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September 23, 2007
With "Friends" like this, ... (Personal)
Expanatory note: One of my frustations in blogging has been that my limited time and relative lack of web expertise have kept me from exploiting the benefits of self-publishing what is intended as a highly focused personal diary hoping to influence public opinion on a poorly understood policy issue. My first concern has been accuracy; thus I've been careful with language and think I'm now reasonably successful, except for the odd typo and grammatical boo-boo left over from a hasty revision. In the interests of time and readability, I'm going to try reducing html links to material that's readily available on the web by using italics to identify those items I'm confident should be either accepted as factual by most readers; or will become self-expanatory when googled by those wanting more details.
My last entry claimed that the unjust federal treatment of medical marijuana supporters in California has become the preferred tactic of conservative demagogues intent at defending an unjust policy; also that the leadership of the medical marijuana movement has yet to fully understand the political game they have been trying to play for over ten years. As if to confirm that judgment, a discussion has just erupted on refom's email discussion lists about what it might take to "fix" proposition 215. After the usual flurry of incompletely thought out positions, this one has settled somewhat unexpectedly, and perhaps even productively, on the "seriously ill" issue I'd been trying to raise with little succes for over three years.
I’ll have considerably more to say about that whole subjct over the next few days (or weeks), but timeliness leads me to call attention to an upcoming report on tomorrow's Sixty Minutes telecast that should focus on what I have come to see as the most extreme and wilfully stupid of all possible interpretations of California’s initiative by anyone not employed by the federal government. Scott Imler's complaint to Morley Safer isn't even logical in terms of 215's wording, yet that hasn't kept the feds, many confused reformers, and a host of others from stubbornly endorsing an assumpion first made by General McCaffrey and often echoed by John Walters: medical training and clinical experience are simply not required to decide how "serious" any given patient's symptoms may be. That's a matter easily and accurately decided by mere observation from across the street by cops, deputy sheriffs, drug czars, cub reporters and similar braying jackasses.
It's the kind of simplistic evaluation of drugs and drug users NIDA has been encouraging, with considerable success, for the past 32 years. Hopefully, some of its political opponents are finally curious enough to begin questioning their own unsupported assumptions.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 23, 2007 06:29 AM