon knowing the drugs and matching them with the Classification requirements. Bigger cash able to be moved into interdiction efforts if the label stuck on the item is scarier is what that legislative action of rescheduling the drug looks like it has behind it.

The anti-marihuana groups never did produce a preponderance of medical quality evidence showing a need to restrict access. They made movies and printed posters and had dime novelists write seamy soap opera stories. Manipulation of related emotion, creationof semiotic responses, when facts did not exist to substantiate a position, an action.

Anti-marihuana groups still cannot bring a preponderance of evidence of medical quality against the material. Marihuana being safer for the public to be exposed to than penicillin in terms of health risk is not a driving force to keep it off the market.

The most devastating effect of marihuana is the social stigma and law enforcement effect intruded into lives by law enforcement and the investigative efforts. Since 1937 millions of citizens have been criminalized by the system. Those citizens rights, inalienable rights, have been denied them through erroneous legislation. Recent reports quote as many as 20% of the prison inmates at federal level are in jail because of marihuana related crime. Each inmate costs one hundred thousand tax dollars per year. Those costs to taxpayers are on top of the interdiction dollars allocated elsewhere. We need those dollars in Social Security, not in jail.

The government needs to declare the related legislation a mistake.

The Government will not change the laws unless they get immunity from prosecution at the same time. Otherwise hundreds of thousands of justifiable lawsuits will be filed against the government charging civil rights violations and more against the innocent. That's the only way I see legislation change having a chance to work.

Without the immunity for the past error the government position most easy is the stupid look, the angry pointing at an associative file, the falling on one knee and saying "We're doing this for YOU!" with hands clasped over their heart and smiling for the photogs, assertion that they don't believe medical benefit, and then ignoring the topic.

This is a super-summarization of a very short book I am working on with footnotes and references which I intend as a positive radicalism to present to legislators and make available to voters in the interest of the present and future.

The topic has a greater emotionally driven enemy than technical scientific data against it.

Ironically I have seen the very same emotional veil ignoring empirical data existence when speaking to people from socialist countries when we tried to discuss the merits of democracy and capitalism. The same post-hypnotic-like auto-response as when in 1972 I saw a South African be walked too close to by an African American on a college campus. The Caucasian South African apartheid participant went ballistic for no reason other than an object, an individual type that he was trained to hate was too close. Taboo in his country. Automatic ballistic enforcement of his emotional and at that time culturally accepted more'. Immediately before, all fine. Five minutes later, all fine. An emotional temporary labile personality exhibition couched only in a stimulus response based within Fear. A Fear justified only by fellow participants knowing a groupness because of it, a dedication related that served their group interests at expense of other. Old Testament Love and Hate, the pep rally makers fuel. Watch the movie "The Music Man" and see it done, "You've got trouble here in River City, it starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for...". Sales and the Art of Persuasion.

The modern day is not served well by being servile to fear which has no base.

Get marihuana into pharmacies and over the counter sales and the associative customer exposure to other illicit substances plummets. Less impulse buy action. Organized crime no longer has the drug of choice nationwide as the major draw.

Legislators have statistics available from many regions where state tax stamps have been available, and statistics of as high as fifty percent of a metropolitan population participating in regular use. Those medical records and law enforcement-EMS medical tied records do show that marihuana is not a problem. Maricopa county or Phoenix-Mesa-Tempe Arizona 1978 and 1979 I can quote as such a place and period in history. Legislators could subpoena those old records.

The same mentality that would try to get lawyers to look over the Geneva Convention rights of prisoners of war to allow torture is in play at governmental level in the twisting of data to reflect their desired political agenda. I am ashamed to see that. The same logic can tell people that water is dangerous and should be very closely watched by officials. After all, it can upset the electrolyte balance and render a dangerous mental condition to exist. I just don't know if I like that kind of person who uses that kind of spin doctoring.

Marihuana was legal to prescribe by physicans until 1970. I have copies of IRS records showing sales through pharmacies. Those records of prescriptions and therapy outcomes ought to be easily accessed by the legislative bodies if nothing else. They shall not discover a preponderance of evidence against the material.

This potentially is an example of a topic and time when the self correcting element of the structure of the United States Democracy needs be exercised. Millions of citizens will be positively affected that very day. Millions more citizens in the future will not live in risk and fear as a result. Millions of households will not be torn apart by an argument and fear which has no base.

Participate in the continuing excellence of the every day becoming of democracy. It's an ongoing responsibility, not a prize line that is passed and able to be taken for granted. Ignore it and you ask others to be that far away inaccessible decision maker body so anonymous and easy to criticize but never find.

Individual judges faced with this data have their hands basically tied. They are there not to make the laws but to enforce the agreed upon laws. Whether they agree or not is immaterial. So check the facts and speak to legislators. Of the people, by the people, for the people. Act like a citizen who cares about the real potential of Democracy.

Today there is a new experimental democracy in Russia. "How do we make it work?" they say. There is new Democracy in Afghanistan and they say "how do we make it work?". There is a new Democracy in Iraq, and they ask "How do we make it work?". This is how it is made to work. Participate. One equals one.

sincerely,

mr suddenly very unpopular again,

fbaum

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

Lets all light one up and pass it around and we will all be happier

And a resounding AMEN to that!

Then again, I've long believed marijuana should be legal for anyone over 21, government-regulated and taxed just like tobacco and booze are. That would not only keep a lot of otherwise innocent people out of the legal system, but get criminals out of the business. Makes perfectly good sense if you ask me......but who asked me?

[funnygirl_rn]

Decriminalize it. Increase tax income from it's sale, increase farming jobs, decrease court cost w/ prosecution, decrease jail time R/T violation of its use & distribution (and perhaps allow for criminals who have commited serious crimes to fulfill their entire sentence vs. early release d/t overcrowding).

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

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

[LydiaNN]

I'm really surprised (pleasantly so) that thus far, all have us have said yes.

[leslie :-D]

a definite, unequivocal, whole-hearted YES.

[Someday-C.R.N.A.]

Marijuana should be legal. It should have always been legal. It should not be government regulated or taxed.

I believe it was God who said "I have given you all the seed bearing plants on earth to use", but apparently "our" government doesn't see it that way. That strikes me as odd, because they seem to use some of God's other ideas pretty freely to get their point across. (gay marriage for one).

Why would we want the government to tax marijuana? Do you want them to tax trees and grass and the vegetables you grow in your garden? Why not AIR? I can grow veggies and tobacco in my garden tax free, so why not marijuana?

"Our" government will never legalize marijuana because THEY would lose a boatload of cash. You think that legalizing and taxing marijuana will generate more revenue than leaving it illegal does? HA. Not only does the government make money in fines and other penalties, but they make a killing in "drug" money and other asset seizures. (They take cars, boats, houses, land, and whatever else they can get their hands on). What percentage of that is being put toward the deficit now?

MEDICAL marijuana should be regulated so that the people using it can get the most benefit from it.

[Ted]

Yes. Many moons ago, when I was doing heme/onc/bmt nursing, I've had conversations with patients who testified that marijuana helped their appetite. Using it was most beneficial for them. Most had used that "THC in a Pill". (Don't remember the name. Marinal???)

Just as ETOH is legal, so should marijuana be legal. Interestingly, both have its "issues" or "risks" and both have its benefits. In my opinion the least problematic is marijuana (and probably the most beneficial).

Oh by the way, I do not drink nor do I smoke. . . anything. And know that I've never even TRIED marijuana! Not once! And I still think it's a crime that it remains illegal the way that it is today. How its viewed by so many in this country serves as a great example on how our society can be so hypocritical with what it considers to be "good" and "bad" for itself.

Oh, I've got to stop. This is a "Hot Button" issue for me. :imbar

Just my more than :twocents: .