Posted by Legalize It on September 16, 1999 at 10:32:15:
NORML Statement on the Medical Use of Marijuana
Science Supports Amending Federal Law
by Paul Armentano
NORML Publications Director
“Federal authorities should rescind their prohibition of the medical use of marijuana for seriously ill patients and allow physicians to decide which patients to treat. The government should change marijuana’s status from that of a Schedule I [prohibited] drug ... to that of a Schedule II drug ... and regulate accordingly.”
-- Dr. Jerome Kassirer, editor, New England Journal of Medicine, January 30, 1997
Marijuana prohibition applies to everyone, including the sick and dying. Of all the negative consequences of prohibition, none is as tragic as the denial of medical marijuana to the tens of thousands of seriously ill patients who could benefit from its therapeutic use.
It is clear from available studies and rapidly accumulating anecdotal evidence that marijuana is therapeutic in the treatment of a number of serious ailments and is less toxic and costly than many conventional medicines for which it may be substituted.1 Most recently, a federally commissioned report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) determined that, “Marijuana’s active components are potentially effective in treating pain, nausea, the anorexia of AIDS wasting, and other symptoms” including multiple sclerosis.2 In some cases, marijuana appears more effective than the commercially available drugs it replaces.3