I've been glad to see General Hospital taking on more serious subjects. Since I've been watching (about 15+ years), their main topic has been HIV/AIDS, but recently a main character has been diagnosed wit lung cancer (even though she's NEVER smoked cigars or cigarettes) and she's been having a bit of trouble with all of the chemicals being put into her body. The chemo makes her incredibly sick, and in order to keep up appearances for her young daughters and to be able to function on a semi-normal level, she took to smoking marijuana (suggested to her by a friend). Though her ex-husband is using this as a ploy to take away her youngest daughter, the rest of the cast has been extremely supportive of this decision, telling her that cancer is a horrible disease, the treatment is as bad or worse, and anything she can do to make herself feel better is fine by them.
You can bet that medical marijuana is going to be an issue, however small, in the upcoming Presidential election, and if it isn't, the press and the politicians are just being negligent. Marijuana is not a completely harmless herb, but the adverse effects are well within the requirements specified by the FDA for anything Americans put into their bodies, and it's effects are far less than that of alcohol or smoking cigarettes.
Marijuana is especially helpful for pain in those with certain cancers, especially that of they eyes, and other painful conditions with limited treatment options such as Fibromyalgia (which my sister suffers from after 4 open-heart surgeries, 1 spinal surgery, 1 shunt, and several hearth catherizations, all due to being born with Tetrallogy of Fallot, better known as Blue Baby Syndrome), Multiple Sclerosis (which Montel Williams and my friend and mentor Annie suffers from), chronic back pain, and MANY other conditions.
Eleven states (AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ME, NV, OR, RI, VT and WA) allow medical marijuana for the treatment of various illnesses or side-effects associated with major illnesses, and many others are debating it. Whatever your opinion, please educate yourself on the benefits AND the risks, then form your own opinion. You owe it to those who are suffering daily and deeply.
Other Americans who are suffering daily and deeply include:
3,129 US Soldiers killed in Iraq
23,530 US Soldiers wounded in Iraq
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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7 comments:
Agreed completely.
Here's the rub: Because Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I narcotic, it is illegal for any government funding to be used to even investigate the benefits for people with various conditions.
The government cannot come out and say that there is no benefit to something without first investigating whether or not that statement is true.
I personally know a woman who works with a group in Illinois to allow medical marijuana who has MS. She is wheelchair bound. She has been arrested for possession. All this, despite the fact that if she eats a marijuana brownie in the morning, it allows her enough motor control to walk on her own in her home.
Sure, one person doesn't prove it would work for everyone. Prozac doesn't work for everyone with depression either. But there are enough of these anecdotal stories to show that we should at least be able to research it further before we say "no, there's no benefit".
And to those who say "but kids will just abuse it" -- kids abuse all kinds of prescription drugs already. It's not the fault of the drug, it's the fault of the parents and the community for not teaching their children to be responsible.
Laura,
There are many reasons for that, all of them political, none of them because it's better for us. All of your points are great and valid.
The whole "War on Drugs" thing has gone massively out of control. Hmm Maybe the anti war folk should switch focus to that, it ahs cost more lives, more money, and has less chance of success than the war in Iraq.
How could anything have less chance of success than Iraq?
Actually the war on drugs is really a war on brown people. It always has been. The original anti-marijuana laws were ones intended to be used as a way to harass Mexicans in the southwest by requiring them to have tax stamps, that were impossible for them to get, for any weed they might be carrying. There were in fact a racist anti-immigration effort.
The only thing you need to know to understand the early marijuana laws in the southwest and Rocky Mountain areas of this country is to know, that in the period just after 1914, into all of those areas was a substantial migration of Mexicans. They had come across the border in search of better economic conditions, they worked heavily as rural laborers, beet field workers, cotton pickers, things of that sort. And with them, they had brought marijuana.
Basically, none of the white people in these states knew anything about marijuana, and I make a distinction between white people and Mexicans to reflect a distinction that any legislator in one of these states at the time would have made. And all you had to do to find out what motivated the marijuana laws in the Rocky mountain and southwestern states was to go to the legislative records themselves. Probably the best single statement was the statement of a proponent of Texas first marijuana law. He said on the floor of the Texas Senate, and I quote, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff (referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy." Or, as the proponent of Montana's first marijuana law said, (and imagine this on the floor of the state legislature) and I quote, "Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona."
Source
I haven't seen GH in years, but am gald that the subject is being explored there.
great post and great comments! I really have nothing to add that the rest of you haven't alredy said. great job!
Great comments, everyone! I think our government has become a little overprotective. Unfortunately we're not necessailry being protected from the right things. Harmful chemicals are being dunmped into water supplies. Immigrants are streaming over the boarders daily. Our atmosphere is corrupted, and so are most of our governments. Let's focus on what's important.
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