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April 16, 2009
More on Pot Legalization
Continuing interest in a possible change in the status of marijuana was reflected by two more items in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle. On the front page, but probably of less immediate interest, was one about a local politician urging the City to go into business as a pot distributor. He's a well known advocate who is also considered out in front of his support, even in San Francisco.For me, the story on ASA’s suit and the Ninth Circuit has greater potential for positive change because what my clinical study of pot applicants shows so clearly is that as soon as large numbers of adolescent baby boomers were able to try pot in the mid-Sixties, many of them began using it for its anxiolytic (anxiety relieving) properties. That many continued using it safely and with satisfactory results for over thirty years was the reason they eventually discovered its additional medical benefits.
Thus the dirty little secret neither side of the “debate” that sustains the drug war is one they've both been unwilling to acknowledge: virtually all chronic repetitive use of cannabis could easily qualify as “medical.”
At some point, hopefully sooner than later, there will be a lot of red faces. The great tragedy is that so many lives have been lost or ruined by ignorance, malice, or misplaced self-righteousness.
That such a situation has long been recognized as a Mexican Standoff simply adds a degree of irony that’s nearly unbearable to someone who remembers Juarez and El Paso as they were when he last saw them in August, 1963. The big local news was that then- President Kennedy had just visited to meet with President Lopez-Mateos of Mexico and the two had agreed to settle the long-standing Chamizal Dispute between the two nations.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at April 16, 2009 04:15 PM