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In reply to the discussion: House Votes To End DEA Raids On Legal Medical Marijuana Operations [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)53. Hope so
California has been a leader in so many ways on this issue.
One thing that's part of the medical marijuana legacy that is so moving to me was the way Democrats, doctors, and marijuana advocates, growers and more responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis. When so many had so little hope, there were people in California who reached out to help ease the suffering of those dying from AIDS-related illnesses.
Of course, one Californian, Ronald Reagan, reacted differently.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s-AIDS-Legacy-Silence-equals-death-2751030.php
Reagan could have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed from so many in his administration. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs." The president's advisers, Koop said, "took the stand, 'They are only getting what they justly deserve.' "
How profoundly different might have been the outcome if his leadership had generated compassion rather than hostility. "In the history of the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan's legacy is one of silence," Michael Cover, former associate executive director for public affairs at Whitman-Walker Clinic, the groundbreaking AIDS health-care organization in Washington. in 2003. "It is the silence of tens of thousands who died alone and unacknowledged, stigmatized by our government under his administration."
Bush Sr., when he was in office, stopped the Compassionate Care Investigative Project that, federally, supplied only about 30 people at the most, because he was afraid requests for the nation's Mississippi Marijuana would surge because of AIDS patients.
Clinton sided with the DEA when CA legalized medical marijuana and, when he was president, the DEA killed a man by making it impossible for him to use marijuana a condition of his bail. Larry McWilliams, a libertarian writer, choked on his own vomit because the DEA thought it was important to deny AIDS patients the herb that made it possible to keep life-saving medications down.
So, yeah. It's time to defund this agency - a little bit now, a lot more to come. Unfortunately, agencies don't reap what they have sown....
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This was a bipartisan effort -- one of the cosponsors was GOP. They like that weed, too. nt
MADem
May 2014
#5
Rand makes statements that sound like he's for legalization when the audience supports it. It's
okaawhatever
May 2014
#46
It's coming in 2016. The big boys with the money will do an initiative then.
Comrade Grumpy
May 2014
#54
Only a handful of Dems voted against it, including Debbie Wasserman Schulz. WTF?
Comrade Grumpy
May 2014
#31
I wonder if Wasserman Schultz and Wilson are in heavily gerrymandered districts and the idea of
Uncle Joe
May 2014
#40
Was Debbie voting against the larger bill? Sometimes that happens with amendments. nt
okaawhatever
May 2014
#47