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August 17, 2013
An Unexpeced Wedge Issue?
A few days ago, I blogged about the unexpected drug war defection of two CNN icons over medical cannabis, a "substance" long demonized as “marijuana” in compliance with official American doctrine. I also noted the timid recognition by AG Eric Holder that we can no longer afford to lead the world in incarcerating our own citizens, an issue closely related to the same costly doctrine. After years spent trying to convince the few readers of this blog that our drug war has been a disaster, the recognition of such issues by a source as prominent as CNN has been both a welcome change in the status quo and a challenge- the latter because the sheer speed of developments makes them difficult to keep up with, let alone interpret.Back to the Present
The first chink in drug war armor appeared unexpectedly when Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Piers Morgan both publicly admitted trying cannabis themselves. Even more significantly, Dr. Gupta revealed he'd been working on a documentary related to its medical benefits. Since a key drug war assertion is that pot can't be medicine, I realized that by simply airing WEED, a powerful American media voice had decided to defect from the drug war; a decision not to taken lightly in the present political climate.
Thus I watched "Weed" last Saturday when it first aired and again last night when it was rebroadcast. For those who haven't seen it yet, the most powerful part deals with the five year old daughter of an American service man then serving overseas, whose 5-year old daughter in Colorado was experiencing up to 300 seizures (convulsions) a week that were unresponsive to conventional medicines. They were finally controlled when growers raising a specific medicinal strain of cannabis made it available to her mother.
In an amazing follow up- one that could not have been planned- another little girl with the same problem has just surfaced in New Jersey. Yesterday, her father was filmed by CNN as he demanded that the state's obviously reluctant Republican Governor allow her to receive the same treatment Colorado had made available.
Thus in one fell swoop, a cluster of vexing political issues latent within the "medical marijuana" phenomenon ever since its origin as Proposition 215 in California over 17 years ago are finally coming to the fore in an amazing coincidence involving two young girls with the same devastating medical problem.
Even with all I've learned from over 7000 individual patients, I could not have conceived of a better scenario for calling attention to the problems created by a terrible policy based on a costly failure we've never officially acknowledged.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at August 17, 2013 07:09 PM