After reading that a sub-committee of the Republican Party of Texas added a plank supporting the removal of criminal penalties for people who use cannabis on the advice of a physician, I want to add my voice to those supporting this plank.
I’ve been good friends with three people that have used this controversial plant for medical reasons. I’d like to tell you a little bit about them.
I know a Viet-Nam veteran who is less than 10 years my elder, but suffers with advanced arthritis. He works when he can, but subsists mainly on disability and the charity of others. He’s very wary about becoming addicted to prescription pain meds for good reasons. Over the years, I set up a couple of hand me down PCs for him. His house always smelled like a rope factory on fire. He says it helps him, but maybe he’s just a stoner. I don’t know and I don’t care.
It had been 20 years since I’d seen a very sharp computer programmer I used to work with. She was never one to go out with the party crowd back then. More recently, a common friend that I’ve kept up with asked me to help him with her yard work before we watched the Sunday games. This surprised me because I’d always remembered her as being very physically fit. I was shocked to find that she was in a wheel chair because of MS. Her house smelled like an Amsterdam coffee shop. She says it helps, and I believe her.
I still miss my brother in law that was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. The worst thing about stage four cancers is that there is no stage five. The nausea from the disease along with the chemo was problematic for him to the point that he couldn’t maintain his treatment schedule. His sister asked me about it and I did not hesitate to commit a “criminal act” to try and help him.
What would you do?
Bob Chambers
GoldBacon says
VICES ARE NOT CRIMES
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting.
It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.
Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
filmmaker01 says
Things that are not crimes by your definition:
Prostitution
Drug use (of any kind, i.e. heroin, LSD, cocaine, meth, etc.)
Cock Fighting, Bear Baiting, Dog Fighting (as long as the animals involved belong to participating parties)
Polygamy (as long as all three (or more) parties are consensual and adults).
I could go on, but really, do we need to? There is a very short step from “libertarian” to “libertine”. We need to step very carefully.
As for the medical use of marijuana, I would think more of the proposals and be more inclined to consider the possible need if the group pushing was the AMA or other medical group instead of NORML and their fellow travelers.
BillMiller says
“…NORML and their fellow travelers.” Really? I recommend Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs by Hon. James P. Gray. Gray is a conservative Republican and Judge of the Superior Court in Orange County in Southern California. He has served as former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and as an attorney in the JAG Corps during his service in the US Navy.
In other words, not exactly a hippie.
bob42 says
But Bill, everybody that consumes cannabis looks like Cheech & Chong! Just look at these smelly hippies.
filmmaker01 says
Bill, There have been a number of conservative/libertarian over the years that have advocated modifying/eliminating illegal drug laws to some extent or another. I have heard the arguments pro/con. I realize that there are reasonable, coherent adults on both sides, not just Cheech & Chong and Bob 🙂
As I understand it, the point in question is whether to advocate for the use of marijuana as a medical treatment. To the best of my knowledge the Republican party has not and is not considering the general legalization of pot. Correspondingly, my comment was specifically addressed to the point of the original article.
Nevertheless, if Big Jolly wants to have that more general discussion I will be willing to weigh in with my opinions.
BillMiller says
It is a discussion that I welcome, and I am glad that the GOP’s tent is large enough to hear variety of voice on the subject.
The denial of medicine to sick people is only one unintended consequence of drug prohibition. From time to time I experience vertigo. My doctors do not understand why; it just happens. The word “dizzy” does even begin to capture the sick disorienting feel. Imagine your worst experience with alcohol, complete with room-spinning nausea. Now multiply that by ten.
I know that advocate like legal hemp is not needed since o argue that big pharma can create pills which supposedly mimic the effects of this naturally-growing herb in countering nausea, but if you have ever experienced vertigo (or the likewise intense nausea associated with chemotherapy) then you will understand that it is impossible to keep anything down. I do not enjoy smoking hemp, but I would much prefer having it around in order to avoid a trip to the ER and a bill for $2400.
The drug war violates our rights in a number of ways, the denial of medicine to sick people being just one of them. We have also witnessed the persecution of doctors who treat patients with chronic pain. It’s a cancer on our bill of rights. Its asset forfeiture laws undermine property rights and rights to due process. It is an engine of corruption. Many many negatives and for what? To keep our kids away from drugs? The other day I asked my son (a junior in high school) and his friends if they knew where to buy marijuana, and could obtain it within a few hours. They all did. Here I am a middle-aged man, and I don’t know where to obtain hemp.
24 years ago I read a letter printed in The New York Times which I cut out and saved.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/16/opinion/l-eventually-we-ll-have-to-legalize-drugs-331990.html
“Eventually, this country will legalize drugs because the black market pathologies — addiction-supporting crime, corruption of law enforcement, overcrowded prisons — will prove intolerable burdens on nonaddicts.”