Update: Here’s another one — needs some commenting: Don’t legalize marijuana in the name of medicine by John Redman, executive director of Californians for a Drug-Free Youth.
Unfortunately, legalization groups have convinced CMA and other medical societies that the process doesn’t work. They claim that research is stifled because marijuana is illegal. But the evidence says otherwise. As of 2011, 209 active researchers are registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration to perform bona fide research with marijuana, marijuana extracts and THC, the active component in marijuana. There are 288 studies being conducted by the National Institutes of Health to research the constituents in marijuana, or cannabinoids.
A concrete example of this can be found in a product called Sativex, which the FDA and DEA have been involved in (it is in FDA trials). Sativex, a drug approved in Canada, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe for the treatment of multiple sclerosis spasticity and cancer pain, combines THC and another active ingredient in marijuana, CBD, to eliminate the “high” from THC.
Have fun…
State doctors group’s call for cannabis legalization slammed
But critics, like Paul Chabot, president of the Coalition for a Drug Free California, said the CMA recommendation would harm society.
“Research has shown marijuana use has been linked to testicular cancer, schizophrenia, and depression,” Chabot said. “It’s because of so-called medical marijuana, we now have the highest use-rate for kids in America.”
Chabot, who said his group has more than 1,000 members, called on doctors to tear up their CMA membership cards “in light of leadership’s pro drug legalization stance.”
“What an irresponsible and unethical position the CMA has taken,” Chabot said. “This flies in the face of science, public health and common sense. It now appears drug money has reached some of this organization’s more influential leaders.”
Marijuana Is High on Americans’ Issue List
“A lot of people sign petitions online who just want to smoke,†said J.T. Griffin, senior vice president for public policy at MADD. “There is a bigger policy debate that needs to be addressed before lawmakers can make a good decision.â€
For the Drug Free America Foundation, legalization is out of the question.
“It is an impairing drug. People have been harmed by it. To say it is a safe drug is just another one of their big fat lies,†Calvina Fay, the group’s executive director, said of the pro-marijuana lobby.
From a press release from SaveOurSociety.org:
“I am thoroughly appalled by the CMA’s decision to release this policy in an attempt to legalize a drug that we know causes so much harm to individuals and families,†said Eric Voth, M.D., F.A.C.P. and Chair of the Institute on Global Drug Policy. “The CMA has managed to single-handedly make a mockery of modern medicine and the ethical practices of physicians. There is nothing scientific about this White Paper – it is total politics.†[…]
“The CMA is dead wrong in asserting that the marijuana legalization movement is driven by the public. Instead it is driven by a group of well-financed legalization advocates. The ballot initiative to legalize pot was defeated in California and no other state has approved such an ill-advised policy, despite millions of dollars poured into this effort by ivory-tower elitists unaffected by the impact of drug use, like the rest of us. Even the issue of marijuana as medicine was rejected by two-thirds of the country,†stated Calvina Fay, Executive Director of Drug Free America Foundation and Save Our Society From Drugs.
“What an irresponsible and unethical position the CMA has taken,†Chabot said. “This flies in the face of science, public health and common sense. It now appears drug money has reached some of this organization’s more influential leaders.â€
I wonder how many of these prohibition supporting organizations are funded by the cartels?
Where would Cabbagehead get the idea that the cartels would buy support for taking 60% of their profits?
I thought these were from the Onion for a sec, but I should know better by now. Only in the bizarro world of early 21st century US Empire can we see medical experts being dissed by complete and utter morons for their scientific conclusions of marijuana and actually getting serious press attention for it.
In case your blood pressure needs a break after those three, here’s an excellent Forbes article: “It’s Time To Declare Peace In The War Against Drugs.”
We should pass a law that says all Americans must read this article, and impose a 10-year mandatory minimum prison sentence on any who fail to do so.
somebody turn on a light, I hear cucarachas scrambling around.
Boy… that’s a line-up: Darth Chabot, Darth Voth and Sith Lord Fay
And of course Çalvina’s is just a PR, she no longer has much sway I suspect.
Ms. Fay’s outfit, DFAF, used to be called Straight, Inc. and was one of the most abusive rehabs around.
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We haven’t been seeing much of Ms. Fay because she has been tied up with another project in her day job.
You’d be crazy too if someone dropped a house on your sister and was intent on killing you with a bucket of water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SESI19h4wDo
testicular cancer? OK Chabot… where are the bodies?
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allan, you might want to back off that one. I’m sure that Mr. Chabot has inspected 10s of thousands of testes “up close and personal” just in the last year, so I think that qualifies him as an expert on testicles.
Chabot might be morphing an urban legend that the anti-drug people were pushing in the seventies which said that weed would cause boys to grow female breasts.
Oh gawd. Think they chatted about it in advance? Well, Guess I have some comments to post or LTE’s to write tomorrow. We should rip ’em good, gentlemen, they’ve thrown down a gauntlet and they’re the retired pro’s, if not the current first string. Where’s John and Barry? They don’t get the call out anymore? Maybe they’re over the hill? That’s Ok, the shrill voice of Calvina Fay is all I need to start me fuming.
that would be ladies and gentlemen 🙂
Oops! Sorry, undrgrndgirl, good to see you here! 😉
comments are open at the article.
“”The organization Mr Cabot heads up is more likely to be supported by drug money than the CMA.
Why would criminals want to support taking their cash cow from them?
On the other hand,,they want people like Cabbagehead to keep prohibition in place,,because it is the only way the criminals can continue making money from marijuana.
Maybe his accusation hits closer to home than we know,or was it a confession?
America does not have a marijuana problem,we can find marijuana in ANY town in America,because our government and stalwart citizens like Cabot keep us buying it from the criminals.””
I chopped up Cabot,feel free to dice Fay.
Calvina only got that one quote, and there aren’t comments at that Roll Call piece. Bummer.
it is chabot’s position that is unethical and irresponsible. i sure hope the cma stays strong in its rational and moral stance!
to those who say “a lot of people who sign petitions just want to smoke”…i say, yeah, so?
http://www.fancypantsgangsters.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/we-want-beer.jpg
thanx Francis,,posted
great article and Gart from stopthedrugwar nailed it with pure meat and potatoes,,America’s favorite meal.
completely off topic here but i found an update on the papa johns pizza driver storie. http://www.cbs12.com/news/pizza-4735863-marijuana-driver.html enjoy..
Thanks Francis for linking Article on Forbes,my blood pressure is better now Yeah particularly like how Cannabis and Heroin make you passive, like I say I happy on Cannabis was a raging all the time and weird,nightmares,other stuff that scares me to talk about when I was on Anti=Depressants. never touch that crap again and yes for some folks I guess it works well.
Chabotage is plain wicked, and not in a good way.
(op) or Opposite Paulcha-bot
Not promoting MSNBC or The Last Word or Lawrence McDonnell, but I couldn’t believe what I saw. Truth. Plain ole telling it like it is about Ganja. Speaking out about the hypocrisy of the politicians toasting each other getting high, on booze. Refreshing…
#lastwordTo puff or pass?
Tell us whether you think marijuana should be legal in the U.S.
Rewriting legalization of marijuana
Oct. 18: A new poll shows approval for legalizing marijuana at an all-time high. But, the federal government still says pot is still as dangerous as heroin. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has more in the Rewrite. Duration: 3:55
The Last Word: First Word: Tuesday, October 18
“Give me control of a Nation’s money
and I care not who makes the laws.”
– Mayer Amschel Bauer (Rothschild)
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You, Paul Chabot, are an unashamed supporter of the longest, most costly, and most futile war in American history. The prejudices and fears that you exhibit bear scant relation to reality. As a self-appointed hypocritical moralist you have aligned yourself with terrorists, criminals and all the other scum of the earth – such as political demagogues, corrupt government agencies, fear-mongering, soulless media moguls, and all other forces of ignorance and arrogance.
How is it even possible that you fail to understand that prohibition – just like it’s counter-part in the 1920s – has created massive amounts of destruction to all aspects of our society?
How can you not desire a saner policy, one that’s based on facts rather than reefer madness?
And how dare you refuse to help undo the massive amount of damage caused by this historically-proved, dangerous and failed policy?
Chabot, your beloved Prohibition has finally run it’s course; the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans have been destroyed or severely disrupted; what was once a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity has become a toxic, repressive, smoldering heap of hypocrisy and a gross affront to fundamental human decency.
Do you honestly believe that the rest of us are willing to sacrifice even more of our precious hard-earned tax dollars and civil liberties on the pointless exercise of whacking ourselves with ever-bigger and more-repressive prohibition hammers while drug use and availability keeps going up, not down, and while we all plunge deeper into Loserville?
In spite of what you may erroneously believe, it’s quite clear to the rest of us that it’s you Paul Chabot, and not a single one of these 35,000 highly respected and principled, Californian physicians, who is guilty of dishonorably supporting organized criminals and international terrorists.
Protect our Children; Legalize, Regulate & Tax!
Chabot, Voth, Calvina…their kind has been around a long time. We knew them back during alcohol Prohibition. Change the names of those on stage and those playing the tune, and that’s all you have to do to see just what their actual roles in this farce are. Some more Prohibition era cartoons available here; see anybody you know in today’s prohib camp? I’m sure you won’t have to look very hard…
The problem with prohibs trying to take the moral high ground is that it was already lost by their ethanol-phobic predecessors. That loss can never be regained, but that doesn’t stop them from trying…
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Hey kaptinemo, are you familiar with the Canadian lunatic that got Canada to criminalize cannabis in 1923, a Ms. Emily Murphy AKA Janey Canuck? She’s definitely worthy of being elected to the Know Nothing prohibitionist Hall of Shame. After all, she beat Harry J to the punch by 14 years. Actually, her blather may well have been where Harry J got his material.
If the Hindus are correct she may well have been reincarnated as Calvina Fay.
I am only too familiar with the damage done by Ms. Murphy…and why she did it.
People today really have very little comprehension as to the (openly!) racist nature of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominated society of only a century ago. There really was a great fear on the part many Whites that they were being ‘out-bred’ and faced eventual extinction as a ‘race’, and that Western civilization had allowed non-White ‘barbarians within the gates’ as a legacy of former slavery and/or peonage.
Said ‘barbarians’ were deemed as being dangerously unstable, unable to control their passions, and thus were in need of constant ‘supervision’. That fear was translated into legislation…such as Jim Crow laws, from which came drug laws intended to savage the ‘lesser races’, the ‘little brown brothers’, to keep them in line. Ms. Murphy definitely subscribed to that particular belief.
Which leads one to ask: since nearly all the drug laws were predicated on racially bigoted stereotypes of minorities, and practically no science at all (pseudoscience such as eugenics not counting, despite its’ prominence in the formation of those laws) one should be able to argue that the laws are null and void, based purely on their effect of being used as a tool of (nationally prohibited) discrimination against minorities. Why has this not happened?
Oh, and as far as MADD goes in ‘weighing in’ on the issue, they should have a care as to whether they really want their own dirty laundry aired in public. Like this: Former president of local defunct chapter of MADD arrested on DUI charge in Gainesville, Florida. Didn’t take long to come up with that; just google MADD corruption.
MADD is an organization that may have been needed at one time, but it outlasted its’ usefulness a long time ago, and just like a bureuacracy that’s lost its’ raison d’etre, is suffering from mission creep and looking for a new lease on life. Now it seeks to inject its’ fund-sucking snout into new Federal and State hosts…that just don’t have the bucks to squander on feel-good but pointless dog-and-pony shows anymore.
the rats are adopting aliases as they depart the ship. the s.a.f.e. organisation in my little town has changed their name from substance abuse free environment to student and family enrichment. they still seem to need taxpayer money to enrich the families. they have yet to show up on the porch with the enrichment for our family. i suspect horse pucky.
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The best indictment of MADD’s off the wall fanaticism is still the fact that Ms. Candy Lightner, who started the organization, quit because of it. MADD’s insanity was implemented in spite of her, not because of her.
Who is better than Ms. Lightner to state what the intent of forming MADD was all about than the lady who founded it?
I`m overwhelmed. So much ignorance in so few words. This has to be some kind of record.Do these people know what they sound like?
Exactly. You read a rant like that and you just don’t know where to start. It’s a withering blast of hot, fetid air that makes it hard just to take a breath.
When you exist in an echo chamber, one that strenuously excludes anything that might cause cognitive dissonance, you wind up with the kind of thinking displayed in the writings of hard-core prohibs. In such people’s minds, to doubt one’s own precepts or one’s facts is to surrender. And their pride will not permit that, regardless of the facts having made the entire issue moot. Think of the Catholic Church keeping Kepler’s and Galileo’s books on the verboten list for hundreds of years. Same kind of arrogance, same kind of pride, same kind of stupidity.
Paul Chabot, Eric Voth, and Calvina Fay believe their ignorance and anti-intellectualism are superior to everyone else’s knowledge.
Gentlemen; I heard on MSNBC that drug screening of the unemployed has been proposed in NY state. Does anyone know who precisely?
Re John Redman: It is foreign countries, and not the United States, which are the primary nations doing research on cannabis. The following news release from nature.com is a prime example. In this case, research in Canada has revealed the genetic differentiation between Purple Kush and hemp strains Finola and USO-31.
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/10/high_times_for_cannabis_resear.html