Last week, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, whose book Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine, was published in German in 1995, attended two International Conferences on Medical Marijuana in Germany.

The first was held in Frankfurt from December 2^nd through the 4^th. The second was in Cologne on December 5^th.
See
International Medical Marijuana Congress in Frankfurt Hears Calls For Medical Access

Both were sponsored by a German AIDS group, the Hessian Society, and each were attended by approximately 150 doctors and laypersons.

By no means, was the focus entirely on AIDS, however.

Dr. Grinspoon said that a Professor of Neurology, who sees over 300 MS patients per year, told him that he was introduced to his book by patients who had read it, and then tried marijuana. They got results that were immediately apparent to the Professor. The Professor then read the book and started recommending both the book and medical marijuana to his patients.

In Germany possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use is decriminalized and in most states doctors feel free to recommend it to their patients. Consequently, patients are not afraid to speak out, as is so often the case in DEAland. (Isn’t it nice to know that we did not fight World War II in vain. The Germans now have the freedom that we used to have here.)

Many of the patients brought copies of Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine for Dr. Grinspoon to autograph and thanked him for telling them about something that made such a big difference in their lives.

It remains to be seen how the German government will respond. There have been contradictory statements. However, the fact that the patients and doctors cannot be frightened into silence bodes well. I guess that we could say that the truth has nothing to fear from freedom.
See
German Drug Czar Calls For Medical Marijuana:
"The suffering of patients with illnesses such as MS, Cancer or AIDS could be eased with cannabis."

Ah, yes, but meanwhile back in the USSR, -- no actually in DEAland – the Drug Czar’s office seems to have decided not to change the Party Line on medical marijuana, even after the disastrous defeats in the initiatives.

Below are two articles that are remarkable in their absolute denial of not only medical but political reality, which is welcomed by public officials and editors. We are used to editors lying to us, but it is interesting to watch the Czar lie to important public officials

The first item is a report on the Drug Czar’s speech to Council of State Governments Annual Convention in San Antonio on December 8^th.

The Drug Czar assured them that the medicinal marijuana and industrial hemp movements are just an attempt to ``legalize all drugs, including marijuana, which poll after poll shows is opposed by 80 percent of the American public.'' He even compared referendums on medicinal marijuana to holding elections on ``FAA flight regulations.'' Whew!

Leaving aside the substance of the argument, remember that this is less than a month after a committee of the House of Lords recommended that marijuana be made medically available. Even more important for the state officials, some 20% of the American people live in states that have passed medical marijuana initiatives. In this context, before this audience, the Drug Czar even blames the medical marijuana movement for increasing teen drug use.

Either these state officials are completely out of touch with political and medical reality, or the Drug Czar is so out of touch with their thinking that they had to think that he is a absolute fool.

Certainly some of them know better. The Governor of Hawaii has endorsed hemp cultivation, for example. Did those who know better politely applaud and wonder if they were alone?

In any case, the fact that the Drug Czar could and would say something like this to such a high level audience indicates how deep the prohibitionist commitment is to the Party Line.

Conferences in Germany, the House of Lords in the UK, elections in states with 20% of the population, hemp cultivation around the world, etc., all mean nothing. It is all just a hoax or plot.

This is a degree of isolation from reality that would get an individual into a psychiatric ward, but the Drug Czar and the attendees at the Council of State Governments Annual Convention are not crazy.

Today is Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 80^th birthday. That should remind us that the sort of behavior we see here is not unique, and why I call this the late Soviet period of prohibitionism. Remember his dictum, "If the lying stops, the system will collapse."

That is the reality of what we are seeing here. Cancel elections in the nation’s capital, and ignore them in five states. Kill people in their own homes. Persecute the sick and dying. Repeat and repeat and repeat the party line, like a mantra. The lying cannot stop.

The only thing that they have going for them is that the truth is so unbelievable.

Exhibit A:

From the United Press International

MCCAFFREY BLASTS MEDICINAL MARIJUANA

SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 8 (UPI) - U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey says the nation is winning the war on drugs, but victory is being jeopardized by the medicinal marijuana movement.

He compared referendums on medicinal marijuana to holding local elections on "FAA flight regulations.''

(Marijuananews note: Opposing using the police to arrest sick people for private behavior is like a wanting to control a technical process involving public safety in the air. Oh, now it is all perfectly clear! Why didn’t someone explain this to me before?)

McCaffrey says another factor hindering a victory in the war on drugs is a disturbing increase in drug use among teenagers, including the use of heroin and methamphetamine. (Marijuananews note: Excuse me, but isn’t this really saying that losing is "hindering a victory?" Funny how that works.)

He says: ``Our children are using drugs again. The total percentage of Americans who use illegal drugs has dropped from 14 percent 15 years ago to 6 percent today. I'd like to cut that to less than 3 percent, but if we continue to tolerate pot smoking, cigarette use and alcohol consumption among young people, we will see a bubble of drug use rising again in this country.''

McCaffrey says his office will release next year a comprehensive plan to use high technology to interdict drugs coming across the southwestern border, including the use of radar to inspect trucks without having to stop and search them.

Copyright: 1998 United Press International

Exhibit B:

The following has been printed in a number of papers.
From the Oregonian
November 25, 1998
letters@news.oregonian.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/
By Lynda Bayer

"Note: Linda Bayer, a Harvard-trained psychologist who has worked with youngsters suffering from substance abuse, is senior writer and stategic analyst at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy."

(Marijuananews note: At least the Oregonian ran Ivins’ column. The Raleigh News & Observer ran this "rebuttal" on December 8^th under the heading "Drug ‘legalizers’ make a weak case" without having run Ivens’ original. They just omitted any references to Ivins. That is actually a fairly common practice.)

The language of Molly Ivins’ column, " Politicians lag behind the people on drug issues," in the Oregonian on Nov. 18 rings nostalgically from the mid-1960’s.

She speaks of the "poor frozen political establishment" and a misbegotten " war we’re losing." The times are changing, says Ivins, and the proverbial " emperor is wearing no clothes,"

Ivins calls for an end to the disparity in the sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. Although the claim that these two forms equal " the same drug" misses the enormous addictive potential of crack compared to powdered cocaine, the point is still well taken. In fact, Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Attorney General Janet Reno have called on Congress to reduce this disparity.

Likewise, the column criticizes " the establishment" for advocating more prisons and longer sentences. The fact is, McCaffrey helped double the number of drug courts that offer treatment rather than imprisonment for first-time non-violent offenders.

(Marijuananews note: What Bayer is doing is disassociating the Drug Czar from the reality the drug war.)

Likewise, McCaffrey is calling for expansion of drug treatment in prisons so that every inmate who seeks help --- and even those who don’t but need it --- can be cured from the addiction that fuels the cycle of drugs and crime.

For more than two years, McCaffrey has been repeating that the effort to reduce drug abuse in America is not a "war."

(Marijuananews note: McCaffrey wants to stop calling the Drug War a "war." He doesn’t want to stop killing people and/or taking them prisoner. He doesn’t want to stop seizing their property. He doesn’t want to end the prohibitionist propaganda at wartime levels. He doesn’t want to stop using the military in domestic law enforcement. But he does want to stop calling it a war.)

This man knows war, having nearly lost an arm in combat and having led the famed " left hook" that won the Persian Gulf War. Instead of fighting, McCaffrey speaks of prevention and treatment in medical terms akin to the search for a cancer cure.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, 30 years have passed and this is not Vietnam. We need to open our eyes and see what’s going on.

The medical marijuana referenda that have passed in several states, including Oregon, are something of a hoax because Marinol, --- the real "medical marijuana" --- has been available for 15 years. The active form of cannabis, THC, can be prescribed legally by physicians and taken in measured doses as well as guaranteed purity. It isn’t prescribed often because new and better medications --- such as ondansetron and denisetron, which have fewer side effects --- have been invented, but that’s beside the point.
See
Gettman Petition For Hearings On Marinol Rescheduling Uses DEA’s Own Arguments Against It.
Why Marinol Is Not Medical Marijuana. Wonderfully Brilliant!
and links

No one argues that patients should have the right to bypass pure forms of penicillin so they can grow it on moldy bread at home.

(Marijuananews note: Sorry, but patients actually have that right. If anyone finds that moldy bread works better than penicillin they are perfectly free to use it.)

We don’t need to endanger our pure food and drug system, which has made American medicine among the safest in world, for a drug that is already available.

(Marijuananews note: Not arresting sick people will "endanger the pure food and drug system?")

Mike Gray’s book might be "lively"...polemic," as Ivins put it, but it’s short on science and facts. Prohibition worked in terms of reducing rates of alcohol consumption and alcoholism; it wasn’t repealed because it was a flop but because the country wanted liquor to be legal. When substances are sanctioned and available, use goes up --- including abuse by children.

The hard truth here is that legalizing a psychoactive substance would increase abuse among young people, and the age of initiation has dropped steadily, so we’re talking about teens and preteens.
See
Legalize Marijuana and Reduce Use?
New Survey Puts Estimate of Dutch Marijuana Use Even More Below DEAland

The overwhelming majority of America don’t want to pay that price, so they oppose legalizing pot.

Two good books on this subject are Dr. Avrum Goldstein’s "Addiction: From Biology to Drug Policy" and Jill Jonnes’s Hepcats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams:

A History of America’s Romance with Illegal Drugs." These authors are a medical doctor and professor of pharmacology at Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University, respectively --- not a Hollywood movie maker.

The National Drug Control Strategy elaborates on the country’s sound, balanced, long range plan. Read it, you’ll like it.