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September 23, 2010

When Silence can be Deafening

The rapid approach of November 2, together with the unanimous opposition of federal officials to all state legislation allowing medical cannabis (“medical marijuana”), has led me to wonder when President Obama will finally break his personal silence on California's Proposition 19.

My own position is clear. Even before I began taking medical histories from applicants seeking a physician’s recommendation as allowed by Proposition 215 in 1996, I would have favored “legalization” simply because of the abysmal failure of all attempts at prohibition; whether China's during the 18th Century or those of the the US and the UN in the 20th. In fact I consider the enduring support of drug prohibition policy by all administrations since Repeal passed in 1933 to be a mystery; also the continuous endorsement of our policy by UN treaty since 1970 as solid evidence that our species has more trouble with deductive logic than we care to admit.

In any event, there is now little doubt that history has conspired to place our first nominally black chief executive in a position that is both ironic and improbable. Not only is he the first to be seen as “black” (as opposed to biracial) he is also the first American President ever to admit trying illegal drugs, (inevitably called "drugs of abuse" by every administration since Nixon).

One of several things I've learned from studying the ingestion cannabis as a repetitive behavior, is that the effects of edibles are so different from the inhaled form that the two are almost entirely different (albeit similar) drug experiences. In fact, the differences can be so pronounced it’s even possible Bill Clinton’s claim to have not inhaled was true; beyond that, if he’d tried an edible first, it could well have been a negative (dsyphoric) experience.

What makes it all the more interesting for me is that while I've been learning about cannabis from simply taking histories from admitted pot users for almost nine years, no other physicians have tried to replicate that experience; or if they have, they haven't reported their results. Without doubt, waiting for confirmation has made me impatient, which is probably why I'm so mindful of Obama's silence.

I'm also impatient to see who will be the first to ask him the long avoided question, which wing of American Journalism will ask it, how he will answer, and how his answers will be parsed by the same pundits who have been supporting our destructive national policy for so long.

It promises to be an interesting several weeks; perhaps well beyond November.

Doctor Tom

Posted by tjeffo at September 23, 2010 07:51 PM

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