California is one of eleven states in
the US that allow the use of medical marijuana. The laws recognizing
marijuana's medicinal value were enacted first in New Mexico, Florida,
Louisiana, and Illinois, and then spread through more states in the past
20 years since the passage of Proposition 215 in Washington,
DC.
Yet Angel Raich, a 41-year old mother of two from Oakland,
California, had her appeal turned down yesterday in Federal Court, not permitting her usage of
medicinal marijuana. The case was originally heard in the Supreme
Court in 2005. Angel's doctor has prescribed the herb for her since
1997, and says that marijuana is the only viable means to prevent her from
dying of her disease.
She suffers from a brain tumor known as
scoliosis, which causes chronic nausea and makes it difficult for her to
eat. The marijuana stimulates the patients' appetites and relieves
the pain more effectively than prescription drugs. Ms. Raich and
three other plaintiffs sued the government for federal laws regarding
medicinal marijuana enacted in 2002, that trump the eleven state's
laws. Though Raich's "prescription" was already seized, the federal
court also ruled that she is not immune from federal
prosecution.
Angel Reich wept when she heard the court
decision, and the New York times reported that she said, "It's not every
day in this country that someone's right to life is taken from them.
Today you are looking at someone who really is walking dead."
In 1974,
researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded
by the National Institute of Health, were hired to look for evidence
that marijuana damages the immune system. They found, instead, that
THC slowed
the growth of three kinds of cancer in
mice: lung cancer, breast cancer, and leukemia. In 1999,
scientists in Spain repeated the experiment, with equal
results.
Medicine, plastic, clothing, paper, and many more products
can be made from hemp, and it used to be such a booming crop in the US
that refusing to grow hemp during the 17th and 18th centuries was actually
against the law in Virginia from 1763 to 1769.
“Marijuana is
the finest anti-nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have
lied about this consistently. [Arresting people for] medical marijuana is
the most hideous example of government interference in the private lives
of individuals. It's an outrage within an outrage within an
outrage.” - Peter McWilliams
