http://www.yesonissue5.com

Entering the 21st century, the neurological has become central to the treatment of disease. In 1988 neurological receptors activated by THC in marijuana were discovered. Receptor cites for THC are found clustered in the basal ganglia and cerebellum of the brain, likely accounts for its effectiveness in alleviating muscle spasms and symptoms of other body movement disorders as these parts of the brain are associated with these same disorders. Marijuana promises to help reduce if not eliminate seizures, spasticity and bladder control problems. The main experienced and observed effects of marijuana use are relaxation and increased appetite, quite valuable therapeutically for enduring cancer chemotherapy treatments, including regular nausea and vomiting, aversion to food. Almost half of oncologists in 1991 would have prescribed marijuana were they legally able. Today the second largest physicians group in the U.S., the American College of Physicians, has endorsed therapeutic uses of marijuana. This proposal would enable physicians to recommend marijuana where clinically beneficial and thereby providing informed consent to patents.

For many or most of sufferers who find marijuana therapeutically beneficial, no adequate treatments currently exists. Synthetic alternatives in the form of THC pills have failed to provide adequate symptom management for a variety of reasons, including difficulty swallowing, metabolizing, and titrating. From a moral perspective, justice demands a citizen have the right to effective medical treatment. To deny this right, there must be provided very good justification. Society has none to justify wielding justice so as to punish and criminalize citizens merely treating their illnesses in the privacy of their own homes. Medical marijuana users have a valid claim on society, to protect them from government interference with their medical treatment. Rather than protecting medical marijuana users from harming themselves, they are preventing them from healing themselves and creating additional problems in already stress-filled lives.

Laws forbidding effective medical treatment are violent and unjust. Rather than being a matter for retributive justice, medical marijuana has to do with distributive justice, namely of suffering citizens having respected their most basic human right of pain control (a right few if any would forfeit to even live in a society in the first place). By prohibiting medical marijuana use, repugnance develops, one for the aggression of a law that creates criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and for the law more generally. Voting “Yes” to Proposition 1 demonstrates compassion and a basic sense of justice, as well as the scientific realization that marijuana may actually work to alleviate the pain and suffering associated with a variety of medical conditions.

Matt Stolick, Ph.D. author of forthcoming book, Otherwise Law-Abiding Citizens: A Scientific and Moral Assessment of Cannabis Use (Lexington Books of Rowman and Littlefield, November 2008)

Posted at 12:10 PM in Current Affairs, Healthcare, Political Science and Economics | Permalink