Marijuana Is Just Bad Medicine Don’t Light Up ‘Medical’ Marijuana Encourages Drug Abuse And Is A Health Threat.

When Americans need a laxative, they don’t hike into the forest, peel a cascara tree and chew a fistful of bark; they walk down a drug store aisle and choose from an array of tested and regulated remedies. When Americans have an infection, they don’t eat moldy soup from the back of the refrigerator. They go to the pharmacy and get a purer form of penicillin - or a newer, specialized antibiotic.

So why would Americans consider marijuana smoking as a way to relieve certain miseries of AIDS, chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis and other ills?

Two reasons:

People who are desperately ill sometimes take desperate measures, and inspire a desperate kind of sympathy. They are easy prey for countercultural snake oil when conventional medicine doesn’t provide a quick, painless healing. Intoxication isn’t a cure, but it may feel like one.

After failing to legalize narcotics directly, the pop subculture that romanticizes recreational drug use is pushing to give pot a new, medicinal legitimacy. (Take note, Tobacco Institute.)

Tragically, it’s working. Americans are being duped into circumventing the established, rational avenues for scientific testing and regulation of pharmaceuticals. Voters in Arizona and California recently approved initiatives declaring marijuana legal for medicinal use. The definition of medicinal use is vague; critics say it may even apply to stress relief.

This would be comical, were it not encouraging to potential drug abusers, and menacing to the health of those who supposedly will benefit.

In fact, clinical research has found that marijuana smoke weakens the immune system, stresses the respiratory system more severely than tobacco smoke does, and contains more than 400 carcinogenic chemicals. The active ingredient in marijuana, THC, has been available by prescription for years. Clinicians have found it less effective, with more adverse side effects, than other drugs that also relieve the relevant ills, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea.

But hey, who cares about all those anal-retentive scientists? You can’t trust the establishment. Bring back the ‘60s. Plug in the lava lamp. Gather round, cancer victims, and hum along with Dylan: Everybody must get stoned.

How sad.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: Families, voters can make decision

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