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The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is the loudest and most vocal critic of medical marijuana in the world. These people are paid to advise us about American drug policy.

Although the international community has recognized the therapeutic benefits of marijuana, and has begun reforming laws to reflect this, American tax dollars are being spent to produce propaganda, like a little booklet called, "What Americans Need to Know About Marijuana."

"Get emergency help immediately if any of the following side effects occur:

Any loss of hearing; bloody urine; confusion; convulsions (seizures); diarrhea (severe or continuing); difficulty in swallowing; dizziness, lightheadedness, or feeling faint (severe); drowsiness (severe); excitement or nervousness (severe); fast or deep breathing; flushing, redness, or other change in skin color; hallucinations (seeing, hearing, or feeling things that are not there); increased sweating; increased thirst; nausea or vomiting (severe or continuing); shortness of breath, troubled breathing, tightness in chest, or wheezing; stomach pain (severe or continuing); swelling of eyelids, face, or lips; unexplained fever ; uncontrollable flapping movements of the hands (especially in elderly patients); vision problems" (Full text here.)

Like all medicines, marijuana use does carry risks. The most frequent side effect reported is euphoric mood changes (feeling "high"). Also common are tachycardia (faster heartbeat) and hypotension (lower blood pressure). Chronic abuse can lead to psychological dependence in susceptible individuals. Marijuana can temporarily impair the ability to perform some tasks requiring mental and/or motor skills, so caution should be exercised until the patient learns how this medicine affects him/her. Patients with a history of cardiac ischemias (chest pain) have been advised not to use marijuana. There have also been a handful of reports of possible adverse effects in schizophrenic patients, as well as chest pain in previously healthy individuals.

Considering these minimal risks, the question should not be, "Is marijuana safe?"; rather, we should ask, "Are the risks so great that the government must override physicians' judgments and arrest sick people for using this medicine?"

Since we are in effect kidnapping sick people at gunpoint, ransacking their homes, robbing these American citizens of their medicine, and locking them in jails, we should ask why. Some argue patients must be protected. We do this to "protect" them from the risks of using a substance arguably less dangerous than aspirin? While most people find aspirin safe and effective, it also carries risks.

Here are some of the warnings from the National Library of Medicine about aspirin:

"Our medical system relies on proven scientific research, not polling results."

Medicine and law enforcement are two different practices. Our laws are supposed to be based on popular consensus. Over 70% of Americans favor ending the arrests of sick people who choose to use medical marijuana with the recommendations of their doctors.

"About 100 years ago, leaders in this country created the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make sure that medicine falls under the "safe and effective" standard before it is sold on the open market."

The FDA was not created to protect people from

themselves. It was created to protect the public from

unscrupulous snake oil salesmen, who would try to sell

them products that were tainted or mislabled. The FDA does not jail people for using unapproved drugs.

The decision of what medicines we will or will not put

into our bodies belongs between doctor and patient.

This is a health care concern -- not a criminal act.

"Research has not demonstrated that smoked marijuana is helpful as medicine."

Patients do not need to smoke marijuana. Cannabis is like any herbal remedy. It can be made into teas, tinctures, cooked in food, made into suppositories, and also vaporized. Thanks to vaporizers, patients who are unable to tolerate oral medications have another option outside of smoking or suppositories. This ingenious device delivers a dose of medicine in an inhalable form, without burning the plant material, and exposing the patient to the risks associated with smoke inhalation.

Research has established that marijuana is helpful as medicine. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine reported, "Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and all can be mitigated by marijuana...". Furthermore it was noted, "[E]xcept for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."

The "New England Journal of Medicine", American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine and dozens of other medical and public health organizations have called for legal access to medical marijuana. In its January 30, 1997 editorial, the "New England Journal of Medicine" noted that opposition to medical marijuana comes primarily from "bureaucrats whose decisions are based more on reflexive ideology and political correctness than on compassion."

"A component in marijuana -- THC -- has been approved in pill form by the FDA. It's called Marinol and though it is not frequently prescribed, the U.S. supports the right of doctors to prescribe this drug if they feel it would best serve their patients' needs. The U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) even lowered the scheduling on Marinol to make it easier for doctors to prescribe the drug."

Marinol is not marijuana. It is a synthetic version of THC, which is only one of the therapeutic components of cannabis.

Marinol is only available in a capsule form, and is useless for patients who are unable to tolerate oral medications.

Marinol costs patients 10 to 20 times as much as naturally grown cannabis.

Patients report that the length of onset of symptom relief with Marinol is inferior to inhaled marijuana. For someone with persistent projectile vomiting, it's cruel to force them to wait an hour or more for relief, when we have another option.

Marinol's dosage is difficult to control. Under-medication and over-medication are risks that can be more easily mitigated by choosing inhaled cannabis.

Finally, the synergistic effects of marijuana are absent in Marinol. For example, another active component in marijuana, cannabidiol, appears to control spasticity, as well as moderating the effects of THC, so the patient is less likely to experience excessive euphoria.

"Marijuana smoke contains more than 400 chemicals and increases the risk of cancer, lung damage, and poor pregnancy outcomes."

The number of chemical components in a substance tells us nothing about its safety or efficacy. There are more than 200 components in breast milk, with more being discovered all the time. Science still does not know what all of these are, nor their individual effects on infants, yet breast milk is considered the "gold standard" of infant nutrition.

The Institute of Medicine reported, "There is no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes cancer in humans, including cancers usually related to tobacco use. " Additionally, marijuana smokers had a slightly lower rate of lung cancer than non-smokers, provided they did not smoke tobacco, in a large California study of HMO patients.

Again, lung damage is easily mitigated by consuming marijuana without smoking it.

In a study of children's growth and developmental outcomes, Tennes et al. (1985) found no differences on mental and motor scores between mothers who used marijuana during pregnancy and lactation, and those who abstained. The Dreher, et al. (1994) Jamaican study, published in Pediatrics, found the only differences to be better scores on several scales for those infants whose mothers smoked marijuana. (For further information about medical marijuana and pregnancy, please see
http://parentsendingprohibition.homestead.com/Mothering.html.)

"The U.S. continues to support research into the medical efficacy of certain isolated properties of marijuana."

And patients are grateful that our government has grudgingly agreed to resume research into an herbal remedy which we know to provide us relief. However, this research takes time, and human beings are suffering today -- this moment -- right now.

"Even if smoking marijuana makes people "feel better", that is not enough to call it a medicine. If that were the case, tobacco cigarettes could be called medicine because they are often said to make people feel better. For that matter, heroin certainly makes people "feel better" (at least initially), but no one would suggest using heroin to treat a sick person."

If a doctor prescribes morphine, cocaine or methamphetamines to make a patient feel better, that patient can go to the drugstore and legally obtain his or her medicine. These drugs are perfectly legal to prescribe, sell and use, yet none cure any illnesses. They make people feel better. For that matter, so does aspirin.

"Marijuana use causes precancerous changes in the body similar to those caused by tobacco use. Smoking pot delivers 3 to 5 times the amount of tars and carbon monoxide into the body. It also damages pulmonary immunity and impairs oxygen diffusion. How could changes such as these be good for someone dying of cancer or AIDS?"

Marijuana does not have to be smoked.

How could prison be safer for patients than marijuana?

Marijuana has been safely used in medicine for thousands of years. Unfortunately, many Americans are unaware of the therapeutic benefits of this plant.

Marijuana is a medicine that has the ability to act as an analgesic (pain reliever), anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, antiemetic (nausea reliever), and appetite stimulant. Similarly, aspirin can act as an analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antiplatelet (reduces the tendency of platelets to clump together), antipyretic (fever reducer), and anti-coagulant. Additionally, researchers recently found evidence that marijuana may help prevent degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and motor neuron diseases.