On medical marijuana -

Here's a link to an interesting article. http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85205/

Let me tell you, in a few simple sentences why I am a proponent of medical marijuana.

My father (the man in the red and black plaid jacket with his fish of a lifetime which links to an Amazon Short story about the catch, and his brother, John) was 86 when my mother found a "pimple or boil" on his back that wouldn't heal. The doctor biopsied it, and it was cancer. That summer, Sloan Kettering in New York performed the most vile of mutilating surgeries on him, that dear old man, and when we read his record at the hospital, we found it had spread. That was August.

On his 87 birthday in October, the cancer had spread to his lungs. Late in November I was called. Mom said to come - it was consuming his brain, and he was on hospice care. I flew to New York, and when I burst into his room at their senior citizen apartment, the little bird in the bed, the shadow of my father, didn't know who I was. Mom had to coax him to remember me.

He was haunted by hallucinations that frightened him profoundly. He had some pain. We went to the family doctor together, Mom and I, to be told by this charlatan that he would not give my father stronger medication than codeine with tylenol, because he didn't want him addicted. Addicted to what? He was 87 and had days to live! I was so stunned, I said nothing. We felt defeated.

The neighborhood, made bleaker by sleet and snow, melting in the streets, was bad. From the window or the balcony, I watched drug deals go down at night, in the vestibule of an old house by the bus stop on the corner, illuminated by a single lightbulb. I should have shown up to buy something for my father. I could have made him brownies, or mixed it into his mashed potatoes, which was about all he could eat. He didn't have breath to smoke anything. Two days after Christmas he died in the swivel chair in his bedroom with me at his side, my mother scrambling across the bed to him.

Pot could have saved Dad some of his misery caused by the hallucinations. Palliative drugs could have been administered for pain and anxiety.

Marijuana has its place, not only for cancer patients but for people with eye disease, such as glaucoma, MS and a myriad of other illnesses. And narcotics need to be administered more freely for people suffering from pain.

The war on drugs is a sham. It brings money to the prison system, because that's big business.

There's a lot wrong with how we treat medicinal herbs and narcotics when it comes to illness. We are demonizing medical marijuana and necessary pain relief because of government paranoia and perpetuating the myth of the war on drugs and causing the suffering of people who truly need them.

NORML has been fighting to enlighten us on the use of medical marijuana. The link is here:
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3376

Just my two cents. I hope I live to see a more compassionate and equitable handling of the total "problem".

Oh, yeah - And now Ted Kennedy's cancer has relevance here. You might want to read this.
You can bet your life that the Senator will get anything he needs - legal or illegal.
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/86256/