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Are we sick enough yet?
by Kurt St. Angelo
Users of medical marijuana
took some blows recently, and not just from their vaporizers.
On June 6, the United States Supreme Court upheld federal authority over
marijuana, even in states where its use for medical purposes is legal. On June
15, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated, by a vote of 161-264, an
amendment that would have stopped the executive branch from arresting and
prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers.
I'm not a big fan of medical marijuana legislation because marijuana prohibition
is much more than just medical abuse. It's an affront to our health, enterprise
and environment. It is also an insult to human rights because it violates, among
other things, the rights of people over their own bodies and property.
One of the most important human rights issues involving marijuana concerns the
power of government over plants grown for private, personal and non-commercial
uses. If government has the legitimate authority to outlaw people growing
marijuana for themselves, then theoretically nothing can stop it from outlawing
any and all foods, herbs and the like in our gardens - including the gardens
themselves. The power to destroy one plant is the power to destroy all of them.
I have combed Indiana's two constitutions, and there simply isn't any authority
given to bullies who don't like the fruits of gardening. Whether in 1816 or
1851, the idea of government telling agrarians what NOT to grow would have been
considered egregious - just as it should be today.
But today, in contrast, we debate on what grounds government agents can enter
our states and our homes to jail us and confiscate our property for their
anti-plant programs. Today Indiana's senior senator opposes marijuana, though he
calls himself a farmer. Our other U.S. senator is a former user of the beloved
thistle.
Medically, marijuana is used to fight nausea from chemotherapy, to gain hunger
against wasting-away syndrome, and to fight some kinds of cancer. Its seeds are
the most complete plant source of essential fatty acids, which are the key to
healthy hearts.
The plant also has the strongest tensile fiber of any plant, making it a source
of durable cloth, paper and building materials, without cutting down trees. It
can readily be converted to methanol and biomass fuels. Government's prohibition
of marijuana has ensured our dependence on pharmaceuticals, synthetics, trees
and fossil fuels. Thanks, prohibitionists!
I'm for treating marijuana as we do tomatoes. I don't know if you call that
legalizing the plant or decriminalizing it, but I think our constitutions
guarantee people the exercise of such natural God-given rights as putting a seed
in the ground, watering it and watching it grow for their own use - whether it
becomes a tomato, a marijuana plant or a Chia Pet. And I believe that people
have a right to use reasonable force to protect their plants and other property
from people who wish to take them.
This is antithetical to the medical marijuana movement. Proponents for medical
marijuana advocate that sick people should ask government-licensed medical
agents for permission to purchase and use plants over which government has no
inherent jurisdiction. That's a backward and ineffective way to argue for the
rights of people, particularly sick people.
Asking government for permission to use marijuana is like asking government for
permission to eat tomatoes. We would laugh in the governor's face if he told us
we needed a prescription to buy Brandywines, Early Girls and Romas, yet we don't
even blink when our state legislature denies doctors power to prescribe
marijuana and when 750,000 Americans - a fraction of American users - are
arrested each year for illegally possessing the plant.
Even wackier is that some state governments would force the sick to get their
marijuana prescriptions from doctors. During my entire life, the medical
industry and government has conspired to keep doctors ignorant and misinformed
about the plant.
The bottom line is that no one should have to be sick to use marijuana, and no
one should have to ask government's permission to grow anything in his or her
own garden. But prohibitionists have convinced most of us that our society is
different than that when our constitutions were written, and therefore our
unalienable rights should be different also.
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