A Judge’s Plea for Pot

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/opinion/a-judges-plea-for-medical-marijuana.html?_r=1

<snip>
THREE and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana.

My survival has demanded an enormous price, including months of chemotherapy, radiation hell and brutal surgery. For about a year, my cancer disappeared, only to return. About a month ago, I started a new and even more debilitating course of treatment. Every other week, after receiving an IV booster of chemotherapy drugs that takes three hours, I wear a pump that slowly injects more of the drugs over the next 48 hours.

<snip>
Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.

This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. Being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I am receiving the absolute gold standard of medical care. But doctors cannot be expected to do what the law prohibits, even when they know it is in the best interests of their patients. When palliative care is understood as a fundamental human and medical right, marijuana for medical use should be beyond controversy.

......more

[Chemisse]

1. It is an unbelievable tragedy that an effective and safe drug is being denied

to those who most need it, because of the arrogance and egos of all those who can't bear to be wrong, who can only think in terms of black and white - all drugs are bad - and who are eager to impose their personal values on everybody else's lives.

[No Elephants]

2. In Massachusetts, police campagined for decriminalization of possession of

relatively small quantities of pot.

That isn't much because I guess getting caught actually using the small amount in your possession would still be cause for arrest.

However, my point is that the measure passed easily and I beleive that was because police campaigned for it.

Of course, in so doing, they unselfishly reduced their own arrest statistics.

Maybe they wanted to focus on something other than victimless crimes?

Even if we assume pot is bad for you, so is cutting on your own arm and we do not arrest people who do that.

[dtexdem]

3. The U.S. is deluded into thinking that as a result of the "war on drugs" ...

they soon won't have a pot to piss on.

;-)