Our government’s bipolar response to medical marijuana is enough to drive anyone crazy. Yes, we will crack down on dispensaries and growers. No, we won’t go after users. Smoking or Medical marijuana is bad. Cigarettes and prescription pill marijuana good. Drugs for children bad. Prescription Ritalin for kids is good.
If anything this all makes the whole stance our government takes towards drugs totally transparent. If Big Pharma makes it, it is okay. If people outside the approved drug communities grow it and self medicate, it is bad.
To add to the confusion the government even has a patent on cannabinoids http://www.tokeofthetown.com/...
“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Obama is a Democrat and his 'justice' department is going after medical marijuana suppliers. This is not about partisan politics.
A new Obama administration memo approves federal prosecution of anyone in the business of growing or supplying marijuana for medical patients even if they are complying with state law, a contradiction, advocacy groups say, of President Obama's pledge to let states set their own policies.
http://www.seattlepi.com/...
"President Obama signaled more of the same in drug policy by re-appointing Bush appointee Michele Leonhart as DEA administrator," states Dale Gieringer, director of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
This is why I have always felt the medical marijuana approach was fraught with pitfalls. I have always been for full legalization without the medical impediments. Perhaps it has allowed the idea of marijuana to make some inroads into people’s attitudes, but it always leads straight to the FDA and prescription pothole. Many say, “Well then it should be approved and prescribed by your doctor, and you should not be allowed to smoke it.”
The research policies surrounding schedule 1 'drugs' is very controversial and motivated by politics, not science.
http://washingtonindependent.com/...
In March, The American Independent was first to report that the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), had acknowledged the medicinal benefits of marijuana in its online treatment database.
Newly obtained documents showing the development of NCI’s summary over months of emails and text revisions now reveal not only how NCI database contributors arrived at their March 17 summary of marijuana’s medical uses, but also the politicking that went into quickly scrubbing that summary of information regarding the drug’s potential tumor-fighting effects.
Phil Mocek, a civil liberties activist affiliated with the Cannabis Defense Coalition, obtained the documents as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request he filed in March after reading The American Independent’s coverage of the NCI action. Mocek has made a portion of the hundreds of pages of at-times heated email exchanges and summary alterations available on MuckRock, a website devoted to FOIA requests and other government documents. The American Independent has obtained the remainder of the documents from Mocek.
Marijuana is probably one of the most studied drugs in history and has been proven safer than alcohol and cigarettes.
http://www.cdc.gov/...
Deaths due to tobacco according to the CDC.
Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States. Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking. Despite these risks, approximately 46.6 million U.S. adults smoke cigarettes. Smokeless tobacco, cigars, and pipes also have deadly consequences, including lung, larynx, esophageal, and oral cancers.
http://www.cdc.gov/...
Deaths due to alchohol according to the CDC:
According to the Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) tool, from 2001–2005, there were approximately 79,000 deaths annually attributable to excessive alcohol use. In fact, excessive alcohol use is the 3rd leading lifestyle-related cause of death for people in the United States each year.
http://www.cdc.gov/...
Deaths due to Marijuana according to the CDC.
Nothing is listed on the CDC or any other reputable site that I could find that list deaths according to Marijuana. The website on Drugwarfacts.com has a chart showing that in 2007 there were 0 deaths due to marijuana as opposed to the thousands who die from alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
http://drugwarfacts.org/...
As for the continued refusal to not take marijuana off the schedule one drugs, because they said it has no proven medical benefits, many studies prove that wrong.
http://www.molecular-cancer.com/...
http://www.mjbusinessreport.com/...
“Cannabinoids reduce ErbB2-driven breast cancer progression through Akt inhibition.
The therapeutic potential of cannabinoids, the active compounds of marijuana and their derivatives, has been known for centuries. There is increasing evidence supporting that they might be beneficial in various pathological contexts such as pain, inflammation, eating disorders, and brain damage, amongst others [5,6].
Ronald J. Ellis, MD, PhD, Professor In Residence in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of California at San Diego, et al., stated the following in their Aug. 2008 study titled "Smoked Medicinal Cannabis for Neuropathic Pain in HIV: A Randomized, Crossover Clinical Trial," published in Neuropsychopharmacology:
"In a double-blind, randomized, clinical trial of the short-term adjunctive treatment of neuropathic pain in HIV-associated distal sensory polyneuropathy, participants received either smoked cannabis or placebo cannabis cigarettes...
Among completers, pain relief was significantly greater with cannabis than placebo. The proportion of subjects achieving at least 30% pain relief was again significantly greater with cannabis (46%) compared to placebo (18%). It was concluded that smoked cannabis was generally well-tolerated and effective when added to concomitant analgesic therapy in patients with medically refractory pain due to HIV-associated neuropathy."
Barth Wilsey, MD, Director of the University of California at Davis Analgesic Research Center, et al., stated the following in their June 2008 study titled "A Randomized, Placebo Controlled Cross-Over Trial of Cannabis Cigarettes in Neuropathic Pain," published in the Journal of Pain:
"This study's objective was to examine the efficacy of two doses of smoked cannabis on pain in persons with neuropathic pain of different origins (e.g., physical trauma to nerve bundles, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, diabetes). In a double-blind, randomized clinical trial participants received either lowdose, high-dose, or placebo cannabis cigarettes...
Thirty eight patients underwent a standardized procedure for smoking either high-dose (7%), low-dose (3.5%), or placebo cannabis; of these, 32 completed all three smoking sessions. The study demonstrated an analgesic response to smoking cannabis with no significant difference between the low and the high dose cigarettes. The study concluded that both low and high cannabis doses were efficacious in reducing neuropathic pain of diverse causes."
Even the Pharmaceutical companies know marijuana has many beneficial medical properties and is anxious to cash in:
As a result of this extensive research, several marijuana-based medications have been found to be safe and effective by the FDA and are available for doctors to prescribe. Dronabinol, a synthetic form of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the most active ingredient in marijuana, is used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. It is also used to treat loss of appetite and weight loss in people who have AIDS. Nabilone, a synthetic drug that mimics marijuana's main ingredient, is also prescribed to treat nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy. Other medications based on one or more marijuana components are being carefully studied.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Pharmaceutical companies have, at petitioned the DEA to reschedule THEIR versions of cannabis medicine... and this report seems to suggest marijuana would be rescheduled if Big Pharma can make a profit.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/23/dea-... /
The irony is they are already growing marijuana.
"The DEA's intent is to expand the federal government's schedule III listing to include pharmaceutical products containing naturally derived formations of THC while simultaneously maintain existing criminal prohibitions on the plant itself," Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National
Sativex: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Sativex is distinct from all other pharmaceutically produced cannabinoids currently available because it is derived from cannabis plants, rather than a solely synthetic process. Sativex is a pharmaceutical product standardised in composition, formulation, and dose. Its principal active cannabinoid components are the cannabinoids: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), wrote at AlterNet.
If the Feds Get Their Way, Big Pharma Could Sell Pot -- But Your Dime Bag Would Still Send You to Jail
We should be very wary about the DEA allowing regulation and marketing of pharmaceutical products containing plant-derived THC.With its proposal, the DEA is responding to the demands of large pharmaceutical companies, he claimed.
Marijuana plants and THC extracts would remain illegal under the proposal, but companies would be able to purchase THC from a government-licensed provider to develop pharmaceutical products.
"While the DEA's forthcoming regulatory change promises to stimulate the advent of legally available, natural THC therapeutic products... the change will offer no legal relief for those hundreds of thousands of Americans who believe that therapeutic relief is best obtained by use of the whole plant itself," Armentano added.

"Rather the DEA appears content to try to walk a political and semantic tightrope that alleges: 'pot is bad,' but 'pot-derived pharmaceuticals are good.'"
We spend billions of dollars every year arresting people for marijuana possession, sending them to trial, and incarcerating small time offenders.
"The “War On Drugs” Is A $2.5 Trillion Racket: How Big Banks, Private Military Companies And The Prison Industry Cash In"
http://ampedstatus.org/...
Let's Be Honest: The War Against Marijuana Has Failed. Retired Chief McNamara
For 70 years, we have prohibited marijuana in this country, each day expecting different results. But as William F. Buckley once said: "Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
worth repeating:
"Rather the DEA appears content to try to walk a political and semantic tightrope that alleges: 'pot is bad,' but 'pot-derived pharmaceuticals are good.'"
The US government is not honest when it comes to drug policy and they can not be taken seriously. The effect of prohibition, as with alcohol, is worse than the effect of legalization for the general population.
Marijuana is one of the most studied drugs ever. More studied and less harmful than many drugs that hit the market today. If you listen to their commercials you should be afraid to take any of them. Marijuana has been proven in study after study to be safer and much less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes, and yet both of those are legal. It has also been proven in many studies to have medical benefits. But apparently the government does not want you to be able to help yourself without profiting Big Pharma. This is all about making marijuana legal for Big Pharma, but not for you.
This is why I am for legalization without the medical designation. Grownups should be allowed to do what they want if they aren’t hurting others. Period.