Who Owns Your Mental State? Medical Marijuana

Some headlines…
Cannabis May Prevent Breat Cancer From Spreading
Sativex, A Cannabis Spray effectively treats pain
The DEA admits that marijuana is medicine, only if you get it in pill form

I wonder how long the feds can argue that marijuana is not medicine when we will soon have two prescription drugs based on cannabis.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA, The Trojan Joint?
Medical Marijuana is a topic I have mixed emotions about. On one hand, I believe any movement that results in arresting less people for pot is good. One the other hand, I believe that Americans, as free people, should have the right to smoke what they want, regardless of medicinal value. Pot should be available for any use, recreational or medicinal.

Johnny Walker Blue is not medicine, it cures nothing. I still consume it, even though a side effect of drinking aged Scotch is intoxication. We ended Alcohol Prohibition without requiring that “medical alcohol” be legalized first.

Prohibitionists often argue that MM is simply a “trojan horse” to legalize cannabis funded by the evil George Soros. I have to plead guilty to that charge. I hope that MM will take away the stigma and fear around marijuana and speed up the inevitable legalization of cannabis. I have never met George Soros, but he should feel free to sponsor this blog.

The debate on cannabis is shifting. Medical pot is happening, Barack Obama has come out for legal medical use. Here is a great page of videos on all the canidates MM stances.

The debate over MM will end with legal prescription drugs like Sativex and Marinol available for certain “good” uses like pain management and fighting cancer, while recreational use is still banned.

Whereas, getting high is not recognized as a medical treatment, anxiety relief is. What separates taking Xanax to treat “anxiety” from smoking pot for a simliar purpose? Is it because the government (FDA, DEA) has not blessed marijuana for “anxiety” treatment. Is that really why we arrest 750,000 cannabis consumers a year?

I believe the arguments surrounding marijuana are moving towards an inevitable debate on the sovereignty of your mental state.

Who Owns Your Mental State?
Here is a recent video of John McCain trying to justify Prohibition. John implies that drugs, unlike alcohol, can not be used responsibly and therefore must be banned. He also states that while you can drink without getting drunk, drugs have this awful side effect- intoxication. Here is a great video of Bill O’Reilly throwing a hissy fit over the idea that you have any right to get “intoxicated.”

The argument of Mr. McCain, Mr. O’Reilly and other Prohibition apologists is that the federal government has a higher claim to your sobriety than you do. You somehow need government permission to pursue “intoxication” on any level, and then only through approved substances.

The right to control your mind should be one of the basic tenets of freedom. Unfortunately we have accepted the paradigm that the FDA, DEA, and Pharma companies can and should have a monopoly on what you can do to your own mind.