Medical Marijuana: The Voters Have Spoken

by Robin Sax

The stories are heartbreaking. Young mothers fighting to survive the ravages of breast cancer and the nausea of chemotherapy; seniors struggling with the tremors of Multiple Sclerosis. Illness has touched all of our lives in one form or another. Whether it is cancer, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease, or even Alzheimer’s, we have all seen people live in pain. I am not talking about minor “ouchies”–this is chronic pain: debilitating headaches, inability to eat, swallow–pain that makes the one suffering just want to curl up in a ball and die.

Doctors have an arsenal of drugs to try to help those patients, medications like OxyContin, Vicodin, Valium, and Morphine–powerful drugs that come with serious side effects like addiction. These drugs often don’t even work to erase the pain, leaving the patients in a hazed out prescription cloud.

As a society, we have all become very well versed in caring for our bodies. Eat healthy, exercise, watch your red meat, a glass of red wine is okay, as is dark chocolate. We’ve even become more open to alternative medicine such as acupuncture or homeopathic remedies, which are now are seen as real options. But not, it seems, when it comes to the use of medical cannabis – otherwise known as therapeutic marijuana.

Why do people have so much trouble with therapeutic cannabis? Many people see their mission in life is closing down cooperative after cooperative, collective after collective, and dispensary after dispensary. What’s worse, these people are our community leaders–elected officials, city councils, small town mayors. It’s mind-boggling, frankly.

California voters spoke in 1996 when they approved Proposition 215 allowing for therapeutic use of cannabis. The people have spoken, and yet their voices go unheard. The political nonsense doesn’t even end there. The government itself has acknowledged the benefits of therapeutic cannabis. Yep. None other than the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services took out a patent based on research done by the National Institute on Health. Patent number 6,630,507 states unequivocally that cannabinoids are useful in the prevention and treatment of a wide variety of diseases including auto-immune disorders, stroke, trauma, Parkinson's, Alzheimer’s, HIV dementia.

So, the voters have voted and the government has acknowledged that patients can get relief and yet the courts are clogged with the day-in, day-out state/federal war over this issue. Give me a break. Isn’t there a better project for a city or county to worry about than therapeutic cannabis? Now don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting every farmacy is legit. But how about some standards, regulation, or at least some recognition for the people that do play by the rules?

A better example of the rub and constant governmental shut down than a case in the little city of Temecula in Riverside County. Despite the California law enactment in 1996, and an additional Senate amendment passed in 2004, Temecula unilaterally decided to ban dispensaries in the city of Temecula in 2006. Per the report that was done at the time, city staff members justified their ban by saying that there is nothing in state law that requires Temecula to allow dispensaries within its boundaries.

Doug Lanphere, tireless advocate, and the force behind Cooperative Patients’ Services, or CPS, in Temecula, is insistent on dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. He has carefully studied all of the Department of Justice requirements and prides himself on CPS’s undisputed class act collective. He is happy to oblige in insuring patients can be treated, and the city’s concerns dealt with. He has voluntarily submitted himself to various law enforcement agencies to walk through, and approve the collective, as well as offered time and time again to meet with city officials, and police representatives in order to work together in the mutual interest of serving their community.

Colleen is a member of Doug’s cooperative and she is what keeps him awake at night–trying to figure out how to keep his doors open despite legal attack after legal attack by the city of Temecula. For Colleen, and every other suffering patient, I say give them the choice to do what the California legislature allows. Let them have access to the therapeutic cannabis. If it can help, who are we to remove that chance for some relief, and perhaps even some quality of life.

CPS has an important function in Riverside County. Unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco or other areas known for “lax” drug rules, Temecula serves a small desert community where many people move to the dry heat specifically to assist in their health matters. Patients like Colleen, a nurse, who has found cannabis the only way to beat back the agony of her ruptured spinal discs. From her morphine haze she called cannabis the only treatment that gave her some sense of quality of life, something opiates could not.

So I ask you; isn’t time to listen to the voters and let those who are ill be comforted with the therapy that works?

To stay up on CPS and therapeutic cannabis follow on Twitter at @coop420cps

photo credits: Goodnight London and harminder dhesi photography

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We Need A New Drug Policy

by Diane Dimond

Forty years ago this month President Richard Nixon declared his "War on Drugs." Now, four decades later can we honestly say we’ve got a handle on the problem?

No, of course we can’t. The drug scourge continues with its ever increasing criminality and murderous violence. It heaps economic hardships on families, communities and prison systems. Our decades' long drug war gives off the stinking scent of failure and the undeniable conclusion that the way we’ve tackled the problem so far just isn’t working

So how long do we keep doing the same old things before we change course? Isn’t it time for a radical shift in strategy to try to lessen the impact illegal drug trade has had on all of us?

You might think that the conservative Nixon, the president shamed by Watergate, ordered up a callous punishment-oriented drug control policy. But he didn’t. Richard Nixon’s $155 million War on Drugs budget (back in 1971) earmarked two-thirds of the money to go for treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts.

Somewhere along the line each succeeding president lost sight of the idea that if you can cut back on the demand for illegal drugs you can cripple the violent trade that sprouts up to supply it.

Today, most of our anti-drug budget goes toward interdiction efforts and punishing people. Two years ago, the White House Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske said the War on Drugs was over, but it sure feels like we’re still waging very expensive combat against an elusive problem that just keeps growing.

So, back to the reports I read. The first was from an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. LEAP is a group of current and former front-line responders to the war on drugs. Its members are police, prosecutors, judges, FBI and DEA agents, corrections officials, military officers and others who know firsthand what it is like to wage this never-ending war. They embrace the idea of radical change, fully admitting that everything they have done in their law enforcement career was for naught when it comes to stemming the tide of the illegal drug trade and the abuse of those poisons. They passionately urge lawmakers to embrace the idea of legalizing, regulating and taxing these drugs

I know it sounds revolutionary. But imagine the chilling effect it would have on, say, the Mexican drug cartel. If there’s no more profit in smuggling drugs across the border into the United States their violent gangs would lose power and control. The tens of thousands of drug related murders each year would dwindle. America’s tax coffers would get much needed infusions. Drug addicts could get proper medical help in weaning themselves off their drug of choice. Why, they might even become contributing taxpaying citizens.

LEAP isn’t the only group of knowledgeable people calling for this radical move. Earlier this month a group of internationally known dignitaries including former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volker, former presidents of several countries and the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan endorsed the idea. In a report from their Global Commission on Drug Policy they labeled the War on Drugs a failure and encouraged nations, worldwide, to pursue the idea of legalization, regulation and taxation

Hey, it worked with booze when we lifted prohibition back in the 1930’s. Why wouldn’t it work now?

I recently wrote in this space about how state lawmakers have courageously stepped up to the plate to pass their own immigration laws after Washington’s monumental failure to act on that issue. Same thing here with the nation’s drug related problems. While Congress wallows in budget battles and sex scandals, 16 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws legalizing medicinal marijuana for those with doctor’s prescriptions. 14 states have decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot.

For some inane reason, the Department of Justice Department silently and consistently continues to raid legal growers, registered medicinal marijuana clinics and patients who find relief from marijuana. The DOJ has conducted nearly 100 such raids in so-called "legal" states, according to LEAP’s report. That’s about double the number of such raids during the President George W. Bush years.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going for police actions against legally approved operations. What a waste of money.

The day of total drug legalization will come – just as it did with alcohol. The question is: How many more multiple billions of dollars will we spend before we finally see it’s the logical way to go?

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