I dislike being high. I don‘t like not being focused or in control of my faculties. When I had a painful but minor operation a few years ago, I threw away the Vicodin they gave me.
I also have an extreme prejudice against being killed in a traffic accident. Like virtually everybody else in today‘s world, I have had friends who were killed by drunk or drugged-up drivers.
Adding potheads to the mix of the idiots I dodge on the road everyday has no appeal for me. Of course, I realize perfectly well that I have far more to fear these days from someone sending a text message while driving, but we all have our hang-ups.
Ever since I have started doing these commentaries I have been barraged by messages from people who assumed that I would be eager to urge our politicians to legalize recreational drugs.
No thank you.
Since then, however, I have changed my mind about medical marijuana. The people who support medical marijuana didn‘t move me at all. Curiously enough, I was convinced this was the right thing to do by its opponents. Most of all, I was influenced by someone I respect, State Senator Tom George, a physician from Kalamazoo.
George has been leading the drive to get smoking banned in bars and restaurants, and was instrumental in forcing Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop to allow a vote on the issue. Personally, I think cigarette smoking should be banned on the planet.
Not because of what smokers do to themselves, though they are a tremendous drain on the health care system. I want smoking curtailed because of what secondhand smoke does to the rest of us.
Some studies have shown that marijuana may be even more carcinogenic than ordinary tobacco. Dr. George maintains that any beneficial effects smoking marijuana offers can be provided by taking a pill called Marinol. Maybe so, though other physicians dispute that.
However, we were later talking about the hospice movement, which he, and I, completely support. Back in the 1990s, I interviewed a number of chronically suffering patients who had been driven to seek out Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the famous assisted suicide doctor.
Many of them told the same story. They were terminally or chronically ill. Their doctors seemed to have little interest in relieving their suffering and were only worried they might become dependent on drugs. Dr. George remembers those days too.
That’s why he supports hospice, where the terminally ill can get what they need to ease their pain. So -- if smoking marijuana has a beneficial effect on some very ill people, who are we to deny them that? Conservatives always say that they are against unnecessary government interference in our private lives. That sounds good.
And on this issue, I plan to vote the conservative way.
It is merely an ordinary law, which would be much easier to change or amend if it doesn’t work out, or turns out to need tweaking.
I think it is worth reminding ourselves of this, in part because of the torrent of negative propaganda against this bill. Frankly, I don’t feel strongly about this issue. I don’t smoke anything, don’t like smoking of any kind, don’t use marijuana and don’t propose to start.
On the other hand, I am not at all comfortable making a law telling anyone suffering that they can’t have some drug designed to ease their pain, especially if that someone is dying.
You can make, I think, an honest and rational case against using marijuana in most cases without resorting to exaggeration.
But what is troubling is the exaggerated bitterness of the attacks against those who would legalize medical marijuana.
Earlier this week, a conservative physician and a judge co-authored a column that ran in the Detroit Free Press titled, “Medical Marijuana has unhealthy side effects for all.”
The article drew a lurid picture of a state where there would be more pot shops than Starbucks stores, and where medical marijuana would be dispensed from strip malls, as is allegedly is in California, which has allowed the drug to be prescribed legally for some time...
If that isn’t scary enough, it added that “Last week a security guard was gunned down outside a Los Angeles pot shop.”
What that says to me is that maybe we should outlaw Seven-Eleven and other convenience stores instead, since I know of many more security guards who have been shot in or outside them.
The proposed Michigan law, in fact, doesn’t establish any strip mall pot shops. It says the Department of Community Health will approve what conditions marijuana can be used for, and even then you would have to have a doctor prescribe it.
You would have to get a health department ID card to use or grow medical marijuana. There is a potential problem here, of course.
The law says registered individuals can grow limited amounts of pot for use by patients who qualify, and that the stuff must be grown in an “enclosed or locked facility.” What’s not clear is who would inspect or regulate it. But time for a reality check:
Marijuana is not exactly rare. People are smoking it anyway, and the police have enough to do without hauling glaucoma sufferers off to the slammer. Trying this approach makes sense.
The virulence of the attacks against it does not make sense.
Not, that is, unless you subscribe to H.L. Mencken’s theory that America is still a Puritan country. Puritanism, as he defined it, was the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
I think we should fear unnecessary suffering instead.
But my real problem with those who are fighting the current ballot proposal in Michigan is that they just flat-out lie. Sometimes they merely stretch the truth, but more often they just lie.
And it is hard to have a discussion with someone who doesn’t tell the truth, even about what the amendment says.
You don’t need to take my assertions at face value. Read the text of the amendment itself, which you can find on the Michigan Secretary of State’s web site. It is formally called Proposal 08-2. It is written in clear, straightforward language, and you will be able to see exactly what it permits and forbids and allows scientists to do.
You could also turn to the Detroit News, a proudly conservative newspaper which, to my knowledge, has never endorsed a Democrat for president. But guess what: It has strongly endorsed voting yes on Proposal Two and encouraging embryonic stem cell research.
The editorial notes that contrary to David Doyle’s assertions, the University of Michigan is not able to do cutting edge stem cell research. The News also notes that the U of M already has lost one top stem cell biologist to California because of what it calls “one of the most backward laws,” on stem cell research in the nation.
To quote further, the newspaper says, “it should also be noted that no language in the proposal compels the expenditure of any funds, contrary to the impression some opponents’ advertising attempts to create.” Nor does this bill do anything to open the door to human cloning, which is already strictly illegal.
What is going on here is obvious. Those who are financially supporting MI-CAUSE, the anti-stem cell group, have religious objections to this kind of research. They know that they will never be able to convince a majority of the people to share their views.
So, they are trying to confuse the issue, and use every scare tactic they can. This would be dismaying in any event.
But in this case, it risks our state’s scientific, educational, and economic future. Imagine a clinic at the University of Michigan where people come from all over to reverse the effects of macular degeneration. Preliminary work in Toronto may indicate that possibility isn’t farfetched at all. To again quote Michigan’s largest conservative newspaper: “Under current law, it is legal in Michigan for fertility clinics to discard human embryos, but not to use them for medical research to try and help patients. That makes no sense.”
None whatsoever.
So - what could be more pro-life than using these tiny clumps of cells to perhaps extend and improve life for millions of people? That’s what you call a question that is its own answer.
Murrow wasn’t arguing against fairness. He was merely arguing that good journalism is more than stenography. For example, if a woman says that two plus two is four, and a man says that no, two plus two is 78, we may have an obligation to report what they say.
But we also have an equally strong obligation to try to get at and report the truth. Murrow managed to do that brilliantly with McCarthy, by letting him hang himself with his own words.
And I think there is a strong need for journalists to try to perform some similar function on the stem cell issue. Most of the anti-stem-cell advertising I have seen, whether online or on TV, consists of blatant lies. Spokesman for those opposed to stem cell research say it would cost the taxpayers a lot of money, which isn’t true.
They say that it would open the door to human cloning, which also isn’t true. They also argue that there is no value whatsoever in using embryonic stem cells, which is also untrue.
Never mind that some of these lies contradict each other; I guess they feel if they throw enough mud, some of it is bound to stick.
What this is really about, of course, is religion, and the main opposition – probably the only opposition – comes from people, primarily Roman Catholics, who believe it is a sin to use embryos for even life-saving research.
The odd thing about this is that the embryos that the anti-stem cell crowd professes to be so interested in saving are destined to be poured down the drain if not used to help mankind. That’s because they are all excess or defective products of fertility clinics.
I suspect the opponents would really like to outlaw the clinics, but know they couldn’t get anywhere with that. Here is the bottom line: The scientists who do understand embryonic stem cell research, like Sean Morrison, believe that it offers the best kind of hope for treating a large variety of diseases, injuries and disorders.
What’s more, if cures are found, they might – might – hold enormous future economic potential for the state of Michigan.
Nobody can promise that. What we do know is that if we don’t lift the ban and permit this research, Michigan will be doomed to the status of a scientific and intellectual backwater.
This country was founded on the principle of freedom of religion – and freedom from being oppressed by other people’s religion.
Voting for embryonic stem cell research is a real no-brainer. Nobody is going to require anyone to donate any embryos.
But if anyone still longs for a society where religion is allowed to block scientific and economic progress … there is always the Taliban.
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