A Judge’s Plea for Pot

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/opinion/a-judges-plea-for-medical-marijuana.html?_r=1

<snip>
THREE and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana.

My survival has demanded an enormous price, including months of chemotherapy, radiation hell and brutal surgery. For about a year, my cancer disappeared, only to return. About a month ago, I started a new and even more debilitating course of treatment. Every other week, after receiving an IV booster of chemotherapy drugs that takes three hours, I wear a pump that slowly injects more of the drugs over the next 48 hours.

<snip>
Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.

This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. Being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I am receiving the absolute gold standard of medical care. But doctors cannot be expected to do what the law prohibits, even when they know it is in the best interests of their patients. When palliative care is understood as a fundamental human and medical right, marijuana for medical use should be beyond controversy.

....more

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. "This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. "

We are getting further and further away from this in the medical marijuana debate.

[RainDog]

2. This is the truth about marijuana

Not the bullshit from Michelle Leonhart at the DEA. Not the lies from the Drug Czar.

HOW can the Federal Govt. continue to treat people so horribly when this truth is out there and has been for 20 years?

HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT KNOWING YOU PUT PEOPLE TO DEATH BY YOUR FAILURE TO OVERTURN BAD LAW?

That's what I want to ask each and every person in D.C. who continues to pretend this issue doesn't matter. It is a matter of life and death for many people - and we already know the DEA has killed people in order to maintain this bad law.

Shame on the plutocrats who care more about money than people's lives.

[felix_numinous]

3. The more people who discover for themselves

how beneficial medical cannabis is, the more pressure will be put on the government to let up on prosecution. I think it is only a matter of time. But for us who depend on it to stay alive, and I am one of them, this can't happen fast enough.

Thanks for posting Kentuck