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August 04, 2010
Improbable, yet “Fit to Print”
Some of the material printed in the NYT lives up to its motto; a recent column by Bob Herbert was such an eloquent statement of my growing disappointment in the Obama Administration’s increasingly mindless policy in Afghanistan that I feel compelled to cite it here. However, I’m also forced to note that the fickle American public will soon forget it was the Bush-Cheney strategy to abandon Afghanistan just as Osama bin Laden was within our grasp in order to pursue their Iraq adventure. That particular folly was almost ten years, thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars ago, when the economy was stronger and a balanced budget hadn’t faded to a distant memory. Speaking of memories, ten years is clearly beyond the attention span of a culture that dotes on Lindsay Lohan’s latest peccadillo and seems ready to accept the notion that the Gulf clean-up has been a huge success.Another report recently appearing in the Times was that the VA, under timid Obama leadership, is slowly warming up to the idea that self-medication with marijuana might even be acceptable for veterans similar to those described by Bob Herbert, so long as they live in one of the fourteen states with an existing medical marijuana law.
In support of that less-than-crisp explanation, the Times referenced the same vaguely worded letter from a VA physician to Michael Kravitz that I’d referred indirectly last Friday. What the article and Dr. Petzel's letter both leave out is the fate of potentially suicidal returnees who live in states without a medical pot law. Will they just have to make do with Ambien or one of the other legally prescribed, medications supplied by their local VA?
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at August 4, 2010 05:39 PM