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April 25, 2010
Annals of Duplicity
The first item in the current Issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is a completely one-sided Perspective on 'Medical Marijuana” written by two legal scholars with unspecified connections to the University of Maryland Law School.At first glance such prominent consideration of a controversial topic in what many consider the nation's premier medical journal might seem to auger well for "reform;" especially in light of the opportunity Californians will have a little over six months from now to vote for full “legalization.”
Sadly, my now-extensive clinical experience with admitted users of the forbidden herb leads to a very different conclusion: the piece is subtle confirmation of two related facts: first, those with a vested interest in protecting the drug war from honest scrutiny are finally beginning to realize that the steadily expanding illegal “marijuana” market they have been so blind to for forty years is finally big enough to threaten their policy. Nevertheless, because they still have the law on their side and enough support from the usual sycophants to believe their “war” is still salvageable, many supporters are not ready to quit. In fact, total collapse of the world's drug policy may have become so unthinkable as to render its failure literally “too big to admit.”
The NEJM Perspective does represent some good news, but only by implication, and it's accompanied by a daunting implied challenge. Although the authors (and publishers) have unwittingly facilitated exposure of several intrinsic drug war errors and various ways its supporters have been distorting evidence in its defense, the ultimate political challenge is to force Congress to admit defeat by repealing the CSA. Thus the major value of poorly coordinated state laws is that they permit the illegal market that has developed under the auspices of federal policy to be studied.
However well intended they may have been, recent recommendations by both the American College of Physicians and the AMA are of little value because they embrace the same restrictions on "research" as those insisted upon by the (medically ignorant) authors of federal drug policy.
Future entires will deal with the many inconsistencies brought to light by the NEJM; whether the various parties "get it" or not remains an open question, but the overwhelming evidence is that someone is lying.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at April 25, 2010 09:22 PM