...  and momentum in the US for cannabis legalization

Add to the reasons that pot was made illegal after hundreds of years of it being widely used for multiple ailments, including migraine headache, the following facts (which are well documented in "Marijuana Myths; Marijuana Facts" by Zimmer & Morgan, Lindesmith Center Publishing, New York, 1997).

     *When looking for a "public enemy #1 for our country's nascent War on Drugs, FDR and the first "drug Czar," Anslinger, found a naturally occurring plant that was used by Mexican migrant farm workers on their "breaks," homosexuals and other "perverts," jazz musicians and other groups that they could marginalize from society by making their favorite recreational drug highly illegal. Today, that same philosophy underlies the DEA's arresting and imprisoning persons with cancer and AIDS, etc., who use medicinal cannabis for relief of symptoms without the addicting properties of the "legal" opium-based analgesics that are the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry. Both Big Pharma and the Alcohol lobby spend some of their immense profits continuing to disseminate the lies and mis-information that are still the basis for our government's $100 billion+ "War on Drugs."

     *Some recent optimism here as both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have recognized the homophobic, racist and corrupt underpinnings of our country's failed drug policies, at least in terms of medical cannabis, and are making moves to both eliminate DEA arrest and prosecution of users/providers, and removing Cannabis from Schedule 1 of the Schedule of Dangerous Drugs, which would remove many of the barriers to the development of legitimate uses for cannabis as well as the government's ability to harass clinicians, patients and researchers in the growing field of Cannabinoid Medicine.

     *While cases of paranoia and rare psychoses can occur if marijuana is used in excess or by vulnerable individuals, such as young adults with schizoid tendencies, the exaggeration of the risks of legalizing medicinal cannabis come primarily from clinicians who are dependent on the illegality and stigma attached to cannabis for their lucrative practices "curing" patients from a non-existent addiction. Even the national professional societies, such as the American Psychiatric Association and the AMA, who should be more concerned about the safety of CM patients than the bloated practices and sham "cures" of practitioners who deny the scientific facts about medicinal cannabis the same way that "AIDS Denialists" deny the role of HIV in causing AIDS, have refused to take a stand against harassment and imprisonment of MC patients or the government's unwillingness to license growers who would produce standardized strength and=2 0composition cannabis for legitimate research purposes.

     *Finally, we have the US military's widespread operation, on American soil, to aid in the wiping out of cannabis growers, including those growing cannabis specifically for state legalized medicinal cannabis programs, a direct contradiction to the US Constitution and a proven threat to the lives and livelihood of both MC patients and producers in the now 14 US states with legal CM programs. Just as Eisenhower coined the prescient warning to "Beware the military-industrial-government complex," American citizens who want to see the return of cannabis to its rightful place in American medicine, need to "Beware the pharmaceutical-industrial-governmental-police-military-medical opportunist complex!" The writer is the VP for Education of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access, the largest consumer-based advocacy group for medicinal cannabis.

     -Dr. David G. Ostrow

David G Ostrow, MD, PhD, addiction psychiatry clinician, harm reduction activist, co-founder of the Howard Brown Health Center of Chicago and founder of the Medical Marijuana Policy Advocacy Project (MMPAP), which has championed for the further development of medicinal cannabis and for the protection of medical cannabis patients from Federal arrest and prosecution since 2006.

NY Times Blog:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/20marijuana.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=april%2020,%202009%20420&st=cse