purple_chronic
PR 4 LIFE...
- Joined
- May 10, 2006
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Well i was looking 4 info. on the net and i found this very long text that i found a very good read,read and post your opinion...
Thanxx
PC
ONE TOKE OVER THAT LITTLE LINE THAT KEEPS MARIJUANA ILLEGAL.
By Isaac W. Kinard
Art by Mr. Shoffner
This statement comes from Sara, my friend of 12 years, who recently beat lung cancer. Sara sounds logical, but any treatment? Most of us would break the law, even jeopardize our house to help a dear friend, our brother, or our mother with a desperate illness like cancer
or AIDS. As a citizen though, this could corrupt your community. Which side to choose? Following the June 6th Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, you face this question. The Raich case, involving medical marijuana, laid the groundwork for a new chapter in the ongoing balancing act between personal freedom and public safety.
Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, which made marijuana illegal in all
50 states. In November 1996, the California legislature passed Proposition 215 "to ensure that seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes
" Californians passed the law feeling that limited home use of marijuana by seriously ill people would be too small for the long arm of the federal law.
The Feds disagreed. By April 1997, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) raided the Flower Therapy medical marijuana buyers club in San Francisco and seized their crops . In the following years, the DEA raided many clubs and individuals, while state law enforcement protested. Meanwhile, 9 other states passed laws similar to California's, which legalized marijuana for medical purposes.
The Raich case emerged from these raids. Angel McClary Raich's clothing billows over her gaunt, flaccid frame. Her face is sunken, almost hanging from her skull. Angel's wasted state results from a litany of symptoms including an inoperable brain tumor, a uterine fibroid tumor, headaches, seizures and nausea. After over 34 conventional medications caused violent vomiting, hot flashes, shakes, itching, and sweats, Angel found relief in marijuana. She smokes every two waking hours, consuming around two and half ounces per week under the supervision of Frank Lucido, a doctor with 25 years of experience.
Angel Raich sued the Feds to stop the raids, fearing a barrier to her medicine. She argued that her behavior was too trivial for federal control, and in any event, legal under state law. She lost in district court, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Raich, finding "nothing contrary to the public interest in allowing individuals to seek relief from a statute that is likely unconstitutional as applied to them." So then-attorney general John Ashcroft appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, never lacking any humor, on 4/20/04.
A Cure As Bad As the Sickness.
"A day after [chemo], the sickness started. It's more than nausea; it's physical pain in your stomach. It's literally like knives in your stomach for days afterward. You can't walk upright; I was crawling place to place, passing out where ever I crawled, and waking up hours later wondering why I started in this direction." Everyone knows about losing your hair from chemotherapy, but Sara is describing probably the most serious side effect.
Chemotherapy involves injecting your body with toxins such as Carboplatin, Cisplatin, Docetaxel, Paclitaxel or Carbotaxol for 8 hours, twice per month, for 4 months. These toxins kill cancer cells, but the amounts remaining in the bloodstream invoke a toxic response, causing vomiting. "You're throwing up and you have nothing to throw up. You can't get any food down. Everything was in the freezer or fridge. It had to be cold because if it wasn't cold you could smell it," Sara said.
Nausea can result in serious metabolic derangements, nutritional depletion and anorexia. "At one point I had lost too much [weight] and they told me that if I didn't eat, they were going to stop my treatment, wait, and then start all 8 cycles all over again," she said. Doctors use several medications for nausea; Sara took three. One medication available is a pill called Marinol, a synthetic version of THC, the active chemical in marijuana. But researchers have found this pill is less effective than smoked marijuana, which hits the bloodstream faster through the lungs.
Another side effect of chemotherapy is extreme pain such as paresthesias, where the skin feels numb or burned for no apparent reason, or hyporeflexia, a condition characterized by diminished or weakened reflexes. "A day or so after chemo, I got out of bed [and] as soon as my foot hit the ground, pain shot all the way through me, I felt like I was 85," Sara recalled. For the pain, doctors prescribe Oxycodone, Vicodin, methadone, levorphanol or other opiates. These drugs often cause hallucinations, nightmares, nausea, mental clouding and constipation. They can be overdosed fairly easily, causing death. Often they create an addiction, a la Rush Limbaugh.
"We get it all the time." says John who works at a San Diego clinic specializing in cannabis therapy and declined to give his last name. "I spoke with somebody today. People say, 'I take Oxycodone, I take Oxycontin, I take all kinds of pills. I have an addiction and I want to get off 'em.'" In July 2004, the National Institute on Drug Abuse published findings that marijuana compounds relieved pain. Since marijuana is, at worst, only mildly addictive, it offers an alternative to opiate medications.
Prolonged isolation during recuperation, the ailment's chronic pain or worse, facing death, causes serious emotional upheaval. "The mental toll it took I think all of the medication made the mental state worse. The morphine made you even more paranoid. A lot of the stuff they put you on makes you even more paranoid. Then it becomes a cycle, because they put you on anti-anxiety drugs to level you out -- Paxil, Xanax, and all this other stuff," said Sara.
Why Weed Works.
THC receptors reside in brain areas that influence pleasure, memory, concentration, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement. Patients are finding that marijuana's mood-altering effects aid emotional pain, too. Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California physician specializing in cannabis therapy, authored a paper on the mental therapeutic effects of marijuana: "While most would characterize and categorize cannabis' therapeutic actions as sedative, anxiolytic, and analgesic; the power of the drug to alleviate depression is, perhaps, as an important psychotherapeutic property. Confronted by mental disorders that have diverse causes and ways of expression, depression and anxiety vary significantly in severity, expression, and manifestation. For some, cannabis is a lifeline to sanity and functionality."
John says marijuana's mental does more than improve a patients' mood. "With marijuana the patients have a new social avenue. In other words, they have more support from other medical marijuana patients. I think, by nature, the intake of marijuana has a social connotation to it, which could be negative in a political arena or a positive, I don't know. I truly view it as an extremely positive experience.
"For example, what would it be like if I had cancer? I watched my mother go through this. You get rushed off to the hospital and it becomes a very bitter and very negative experience for everybody, especially the patient. Your whole family is there, everybody's depressed, and no one knows what's going on. Marijuana comes after that stage. You've gone through the trauma and you've come to grips with your life, your ailments and how much time you have left. It then becomes an issue of, 'Who do we talk to? Who do we relate to?' I can think of a few times where it happened before my eyes and it really blew me away. I've watched a patient come in and actually meet other patients in the lobby with similar conditions. I've seen them sitting there for hours just talking. It's fascinating -- these people have something in common, they have something to grab onto. It opens a whole new world to patients. It's kind of a support group."
But patients need more than drugs for the side effects, they must directly address the ailment. Nearly a year after her treatment began Sara still took antibiotics. "It's so expensive, even with the health insurance that I have, everything was covered, but I guarantee you that I was spending $200 [a month] on medication just from co-pays." Sara said. At this point marijuana, which addresses many of the symptoms, becomes attractive. "It was so expensive that even the co-pays were $50 to $60. A bag of weed was like 50 bucks and would last you three weeks. It didn't make sense."
Thanxx
PC
ONE TOKE OVER THAT LITTLE LINE THAT KEEPS MARIJUANA ILLEGAL.
By Isaac W. Kinard
Art by Mr. Shoffner
"I was told by every oncologist, every nutritionist, 'you do anything you have to do to get through this period.' When you watch somebody in tears, not able to move, they can't even talk, to find some sort of peace, you think, 'Thank God, whatever this is, let them do it.'"
This statement comes from Sara, my friend of 12 years, who recently beat lung cancer. Sara sounds logical, but any treatment? Most of us would break the law, even jeopardize our house to help a dear friend, our brother, or our mother with a desperate illness like cancer
or AIDS. As a citizen though, this could corrupt your community. Which side to choose? Following the June 6th Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, you face this question. The Raich case, involving medical marijuana, laid the groundwork for a new chapter in the ongoing balancing act between personal freedom and public safety.
Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, which made marijuana illegal in all
The Feds disagreed. By April 1997, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) raided the Flower Therapy medical marijuana buyers club in San Francisco and seized their crops . In the following years, the DEA raided many clubs and individuals, while state law enforcement protested. Meanwhile, 9 other states passed laws similar to California's, which legalized marijuana for medical purposes.
The Raich case emerged from these raids. Angel McClary Raich's clothing billows over her gaunt, flaccid frame. Her face is sunken, almost hanging from her skull. Angel's wasted state results from a litany of symptoms including an inoperable brain tumor, a uterine fibroid tumor, headaches, seizures and nausea. After over 34 conventional medications caused violent vomiting, hot flashes, shakes, itching, and sweats, Angel found relief in marijuana. She smokes every two waking hours, consuming around two and half ounces per week under the supervision of Frank Lucido, a doctor with 25 years of experience.
Angel Raich sued the Feds to stop the raids, fearing a barrier to her medicine. She argued that her behavior was too trivial for federal control, and in any event, legal under state law. She lost in district court, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Raich, finding "nothing contrary to the public interest in allowing individuals to seek relief from a statute that is likely unconstitutional as applied to them." So then-attorney general John Ashcroft appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, never lacking any humor, on 4/20/04.
A Cure As Bad As the Sickness.
"A day after [chemo], the sickness started. It's more than nausea; it's physical pain in your stomach. It's literally like knives in your stomach for days afterward. You can't walk upright; I was crawling place to place, passing out where ever I crawled, and waking up hours later wondering why I started in this direction." Everyone knows about losing your hair from chemotherapy, but Sara is describing probably the most serious side effect.
Chemotherapy involves injecting your body with toxins such as Carboplatin, Cisplatin, Docetaxel, Paclitaxel or Carbotaxol for 8 hours, twice per month, for 4 months. These toxins kill cancer cells, but the amounts remaining in the bloodstream invoke a toxic response, causing vomiting. "You're throwing up and you have nothing to throw up. You can't get any food down. Everything was in the freezer or fridge. It had to be cold because if it wasn't cold you could smell it," Sara said.
Nausea can result in serious metabolic derangements, nutritional depletion and anorexia. "At one point I had lost too much [weight] and they told me that if I didn't eat, they were going to stop my treatment, wait, and then start all 8 cycles all over again," she said. Doctors use several medications for nausea; Sara took three. One medication available is a pill called Marinol, a synthetic version of THC, the active chemical in marijuana. But researchers have found this pill is less effective than smoked marijuana, which hits the bloodstream faster through the lungs.
Another side effect of chemotherapy is extreme pain such as paresthesias, where the skin feels numb or burned for no apparent reason, or hyporeflexia, a condition characterized by diminished or weakened reflexes. "A day or so after chemo, I got out of bed [and] as soon as my foot hit the ground, pain shot all the way through me, I felt like I was 85," Sara recalled. For the pain, doctors prescribe Oxycodone, Vicodin, methadone, levorphanol or other opiates. These drugs often cause hallucinations, nightmares, nausea, mental clouding and constipation. They can be overdosed fairly easily, causing death. Often they create an addiction, a la Rush Limbaugh.
"We get it all the time." says John who works at a San Diego clinic specializing in cannabis therapy and declined to give his last name. "I spoke with somebody today. People say, 'I take Oxycodone, I take Oxycontin, I take all kinds of pills. I have an addiction and I want to get off 'em.'" In July 2004, the National Institute on Drug Abuse published findings that marijuana compounds relieved pain. Since marijuana is, at worst, only mildly addictive, it offers an alternative to opiate medications.
Prolonged isolation during recuperation, the ailment's chronic pain or worse, facing death, causes serious emotional upheaval. "The mental toll it took I think all of the medication made the mental state worse. The morphine made you even more paranoid. A lot of the stuff they put you on makes you even more paranoid. Then it becomes a cycle, because they put you on anti-anxiety drugs to level you out -- Paxil, Xanax, and all this other stuff," said Sara.
Why Weed Works.
THC receptors reside in brain areas that influence pleasure, memory, concentration, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement. Patients are finding that marijuana's mood-altering effects aid emotional pain, too. Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California physician specializing in cannabis therapy, authored a paper on the mental therapeutic effects of marijuana: "While most would characterize and categorize cannabis' therapeutic actions as sedative, anxiolytic, and analgesic; the power of the drug to alleviate depression is, perhaps, as an important psychotherapeutic property. Confronted by mental disorders that have diverse causes and ways of expression, depression and anxiety vary significantly in severity, expression, and manifestation. For some, cannabis is a lifeline to sanity and functionality."
John says marijuana's mental does more than improve a patients' mood. "With marijuana the patients have a new social avenue. In other words, they have more support from other medical marijuana patients. I think, by nature, the intake of marijuana has a social connotation to it, which could be negative in a political arena or a positive, I don't know. I truly view it as an extremely positive experience.
"For example, what would it be like if I had cancer? I watched my mother go through this. You get rushed off to the hospital and it becomes a very bitter and very negative experience for everybody, especially the patient. Your whole family is there, everybody's depressed, and no one knows what's going on. Marijuana comes after that stage. You've gone through the trauma and you've come to grips with your life, your ailments and how much time you have left. It then becomes an issue of, 'Who do we talk to? Who do we relate to?' I can think of a few times where it happened before my eyes and it really blew me away. I've watched a patient come in and actually meet other patients in the lobby with similar conditions. I've seen them sitting there for hours just talking. It's fascinating -- these people have something in common, they have something to grab onto. It opens a whole new world to patients. It's kind of a support group."
But patients need more than drugs for the side effects, they must directly address the ailment. Nearly a year after her treatment began Sara still took antibiotics. "It's so expensive, even with the health insurance that I have, everything was covered, but I guarantee you that I was spending $200 [a month] on medication just from co-pays." Sara said. At this point marijuana, which addresses many of the symptoms, becomes attractive. "It was so expensive that even the co-pays were $50 to $60. A bag of weed was like 50 bucks and would last you three weeks. It didn't make sense."
