Don’t Legislate Medical Use of Marijuana
Within our NSW Parliament, we have a number of politicians who advocate the legalization of smoking marijuana. They advocate this on the ground that smoking marijuana can help ill people by taking away the pain, and allowing them to live in a state of euphoria. Especially is this espoused for those dying of AIDS.
It is not compassion for the ill and dying that drives them, but a n emotive strategy to legalize pot-smoking for their own euphoria! It is time to examine the credibility of their claims.
We have strong medical and pharmaceutical protocols in Australia. Like other countries, we demand scientific evidence before any drug can been prescribed for medical use. The proponents of marijuana for the ill, seek to side-step the scientific process and instead create a process that could be called, “medicine by popular vote”.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of U.S. v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Coop., reviewed a similar California initiative and unanimously decided that smoked marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use at all.” Smoked marijuana as medicine has been rejected by the American Medical Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Glaucoma Society, the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Cancer Society. Recently, the federal Institute of Medicine also conducted research on this issue and they see “little future in smoked marijuana as a medicine.”
There is a drug in liquid form derived from the cannabis plant that can relieve some of the symptoms of cancer and AIDS patients that is already approved by the various national health authorities, but smoking marijuana has no scientific basis as a medicine.
In fact, the scientific evidence shows that smoking marijuana can exacerbate physical and mental health problems. Now that is news the proponents of smoking marijuana do not want you to hear!
The respiratory damage associated with marijuana smoke speaks against inhaling marijuana as a medicine. Smoked marijuana is associated with higher concentrations of tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens than even cigarette smoke.
I understand that marijuana research reveals the effect on the various bodily immune functions. Those who smoke marijuana are found to have impaired cellular immunity, pulmonary immunity is impaired, and they possess an impaired ability to fight infection. If the concern is for the benefit of cancer suffers and AIDS sufferers, that concern is ill placed. For smoked marijuana bears substantial health risks especially for people at high risk for infection and immune suppression such as AIDS and cancer chemotherapy patients.
We are often told of the advantages of living in the Netherlands where marijuana is more readily available. But the Dutch government did an extensive study to assess the efficacy of marihuana for medical use. The scientific literature published during the past 25 years concludes that the evidence is insufficient to justify the medical use of marihuana.
In the US, David Evans, Executive Director of the Drug-free Schools Coalition, wrote: “Scientific literature shows that use of marijuana is a major risk factor in the development of addiction and drug use among our school children. The efforts to confuse the public about marijuana have contributed to the drop in school children’s perception of marijuana’s harm and this has resulted in an increase in marijuana and other drug use among school children. Of the nearly 182,000 kids in treatment today, 48% were admitted for abuse or addiction to marijuana while only 19.3% for alcohol and 2.9% for cocaine, 2.4% for methamphetamine and 2.3% for heroin. It is no coincidence that those states with medical marijuana initiatives have among the highest levels of drug use and drug addiction.”
It is not without reason that surgeons will not operate on smoking patients. It is not compassion to give marijuana cigarettes to sick people. Smoked marijuana contains some 400 chemicals. Smoked marijuana, an impure and toxic substance, has no place in our list of approved medicines.
The Christian Democratic Party will not support any bill providing for the medical use of smoked marijuana.
This is GORDON MOYES.
