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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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US: OPED: Bush Should Heed The Grass Roots On Pot Question
Star-Ledger (NJ)
Wednesday 16 May 2001 Website: http://www.nj.com/starledger/ Author: Bill Press (Co-host of CNN's "Crossfire.") BUSH SHOULD HEED THE GRASS ROOTS ON POT QUESTION There's one tiny bit of good news in this week's unanimous Supreme Court decision against medical marijuana. You can't blame it on George Bush. You have to lay blame for this one squarely where it belongs: on Bill Clinton and Barry McCaffrey, his heartless, overzealous drug czar. McCaffrey's problem is, he probably never smoked pot in college. Had he taken a few tokes, he would know that the garbage he spews about marijuana being a threshold drug, leading users to ruined lives of addiction to cocaine and heroin, is simply, well, garbage. There is no evidence that recreational marijuana smokers become serious drug addicts. McCaffrey is so convinced of the evils of cannabis that he'd prevent his own mother, if she were suffering from terminal cancer, from puffing on a joint to get relief. "Smoking a joint is no more effective than 'downing two glasses of vodka on dealing with pain," he told NBC News. "You're drunk and you're still in pain." What does he know? Listen instead to Angel McClary, 35, of San Francisco, who's been taking marijuana to fight the side effects of an inoperable brain tumor and a seizure disorder. "My question to the government is, why haven't they taken us off the battlefield?" she told CNN after the Supreme Court decision. "We're the ones sick. Why are they attacking the weak of our country? There are American citizens who are suffering and dying. If it wasn't for cannabis, I wouldn't be just in a wheelchair, I'd be dead." It was the uninformed McCaffrey who convinced Clinton to sue states that had recognized the valuable and merciful use of marijuana, especially for those in the terminal stages of cancer or AIDS. Voters in eight states - California, Arizona, Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington - have done so by ballot initiative. Hawaii became the ninth state by an act of the Legislature. The fact that so many voters in so many states approved medicinal marijuana proves this is no oddball, outlaw conspiracy. Grass is only available, through special clinics or cooperatives, to patients whose doctors say they need it. The conservative California Medical Association has ruled that the use of medical marijuana is consistent with its "core belief that patients should not suffer unnecessarily when other options fail." But the strongest testimonial to the therapeutic value of marijuana comes from patients like McClary, suffering from AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other incurable diseases. They've learned that only grass can ease the side effects of chemotherapy, save nauseated AIDS patients from wasting away or even allow MS patients to get out of their wheelchairs and take a few steps. For them, the Supreme Court's 8-0 decision against medical marijuana amounts to a cruel and unnecessary punishment. But still, as bad as it is, the court's decision is not the end of the road. There are two openings for change. First, while declaring the distribution of marijuana by medical clinics to be illegal, the court did not, nor was it asked to, declare the use of marijuana by cancer patients illegaL Which means people can still grow their own. Or clinics could convert into greenhouses, where patients tend their own plants. Second, the court's decision is meaningless unless federal agents swoop into nine states and shut down marijuana clinics. That puts the ball squarely in Bush's court. He would have to give the Justice Department the green light to act and may not do so. As governor of Texas, Bush said that, while he personally opposed the medical use of marijuana, "I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose." As president, we can only hope he continues to support states' rights.
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