Maryland Lawmakers Prepare Medical Marijuana Bills
By Mike Meno
Yesterday, a team of bipartisan Maryland legislators announced the details of two bills that would make medical marijuana legal and accessible for qualified patients in the state.
The bill’s main sponsor in the House is Del. Dan Morhaim (D-Baltimore County), who, as an internist and emergency medical physician, has been very effective at explaining why patients and doctors need access to a range of treatment options, including marijuana.
As proposed, the bill would allow patients with a “debilitating medical condition” to obtain marijuana from state-run distribution centers with the recommendation of a doctor with whom they have a long-standing relationship.
However, the new bill would not allow patients to grow their own marijuana, and they would have to try other treatment options before marijuana.
But if passed, the new law would be a vast improvement for medical marijuana patients in Maryland. Under current state law, patients are provided with a limited affirmative defense in court, but they have no protection from arrest or a criminal conviction, and no safe and reliable access to their medicine.
Under this new proposal—which has backing from a diverse and bipartisan group of legislators and has so far seen no opposition—those patients would no longer be treated as criminals, and they would have safe access to the medicine they need.
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One of the medications prescribed by my personal
physician for my arthritis pain and inflammation, has the rare potential side effect of death. In other words, if I take this medication as prescribed, I can die as a result.
On the other hand, marijuana has never been documented to kill a single person in the 5,000 year history of its use.
For me, marijuana is the more effective medication. Right now, if adult citizens opt for the safer and more effective medication, they are subject to arrest and being sent to jail with violent criminals.
Is something wrong with this situation? I think so.
Shouldn't adult citizens have the freedom to choose whatgoes into their own bodies in the privacy of their own homes?
Should the right to self-medicate be a fundamental
Right?
Apparently the one politician in the group with medical experience does not have the clout to convince legislators that doctors and patients are the only people qualified to decide a patients treatments and medications for their treatment.
How would legislators,mostly lawyers or professional politicians,have the required knowledge to set limits or build hoops for patients and doctors to jump through?
With 14 states now recognizing that marijuana is a medicine ,and support by the AMA for removal of marijuana from schedule 1,and our own Attorney General having a "medical" marijuana policy,why has congress refused to act on the consensus that marijuana is a medicine,therefore it does not fit the description of a schedule 1 drug.
The denial of a medicine just because it may be abused has not stopped the distribution of Oxycontin and should not be considered as a reason to withhold marijuana from patients that would benefit from its medical attributions.
And if anyone should abuse marijuana,they will live to tell us about it. There is no way anyone can smoke,eat,vaporize or use enough suppositories made from marijuana to kill themselves.
After partaking of too much marijuana,you go to sleep ,wake up the next day with no hangover,no drug lag and the best sleep you have had in years.
That is only if you do that with marijuana,alone,no beer ,no wine or whiskey. Other pharmaceutical drugs at the same time may also alter the process.
Wake up America,you have been lied to about the dangers of marijuana and even now your government lies about the actual numbers of marijuana smokers in America, They surely don't want too admit that there are 5 times as many tokers in America as they estimate.
Do the math. Estimated profits from marijuana for cartels=28billion dollars,according to numbers furnished by Mexican government and our own DEA.
Divide the amount of dollars that you spend yearly into that 28 billion and how many tokers would it take to have that much profit?
Some spend more than others,but the numbers are at least five times higher than the estimates the drug warriors give when asked about the number of marijuana smokers.