Just a day apart the leading papers in the capitals of DEAland and Canada ran editorials endorsing medical marijuana: The Washington Post for the first time, and the Ottawa Citizen in an even stronger reiteration of their previous stand. Compare and contrast.

The Post’s piece managed to be both weak and arrogant, while the Citizen’s was bold and forthright. The Citizen published first, so the editors of the Post had the opportunity to learn from a little northern exposure, but that assumes that they would deign to look.

I put them here in non-chronological order for a number of reasons, but primarily because -- after reading the Post – one needs something to take the bad taste out of one’s mouth. However, as you read the Post editorial, keep in mind that medical marijuana has previously been endorsed by Canada’s capital city papers, the House of Lords, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, etc. There is not only no indication of these facts in the Post piece, there it seems to try to give the impression that the Post is on the radical cutting edge. One almost expects them to say, "As we’ve being trying to tell you all along…"

They want us to think that they are "pushing the envelope" but the only envelope that has been pushed at the Post in decades is the one with the paychecks.)

Medical Marijuana

THE REPORT by the Institute of Medicine on medical uses of marijuana provides guidance on a subject that has been politicized beyond both its actual medical promise and its actual law enforcement implications. The report has been spun as a victory by all sides, but its contents are neither a ringing endorsement nor an outright rejection of marijuana’s therapeutic qualities.

Its authors conclude that while marijuana-derived chemicals such as THC and other cannabinoids may be useful for a variety of symptoms, smoked marijuana is "a crude THC delivery system that also delivers harmful substances." The goal in studying "smoked marijuana would not be to develop marijuana as a licensed drug," they write, but "as a first step towards . . . nonsmoked, rapid-onset cannabinoid delivery systems."

There are good reasons to be skeptical of the movement for medical marijuana. The issue has become a kind of stalking horse for marijuana legalization generally, one that avoids the serious public policy questions legalization presents.

The D. C. movement is almost entirely the creation of the patients, primarily people with AIDS. Theirs is as pure a medical marijuana movement as one can find. This doesn’t fit the party line, so they don’t exist?
See
A Great Press Release From D.C. Medical Marijuana Supporters

Moreover, the marijuana reform movement has never avoided "the serious public policy questions legalization presents." Instead the Post has avoided the serious public policy questions that marijuana prohibition presents. It has mislead its readers and avoided giving any indication of how wide-spread the opposition to marijuana prohibition has become. The Post has avoided all knowledge of the medical marijuana movement.)
See
McCaffrey Named New Editor-In-Chief of the Washington Post – Exclusive To Marijuananews
and links

Moreover, THC is already available commercially in oral form with a prescription, and the FDA has approved other drugs to treat many symptoms marijuana is said to relieve.
(Marijuananews note: Did they read the IOM report?)
Something is wrongheaded about the notion of drug availability as a subject for referenda, rather than for a regulatory process in which data from rigorous clinical trials are evaluated.
(Marijuananews note: That is quintessential Washington Post: Washington – as in Post – knows best. It never occurs to them that the people might distrust this process after decades of stalling. NORML brought its first medical marijuana suit in 1972. In 1997 the Drug Czar was still saying that there wasn’t a "shred of evidence" that marijuana has medical value. The Post has almost caught up with the 1972 NORML position, but now they say that there "something is wrongheaded" about referenda that said what the Post now says. Something is wrongheaded all right. Perhaps it is the editing of the Washington Post.

Amazingly, they make no mention of D.C.'s  own medical marijuana referendum!)
See
Democracy In Limbo: The Court Still Hasn’t Ruled On The D.C. Medical Marijuana Vote

The flip side, as the institute’s report suggests, is that the class of patients seems to be limited, generally, to terminally ill people suffering from chronic pain, nausea from chemotherapy, or appetite suppression from AIDS or advanced cancers who don’t respond to standard therapies but do respond to marijuana. It seems wrong, in the name of fighting the war on drugs, to withhold from these patients a drug, however imperfect, that offers relief. And it should be possible to arrange for access to marijuana by people who may benefit from it—as compassionate-use programs have allowed access to many unapproved therapies—without a general relaxation of drug laws.
(Marijuananews note: "It seems wrong…" What a clarion call! Was this the last gasp from their conscience? Heavens to Betsy! It seems wrong???? God help them. But after He saves us from them.)

The institute’s report recommends that marijuana and its constituent compounds be studied further, with trials of smoked marijuana examining only short-term use to avoid the health consequences of longer-term marijuana smoking. No reasonable objection can be made to this idea, particularly insofar as further studies could lead to cannabinoid delivery systems that lack the unhealthful qualities of smoking.

The report also recommends that access to marijuana be permitted for patients who have failed to respond to standard treatments and whose doctors approve their use of it. This too seems reasonable. Key, however, is that such expanded access not become a system—such as the buyers’ clubs that followed the referendum in California—under which marijuana is made openly available even to those with no medical need for it.

(Marijuananews note: Oh really? First, there is no evidence of significant leakage from the California system. There is certainly leakage from the prescription system for other drugs, and from marijuana prohibition itself. Or does the Post think that all the marijuana in California is leaked from the Clubs? )

If marijuana is to be medicine, it should be under tight controls and used only by those who cannot avail themselves of other drugs.

(Marijuananews note: Notice that there is no mention of arresting patients! There primary concern is that there be "tight controls." As tight as the controls on mercy at the Post?)

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

(Marijuananews note: By contrast, all I can really say about the Citizen's editorial is "Bravo!" If their winters weren’t so cold, I would be honored just to be one of their paperboys. What a difference it would make it this were the paper of the capital of DEAland. We wouldn’t be DEAland much longer.)

MR. ROCK’S HARD HEART

April 2, 1999
From The Ottawa Citizen
letters@thecitizen.southam.ca
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/

The substance in question is marijuana. The people in "such great need" are cancer and AIDS patients, who feel that marijuana offers them succour. Prof. Gould knows whereof he speaks: In the 1980s, marijuana relieved him of the nausea from the chemotherapy that treated his cancer.

Similar stories are too numerous to count, yet Canada continues to treat as criminals very sick people who use marijuana, a fact which is unlikely to change soon despite the March announcement by Health Minister Allan Rock that the government will study medical marijuana.
See
Canadian Health Minister Proposes "Clinical Trials" For Medical Marijuana;
Promises Immediate Access For Some Individuals.
"He doesn’t want a restrictive process that would deny access in compassionate cases."
-- 2 Articles

There are reasons to doubt the sincerity of a government that has happily accepted the status quo since taking power in 1993. For one, more study hardly seems a priority when there are already stacks of research on medical marijuana. There’s so much evidence, in fact, that the New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized in medical marijuana’s favour. Just last month, an 18-month study commissioned by the drug policy arm of the White House—a branch that has for years fought medical marijuana tooth and nail -- declared that marijuana has important medical uses, especially for cancer and AIDS. One author of the study noted that there is "an explosion of new scientific knowledge" about marijuana’s useful effects. Why re-invent the wheel if Mr. Rock is serious about change?

There’s yet another reason to doubt our government: the case of Jim Wakeford, who, in August, 1998, went to court demanding that he be given the legal right to possess marijuana. Mr. Wakeford has AIDS, and the disease has ravaged his body. At one point, his weight dropped from 140 pounds to 118. But then he discovered marijuana and the drug’s ability to instill a fierce appetite in users. Mr. Wakeford’s weight rose back into safe ranges.
See
Plight Of Canadian AIDS Patient and Medical Marijuana Activist Wakeford
Reinforces Call By 17 DEAland AIDS Groups For Immediate Access To Cannabis

But the law says that in saving his own life as he did, Mr. Wakeford committed a crime repeatedly. He’s a criminal. Either that or, as Dickens wrote, the law is an ass.

The judge hearing Mr. Wakeford’s case was sympathetic but he pointed to a law which gives the minister of health the power to allow individuals or groups to legally possess marijuana. The judge said Mr. Wakeford would first have to ask the minister to use that discretion before he could argue before the court that the government, in forbidding him access to marijuana, had violated his Charter right to "life, liberty and security of the person."

So Mr. Wakeford asked the minister. In fact, he asked six times. Only once, finally, did the health ministry reply. They said they would look into it.

Recently, Mr. Wakeford went back to the same judge. Seven months had gone by, an eternity to a man with AIDS, and the minister had done nothing. The judge ordered the government to explain at a hearing this month just when it might rouse itself to decide on Mr. Wakeford’s request.

Why not? What precisely is he waiting for? Mr. Wakeford’s funeral?

We have made no secret of our opposition to the ban on marijuana, consumed for whatever purpose, which we feel is irrational, invasive, and destructive. But the refusal to allow even terminal patients to try marijuana is so cruel, so pointless, it is, to paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, beyond our comprehension.