I am one of thousands of people who need the medicine marijuana. In short, I had an accident in 1983 and fell 20 feet from a ladder. I went through 10 operations and now I have no ankles, my joints do not fuse or mend. Since I have joint arthritis, everything I do is painful. This is just a sample of the problems I have had. All the doctors I have seen tell me I would benefit from the use of marijuana. It won't replace the medicines I am taking now, but it would make life worth living. Some days I ask God to take me from this hell. I have tried the medicine marijuana once before, but just tried. My wife and I have too much to lose if somehow I were arrested for possession. So for now I say to myself, I wish and hope they would legalize the medicine marijuana before I die.

Tom Siebel is a multimillionaire philanthropist who funded terrifying anti-meth ads in Montana. His work has been praised by ONDCP, but now he's speaking out against the drug war.

The nation's drug policy "is a little bit crazy," Montana Meth Project founder Tom Siebel said Thursday.
...

Pointing out that the skyrocketing rate of incarceration is mostly because of drug offenses, Siebel said, "it used to be that we put people in jail who we were scared of. Now we put people in jail we're mad at."

Prison doesn't work, he said.

"They just get a better education," Siebel added. "It's like a graduate school program in drug distribution." [Great Falls Tribune]

Tom Siebel absolutely hates meth, and yet he also opposes the drug war. How can this be? Maybe his aggressive anti-meth ads are actually some sort of drug legalization conspiracy, because everyone knows that only "pro-drug groups" would ever criticize the wisdom of trying to arrest our way out of the drug problem.

Of course, Tom Siebel's work and his words demonstrate that people who care about victims of drug addiction can simultaneously oppose drug abuse while advocating commonsense policies that emphasize public health and reject mass incarceration. Having previously heaped praise upon Tom Siebel, will ONDCP now accuse him of being "pro-drug"?

Regardless, it is becoming increasingly obvious that ONDCP couldn't alienate anti-drug activists, the U.S. Congress, and the academic community any faster if they were actually doing speed themselves.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Border Patrol agents should be allowed to shoot at fleeing drug traffickers, a Republican senator suggested Tuesday.

The patrol's deadly force rules were questioned at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning the conviction of two agents who shot a fleeing, unarmed drug trafficker and covered it up.

"Why is it wrong to shoot the [trafficker] after he's been told to stop?" asked Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma.

Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the Supreme Court has ruled that using deadly force in that way is illegal. Agents also may not know if the fleeing person is a trafficker, he said. [CNN]

Wow, man. There's lots of heady nugs in this movie. Just pack your favorite bong, zap some popcorn, and get ready for the ride of your life.

Actually, no. In Pot We Trust doesn't make you want to smoke pot. It will make you want to give all your pot to Jacqueline Patterson. Jacqueline has celebral palsy, which manifests itself most notably in the form of a severe stutter. When she uses medical marijuana, Jacqueline can speak much more quickly and clearly, because the drug relieves her muscle tension. The difference is so obvious, I don’t know how anyone could watch this and say marijuana isn't medicine.

In Pot We Trust tells the story of four medical marijuana patients, against the backdrop of last year's Hinchey-Rohrabacher vote. The filmmakers follow MPP's Aaron Houston through the halls of Congress, then join the DEA as they uproot marijuana plants in the hills of California. Marijuana experts such as Lester Grinspoon provide insight into the drug's benefits, while prohibitionists Joe Califano and Robert Dupont explain why they've dedicated themselves to criminalizing sick people.

The film is invaluable because patients themselves make the best spokespeople for medical marijuana. The ulterior motives so often attributed to the medical marijuana legalization effort become irrelevant here, as we meet the actual people whose health and wellbeing lies at the center of this controversy.

I won't ruin the ending, but in case you haven’t heard, patients who rely on medical marijuana to maintain their quality of life are still criminals under federal law.

The OxyContin debate has been part of a larger fight in which patient advocacy groups that are worried about historic undertreatment of pain have joined with drug companies to argue against regulatory and law enforcement restrictions on painkillers that might unduly restrict their availability.
…

Giuliani was a key ally in that debate. He cast himself as an expert because of his prosecutorial background and his experience with prostate cancer. As part of his work for Purdue, he agreed to chair a group called the Rx Action Alliance, which promoted a "balanced" approach that would address abuse but maintain access for patients…

As the DEA continues its misguided war on pain management specialists, it's really quite refreshing to know that a front-running presidential candidate understands the problem. DEA's overreaction to OxyContin abuse has been disastrous, resulting in the reluctance of doctors nationwide to prescribe pain-relievers to deserving patients. Whether it was his prostate cancer, or the money Purdue paid his firm, something has led him to stand up for patient access and there's nothing wrong with that.

The only remaining question is why Giuliani is so hostile to medical marijuana. The fact pattern is remarkably similar: the stigma resulting from widespread recreational marijuana use has created a climate in which legitimate patients are denied medical access to the drug.

If only medical marijuana patients could afford to hire Giuliani Partners, LLC to help improve their public image…

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

Via DrugWarRant, here's a glimpse at the brilliant methods of ONDCP Chief Scientist David Murray.

First, recall Steve Kubby's brief imprisonment last year. Due to his unique medical condition, many people were concerned that Kubby might not survive being denied access to medical marijuana while in jail. He survived thanks to Marinol and said this about the experience:

"During that time I experienced excruciating pain, a vicious high blood-pressure crisis, passed blood in my urine and I lost 33 pounds. However, there was also good news. I learned that Marinol is an acceptable, if not ideal, substitute for whole cannabis in treating my otherwise fatal disease. Now I am a free man and I am profoundly grateful to be alive and to have friends and supporters such as you."

Testifying before Congress last week, David Murray then twisted Kubby's statement into a pretzel, casting it as a complete reversal of his position on medical marijuana in general:

Founding proponents of medical marijuana in the United States have reversed their key positions of support for medical marijuana. [...] Steve Kubby, another Co-founder of medical marijuana in California stated in a letter to supporters on April 14th, 2006 that "Marinol is an acceptable, if not ideal, substitute for whole cannabis in treating my otherwise fatal disease."

Steve Kubby was just glad to be alive. He lost 33 pounds. He was pissing blood. If that sounds like an endorsement of Marinol as an alternative to whole cannabis, your name must be David Murray. The guy gets caught lying every time he opens his mouth, but this is obscene and disgusting, even by Murray's rock-bottom standards.

It would serve the U.S. Congress well to understand that David Murray does things like this. His claim that Steve Kubby changed his position on medical marijuana is a perfect example of the boundless dishonestly of which he is capable, and in fact specializes in.

This is the typical behavior that can be expected from the very Serious, Scientific, and Responsible people at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Don't bother asking why it is necessary for them to lie shamelessly about what Steve Kubby has said. They lie to our elected representatives only because they care about us. So we should be grateful that they are as good at lying as they are, lest we should be legally allowed to select medicines based on our experience rather than theirs.

New York City’s psychedelic experiment with misdemeanor MPV [marijuana possession violation] arrests—along with all the associated detentions, convictions, and additional incarcerations—represents a tremendously expensive policing intervention. As Golub et al. [authors of the original research] document well, the focus on MPV has had a significant disparate impact on African-American and Hispanic residents. Our study further shows that there is no good evidence that it contributed to combating serious crime in the city. If anything, it has had the reverse effect. As a result, the NYPD policy of misdemeanor MPV arrests represents an extremely poor trade-off of scarce law enforcement resources, imposing significant opportunity costs on society in light of the growing body of empirical research that highlights policing approaches that do appear to be successful in reducing serious crime. Our findings, building on those of Golub et al., make clear that these are not trade-offs in which we should be engaging.

Popular law blogger Ann Althouse concurs with Rudy Giuliani's ignorant remarks about medical marijuana:

He takes a tough position:

"You can accomplish everything you want to accomplish with things other than marijuana, probably better. There are pain medications much superior to marijuana," he said.

"We'd be much better off telling people the truth. Marijuana adds nothing to the array of legal medications and prescription medications that are available for pain relief."

I think he's right. But perhaps marijuana should be legalized, not just for people who can portray themselves as sick enough, but for any adult.

* The American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM)
* The American Nurses Association (ANA)
* The American Public Health Association (APHA)
* The American Society of Addiction Medicine
* British Medical Association
* The National Association for Public Health Policy
* The National Nurses Society on Addictions
* The Episcopal Church
* The Presbyterian Church USA
* The United Church of Christ
* The United Methodist Church's Board of Church and Society
* The Union of Reform Judiasm
* The Unitarian Universalist Association

All of these organizations (and many more) have endorsed medical marijuana, and they're probably a bit more credible than OxyContin representative Rudy Giuliani.

Politics aside, why is it so hard to agree that people who don’t feel good should be allowed to feel better by using marijuana? Regardless of what anyone says, marijuana becomes a medicine when sick people successfully use it to treat their symptoms. That's what medicine is, by definition.

The "other options" argument is ludicrous because it is vital that sick people be given as many options as possible. Medical marijuana patients include people who are allergic to other medicines. Many patients use other medications as well, but find that marijuana settles their stomach after eating a dozen pills. For some, marijuana relaxes the muscles and/or the mood in ways that other medicines do not. Many of these "other options" are more toxic and more addictive than marijuana, and that is just a fact.

Patients and their doctors are the first people one should consult for information on the efficacy of medical marijuana, and their experiences should always matter more than the politicized fulminations of an authoritarian former prosecutor on the campaign trail.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a worker whose hand was crushed by machinery at his workplace was not to blame for the accident despite his admitted marijuana use off the job.

…

The state law establishing the drug-free workplace program presumes that any injuries to an employee found to have been using drugs or alcohol were caused by the drug use. But the court noted that the law also allows employees to enter evidence to rebut that presumption.
…

The co-worker and the shop foreman both testified that McIntosh didn't appear to be impaired by marijuana use before the accident.

McIntosh, who had worked at Interstate for five years, contended the injury was caused by the actions of an inexperienced employee. [Forbes]