Monthly Archives for December 2009

Cops Are Not Doctors, Pot Should Not Be a “Last Resort”

(Source: Drug Justice)  As Los Angeles grapples with the uncontrolled proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries, drug warriors continue to rely on the laughably weak argument that “just anyone” can get a doctor’s recommendation for marijuana, and that the majority of medical users “just want to get high.”

Here are some good talking points to use when you hear this garbage:

1. Cops are not doctors. Practically every news report I can find about marijuana dispensaries quotes some dim-bulb prosecutor or cop (yes, there is another kind) making a comment like, “Everyone I see coming out of the dispensary looks young and healthy.” For examples, look here, here, and here. Yes, the journalist will often qualify the statement with an “according to” or an “Officer Smith claims,” but why are these quotes even being included in the first place? What makes journalists think their readers  need to hear the medical opinion of a drug cop with no education? I mean, the last “drug interdiction specialist” that pulled me over became a cop after his career as a long-haul trucker didn’t work out. He actually told me that.

It’s already bad enough that we take some of society’s least developed minds, screen out the ones with high IQs, teach them to take pleasure in the suffering of others, and give them guns and the authority to ruin good people’s lives. Now we have reporters turning to them for medical opinions?

2. Insomnia is a serious illness. Anyone who scoffs at medical marijuana patients who cite chronic insomnia as their malady has obviously never gone for months (or even days) at a time without rejuvenating sleep. As someone who suffered from insomnia for 25 years, I speak from personal experience. Night after night I laid awake, angry that tomorrow would be another miserable, heavy-eyed, day. The only nights of sleep I got were the result of total exhaustion from several preceding nights of agony. I would watch the clock obsessively, knowing that if I wasn’t asleep by a certain time, there would be no hope.  I tried to cure it with variations in my schedule and habits. I tried prescription sleep aids, which, as anyone who uses them knows, provide low-quality sleep and leave the user feeling lethargic during the day. I also tried melatonin and tryptophan supplements to no avail.

Lack of sleep very directly causes low productivity, depression, mental fatigue, and lots of other excruciating conditions that drug warriors would probably consider “minor” (see #1). Insomnia must be dealt with, but since prohibitionists fancy themselves medical experts, they will quickly retort that there is no need to treat it with cannabis because there are many legal medications available.

Let me share a list of some side effects of mirtazapine, one of the “approved” drugs I tried (source: emedtv.com): suicidal thoughts, hypertension, hypotension, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, hostility or aggressiveness, engaging in unusual or dangerous activities, restlessness, inability to sit still, extreme elation that may switch back and forth with a depressed or sad mood, other unusual changes in behavior, hallucinations, fast heart rate, chest palpitations, difficulty sleeping, sore throat, fever, infection, unexplained rash, hives, itching, unexplained swelling, wheezing, difficulty breathing or swallowing, dry mouth, increased appetite, high cholesterol, constipation, weight gain, weakness, dizziness, high triglycerides, fever, chills, abnormal dreams, abnormal thinking, tremors, muscle pain, frequent urination, confusion, back pain, fluid retention, sensitivity to the sun, migraine headaches, canker sores, hypothyroidism, weight loss, urinary tract infections, seizures, hiccups, asthma, hair loss, loss of sex drive, impotence, ejaculation problems.

This list is incomplete. It doesn’t mention the brutal electric shock sensations I would get randomly throughout the day and the fact that every fifth night or so, I could not sleep because I had an agonizing sensation that my knee and elbow joints were locked up and an urge to dislocate my limbs. Oh, and if I wanted to get out of bed before 2:00pm, herculean effort was required.

During that 25 years, I suffered from an even worse illness: ignorance. A total buy-in to D.A.R.E. generation government anti-drug propaganda. I naively believed that government had my best interest at heart and that cops were there to protect me. Worse, I believed that only “bad” people became associated with marijuana.

3. Cannabis doesn’t need FDA approval because it’s not a drug. Invariably, drug warriors will scream that cannabis cannot be a safe and effective medication because it has not undergone the “rigorous” FDA screening process. Let’s put aside the fact that it’s actually the ONDCP and the DEA, not cannabis’ lack of merit, that prevent this from happening, and consider the implication: the government doesn’t care whether something actually makes you healthier – only whether it has determined that something makes you healthier.

Of course, the real culprit is the fact that anyone can grow pot and the FDA exists to serve the pharmaceutical industry. An FDA endorsement of cannabis will only happen if big drug companies find a way to monopolize the market. We don’t need Pfizer to make cannabis for us, and that’s downright scary if you’re Pfizer and word gets out that cannabis can replace a bunch of your products.

We already know that the commission President Nixon hired to discredit marijuana returned the opposite result, recommending that prohibition end. I mean, Nixon hired this commission specifically to legitimize his propaganda and it still couldn’t find a reason to ban the herb. Despite access to sound science on the subject, Nixon could not bear to see those dope-smoking hippies protesting his war on Vietnam. With this knowledge publicly available, why does anyone trust the government’s position on anything? Think about it. Government is the original source of everything anti-marijuana in today’s culture, and we know that the government spat in the face of scientific evidence to bolster today’s federal drug policy. We don’t need to look to that same government for “approval” of the things we put in our bodies. You know, the one that approved a hair loss drug that shrinks users’ genitalia.

4. When neighbors complain that dispensaries attract “unsavory characters” to their neighborhoods, they’re actually talking about young males. Let’s face it. There is no way to convince your average “community member” that gets quoted in the local media that being a 20-something male – maybe with long hair, tattoos, or even, God forbid, corn rows – does not make a person a criminal. I won’t go into too much detail about the underlying racial implications of these oblivious statements.

I wonder if anyone who complains about dispensaries ever bothers to count the number of liquor stores in the area or within [arbitrary number] feet of a school, church, McDonald’s playground, or residence. I wonder if they would change their minds and support full legalization if they were informed that the crime associated with cannabis is caused by its high price, which is caused by prohibition.  I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. D.A.R.E.-induced ignorance is a very serious illness that is difficult to overcome. Ironically, medical marijuana really helps with that.

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“Obama entrapped me” – medical marijuana provider mounts a novel criminal defense

Originally published 12.22.09

Barack Obama asked Americans to take a stand. Now a California pot provider is putting the candidate’s rhetoric on the stand.

Obama entrapped me

(Photo by David Rolland)

(Source: San Diego City Beat)  More than most citizens, James Dean Stacy feels betrayed by the candidate for whom he voted for president.

Up and down the campaign trail, from Los Angeles to Medford, Ore., then-Sen. Barack Obama and his spokespeople pledged that he would end the aggressive raids by the U.S. Department of Justice of medical-marijuana dispensaries operating legally under state law. The candidate said it was a waste of resources that would be better dedicated to fighting terrorism and prosecuting violent crime. Obama said he didn’t see any meaningful difference between marijuana and prescriptions such as morphine and that providers should be protected, excepting those who blatantly use medical-cannabis laws as a shield for otherwise dubious drug trafficking.

james-stacy_medicann.jpg

When he assumed office, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder echoed the sentiments during several meet-the-new-DOJ appearances in California and New Mexico—“You will be surprised to know that the Justice Department will be acting in a manner consistent with what [the president] said during the campaign”—and, in October, Holder formalized the policy in a set of guidelines distributed to U.S. Attorney offices.

Stacy opened the medical-marijuana collective, Movement in Action, in the space adjacent to his martial-arts dojo in Vista in June 2009 after Holder made the verbal commitment but before he put it in writing.

“I’m the most follow-the-rules kind of guy around, so I thought I was the perfect guy to do it,” Stacy tells CityBeat. “When the collective was open, I’d have days where we’d turn away as many as 10 people who didn’t have the proper paperwork.”

In a Dec. 10 court motion, Stacy says he did the due diligence: He researched the prosecutorial policies articulated by Holder, hired a lawyer to walk him through the process and corresponded with the California Secretary of State’s (SOS) office on how to file for “public benefit” status, the technical term for a California nonprofit. The SOS even provided him with a copy of the state Attorney General’s guidelines for running a collective. Unlike many of the other collectives where the San Diego Regional Narcotics Task Force ran stings, Stacy opted for a low-profile model because, he says, “I didn’t want people who didn’t need to know to have it in their face.”

Stacy told undercover officers that they could provide labor to the collective in exchange for medicine and invited them to a “farmers market,” where patients could buy directly from growers—practices he felt were in keeping with the spirit of the California AG’s guidelines. Nevertheless, on Sept. 9, after four months in operation, he was arrested after his collective and 13 others were raided.

Now, Stacy is one of only two collective operators who have been charged in federal court as a result of the raids. He faces one count of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana, one count of manufacturing marijuana and one count of possession of a firearm while committing the other crimes—a handgun was found in the locker where he kept the collective’s supply.

The other federal defendant, Joseph Nunes of Green Kross Collective, pleaded guilty to his charges earlier this month. Stacy, however, says he’s not giving in to the prosecution.

“I quote my wife: ‘I’m not going to let you plead guilty to something you didn’t do,’” says Stacy, who uses marijuana to treat pain from martial-arts injuries and to relieve the nausea he’s suffered since losing his gall bladder. “They threatened life-imprisonment at both of my bail hearings…. This is nothing but a terrorist attack against the medical-marijuana community.”

Instead, Stacy is mounting a novel defense: The statements by Obama and Holder constitute entrapment by estoppel, defined as when an official tells someone that something is legal, then busts them for it. Put plainly, Stacy would not have formed the collective if the government hadn’t assured legal collectives that they wouldn’t be prosecuted.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office does not comment on pending cases, and Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman whose pro-medical-marijuana statements were directly cited in the court filing, did not respond to inquiries.

The entrapment defense draws from a “fundamental notion of fairness: The individual must have fair warning of what conduct the government intends to punish,” Stacy’s attorney, Kasha Castillo of Federal Defenders of San Diego, writes in the recent motion. Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz has agreed to hear the motion—which includes a request that the case be dismissed or, alternately, Stacy be allowed to present the entrapment defense in court—on Feb. 3.

When CityBeat first posted a summary of the motion on its blog, Lastblogonearth.com, and linked it from the Huffington Post, some commentators wrote it off as a gratuitous and foolish attempt to claim that a candidate’s campaign promises are as good as laws passed by Congress. However, defense attorneys say it isn’t just a novel approach; rather, it’s a potential groundbreaking solution to a longstanding paradox in federal medical-marijuana cases.

San Diego County Deputy Public Defender Juliana Humphrey explains that, historically, medical-marijuana patients and caregivers have been barred from saying they were acting in good-faith under California law because it has not been considered a legitimate defense under federal law.

“Most of the time, the common thought is that trial defendants are getting some kind of advantage because everything is sterilized for the defendant’s benefit,” says Humphrey, who chaired the city of San Diego’s Medical Cannabis Task Force in 2002. “But in this case, it completely keeps from the jury the truth of the motivation of the person that possesses or provides the marijuana for the benefit of the government.”

Last month, a San Diego jury in state Superior Court acquitted Jovan Jackson, the coordinator of Answerdam Alternative Care, of all marijuana-related charges; the foreman told the press following the verdict that California’s laws are too vague to determine whether Jackson’s collective wasn’t in compliance.

Jackson’s trial lawyer, K. Lance Rogers of Turner Law Group, cautions that each case’s circumstance are different—not to mention each jury—and that Jackson’s verdict doesn’t indicate how the federal court will rule on Stacy’s motion. Plus, unlike in Jackson’s case, when the prosecution had to prove he committed the crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, the burden will be on the defense during the hearing to show that Stacy was within the law.

“The issues and the challenges that will ultimately come up with Mr. Stacy’s hearing are all of the same issues that came up in Jovan’s case,” Rogers says. “It’s not enough to say, ‘I knew about this information before I set up my collective.’ In my opinion, he needs to show some evidence that he knew the government’s public advisory.”

Stacy’s testimony may be enough, Rogers says, but his communication with the Secretary of State’s Corporations Division and the fact he hired a lawyer to advise him may prove the most compelling.

More than the entrapment defense, Rogers is interested in another argument Stacy’s attorney makes: The federal government violated the 10th Amendment protection of states’ rights by enlisting San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies to enforce a federal law that contradicts state law.

“The federal government can’t commandeer state law enforcement to implement federal policies, and the keyword is ‘commandeering,’” Rogers says. “This is a fundamental principle of federalism and American jurisprudence. That’s a fascinating argument that has not been decided to my knowledge.”

Until it is decided, Stacy is keeping his nose (and his pipe) clean. He believes he has the right to continue using marijuana for medical purposes but has switched to Marinol, a synthetic THC pill, until the court gives him explicit permission at his next bail hearing.

“I did not, I do not and I will not break the law,” Stacy says.

Write to davem@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

Writer’s Note: In the fourth paragraph of this story, I initially wrote that the Movement in Action collective had been in operation for five months when US Attorney General Eric Holder released formal medical-marijuana guidelines. While there was five months between the collective’s formation (June 2009) and the guidelines announcement (October 2009), MIA ceased operation in September after it was raided and its operator, James Dean Stacy, arrested. Therefore, the collective was only in operation for a total of four months. The story has been amended.

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Marijuana could alleviate symptoms of PTSD

An Israeli study finds that the cannabinoids in cannabis provide anxiety relief, could affect emotional memory and may enhance PTSD treatments.

Cannabis

Photo courtesy of Yossi Zamir/Flash90
In pill or drug form, cannabis could be used alongside exposure therapy to stymie the effect of trauma.

(Source)  Back in the early Sixties when the Flower Children were getting high, parents in the US government were consulting Prof. Raphael Mechoulam from Israel about the effects of pot smoking on their teens. Mechoulam, an organic chemist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was the first to isolate the psychotropic element THC in the cannabis plant. He dubbed its active chemical components ‘cannabinoids.’

Ever since his discovery, the medical community has recognized and lauded the importance of cannabinoids in alleviating chronic pain and nausea in cancer patients and modulating the symptoms of HIV/AIDS. A new study, this time at Israel’s University of Haifa, has found a reason to legalize the use of cannabinoids, assuming that its benefits outweigh the potential risks.

According to the study by Dr. Irit Akirav from the Department of Psychology at Haifa University, cannabinoids may relieve the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a debilitating disorder that strikes 10 to 30 percent of people who suffer from a traumatic event such as war, a car accident, rape or a terrorist attack.

In her study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Akirav used an animal model and a synthetic form of marijuana that didn’t induce psychotropic effects, to measure the compound’s efficacy at reducing the effects of PTSD.

Relieves stress in rats

In the first part of the study, Akirav and her students examined how long it took rats to recover from the trauma of electric shock without the drug. Some of the traumatized rats were exposed to a series of procedures intended to stress them even further, while another group of rats was exposed to both stress and trauma but also received a dose of cannabinoids directly to the brain – into the amygdala region. The amygdala is known to be connected to emotional memory, which is linked to PTSD.

Researchers concluded that rats that received the drug experienced hormonal changes and consequently their brains didn’t release an increase of the stress hormone that the body normally produces as a reaction to stress. People with PTSD are found to have abnormal levels of this stress hormone.

“The results of our research should encourage psychiatric investigation into the use of cannabinoids in post-traumatic stress patients,” Akirav, who hopes that if enough animal studies are conducted in this area, sufficient evidence will be provided to convince clinicians to initiate trials on humans, tells ISRAEL21c.

There is already talk in Israel about conducting clinical trials on soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces to investigate the effects of cannabinoids on PTSD, but Akirav says she will continue to work at present with animals. She believes that in the case of PTSD, the cannabinoids, which seem to be a perfect fit to cure many disorders and diseases in our bodies, have an effect on emotional memory.

Weighing risks and benefits

“In the case of people with PTSD, it could be a good solution to take marijuana, but we still don’t know the possible negative effects of the drug,” she cautions. “For PTSD sufferers, where their situation is terrible, something like marijuana has other effects – an effect on anxiety, and we are trying to pinpoint brain areas that are involved.”

But more than providing anxiety relief, cannabinoids could affect emotional memory and enhance PTSD treatments by modulating the emotional memory component, she argues. Akirav believes that in pill or drug form they could be used in combination with exposure therapy to stymie the effect of a trauma. And since cannabinoids are already widely used and in some cases prescribed as cancer therapies, they could potentially pass through regulatory hurdles quickly as a drug to treat PTSD.

“As opposed to other drugs, one wouldn’t need to adjust it, because people use it already as a chronic therapy for HIV and it helps them,” she says. However, she concludes, in the case of PTSD, more extensive studies are still needed to ensure that the benefits of taking cannabinoids would outweigh the risks.

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Medical Marjiuana Muddle

Obama’s new policy sounds good, but it may not make much difference

(Source)  During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to stop federal interference with state medical marijuana laws. In October the Justice Department seemed to deliver on that promise with a memo telling U.S. attorneys to avoid prosecuting people who use or provide medical marijuana in compliance with state law.

The new policy sounds a lot better than the Bush administration’s refusal to tolerate any deviation from federal law in this area. But it may not make much difference in practice.

While campaigning in New Hampshire in 2007, Obama said “prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users” is “really not a good use of Justice Department resources.” In a March 2008 interview with Oregon’s Mail Tribune, he said, “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.” Two months later, when another Oregon paper, Willamette Week, asked Obama whether he would stop Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) “raids on Oregon medical marijuana growers,” he replied, “I would, because I think our federal agents have better things to do.”

Critics of the drug war (and consistent advocates of federalism) were therefore disappointed that the DEA’s raids continued after Obama took office. There were five in January and February, all in California, even as the White House affirmed that “federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws.”

The mixed signals continued. “The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law,” Attorney General Eric Holder declared in March. Less than a week later, the DEA raided a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco, reportedly because of irregularities associated with the collection of state sales tax (as opposed to violations of state drug laws).

In light of Holder’s announcement, a federal judge in Los Angeles delayed the sentencing of Morro Bay dispensary operator Charles Lynch, only to be told by the Justice Department that the case against Lynch was consistent with the new policy. In August the DEA arrested a medical marijuana patient and grower in Upper Lake, California. The DEA also has continued to participate in raids initiated by local officials, hitting two Los Angeles dispensaries in August and 14 San Diego dispensaries in September.

The October memo, which White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said merely describes what “has been administration policy since the beginning of this administration,” helps explain these apparent inconsistencies. It tells federal prosecutors in the 14 states that recognize cannabis as a medicine they “should not focus federal resources…on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

In California especially, that phrasing leaves a lot of wiggle room for federal meddling. A 2008 decision by the California Supreme Court rejected the idea that medical marijuana suppliers are legal as long as their customers designate them as “primary caregivers.” Patients who are not up to growing marijuana on their own can still organize as “collectives” or “cooperatives,” but local officials disagree with state officials and each other about what that means.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, for example, maintains that state law does not permit over-the-counter sales, which would make virtually all of the 800 or so medical marijuana dispensaries in L.A. illegal. Cooley’s position conflicts with the views of more cannabis-tolerant officials in places such as Oakland and San Francisco. It also contradicts guidelines issued in 2008 by California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who says patient collectives may charge for marijuana as long as they do not take in more revenue than is necessary to cover their overhead and operating expenses. Until the law is clarified by the courts or the legislature, the federal government will have plenty of opportunities to continue interfering with the distribution of medical marijuana.

Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is a senior editor at reason.

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10 Reasons the U.S. Military Should (Officially) Use Pot

Medical marijuana may have a host of advantages over other treatments for traumatized vets, but the VA won’t even study its efficacy.

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet.

On top of a 100 percent disability rating with PTSD, “Charlie” — who asked that his real name not be used — came home from Afghanistan with a traumatic brain injury, a back injury and gastrointestinal problems. The VA pulled every magic trick out of its bag to treat him. But nothing worked.

What did work was marijuana.

Shirak-e-Mazar, the milk of Mazar, is what got Charlie through his deployment in Afghanistan. Shirak-e-Mazar is what Afghanis call the paper-thin sheets of hashish that sell for about $1.50 an ounce. It’s a 5000-year-old recipe, perfected in the Mazar-e-Sharif region, for preparing the compressed resin glands of the marijuana plant, and unless things have changed since Charlie left Afghanistan in 2004, it’s available, well, just about everywhere.

So was alcohol, but according to Charlie, it didn’t provide the same kind of relief: “You get some drinks in you, you get nice and loose; you drop your inhibitions and think you’re invincible. But you haven’t dealt with the stress; you’ve just kind of blocked it; you don’t really understand the possible outcomes of what you’re about to do—or you don’t care.

“Smoking though … you can appreciate the stresses and understand everything that’s going on, but you’re still relaxed enough to do what you have to do, and do it well.”

Since he got home, he says he is “smoking about one and a half grams a day, depending on how I’m doing. I go through an ounce in three to four weeks. I’m medicating for PTSD, but also a back injury and gastrointestinal problems, so if I had to do things like shovel the walk … I would have to smoke a little more.”

Unfortunately, Charlie does not live in one of the 13 states that have authorized the use of medical marijuana. In the rest of the states, federal law still applies, and according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug. Schedule I drugs are those deemed most dangerous, more so than cocaine, oxycodone and methamphetamines, all of which are Schedule II.

“Me and the rest of my veterans’ group talk about it all the time,” he says. “Most of them also medicate with marijuana. If you asked any of us what, out of everything, was most effective in PTSD treatment, we would tell you marijuana.” But the VA is a federal agency, so even in the 13 states where doctors are at liberty to suggest that patients try marijuana, they are prohibited from dispensing it.

The first two years after he got home, Charlie and his wife were still active duty. Marijuana was too risky, so he drank. A lot. So much that he almost killed himself and his wife.

“Alcohol seemed to exaggerate all the negative feelings, the anger, the rage, the depression, the desperation.”

Since Charlie was discharged in 2006, the VA has pulled an astonishing variety of medications out of its magic bag. Charlie’s list is an impressive one that many, perhaps most, vets who have gone to the VA for help with post-combat stress and pain issues will recognize.

“I’ve been on six different antidepressants, lorazepam for anxiety; two sleep aids, Ambien and something else; three medications for my stomach problems, including omeprazole; and Topomax and amyltriptomine for migraines.

“Even if the sleeping pills got me to sleep, I’d still wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares. The only difference is that WITH the pills I’d wake up dizzy and disoriented. The disorientation made for a smooth transition into flashbacks, and if you want to see a vet have a bad episode, make sure he/she is completely disoriented and wake them suddenly in the dark. (Don’t try this at home — danger, danger!)

“The lorazepam was prescribed for the anxiety caused by the antidepressants, but it turned me into some kind of shuffling Ozzie Osborne zombie. I didn’t have the physical energy to do anything but lay on the couch. Topomax and amyltriptomine turned me into a sloppy, silly bedlamite, groggy like I’d had too much to drink and babbling like a face-painted Anna Nicole Smith. Oh, and the Topomax had me hurling up last year’s Christmas dinner.

“I’ve gone through pain management more times than I can count on my hands, and I’ve had over twelve series of epidermal steroid injections done to my lower back. None of them ever did anything for me. Except of course make my stomach problems much worse. I started smoking [marijuana] again three years ago, and it’s been the best pain management I’ve found. I can pick up my thirty-pound daughter for a while now, which might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Oh, as for helping with hypervigilance, it does, but given the current legal status of my medication of choice in this state, I am hypervigilant for the police.”

And not without cause.

Even in states where medical marijuana has been approved, conflicting state and federal laws have provided law enforcement agencies with an excuse to prosecute according to personal prejudice.

Recently, the Obama Department of Justice instructed prosecutors to leave legitimate growers of medical marijuana alone. That is a step in the right direction, but there are at least 10 reasons why they should be encouraged to continue moving toward saner and clearer policies.

1) Until proven otherwise, marijuana is the safest thing they’ve got in their pharmacopoeia.

Marijuana has been used worldwide to treat pain, stress and any number of other ailments since the third millennium BCE.

It has been outlawed in the United States since 1937, but since 1970, with passage of the Controlled Substances Act, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug, with a “high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use” and a “lack of accepted safety” for use of any kind.

The Schedule I classification has meant that for the better part of 40 years, claims could be made that marijuana would turn you into a serial psycho-killer, a spotted owl or a socialist, and nobody could prove them wrong.

Daunting layers of federal permits discouraged serious study of the substance’s efficacy, and strictly controlled access to the only legally grown supply have meant that grants were awarded only to those folks who weren’t looking for anything nice to say about pot.

Schedule I drugs can’t even be the subject of research or study.

But this November, the young guard at the American Medical Association (AMA) gleefully hip-checked the doomy, gloomy straight-laced old guard out of the way and voted to revisit marijuana’s Schedule I classification.

After reviewing all the reliable information available, their conclusion was this (PDF):

“Adverse reactions observed in short-term randomized, placebo controlled trials of smoked cannabis to date are mostly mild without substantial impairment. Physicians who comply with their ethical obligations to ‘first do no harm’ and to ‘relieve pain and suffering’ should be protected in their endeavors, including advising and counseling their patients on the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes.”

In taking that position, the AMA joined the American College of Physicians, the country’s second largest physician group, which in February 2008, had adopted a similar resolution.

As former Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders wrote in AlterNet in 2008, it’s time “to put science ahead of politics.”

2) Reduce our dependence on foreign opioids.

Chronic pain is the leading indication for medical marijuana use, accounting for 90 percent of the patients in Oregon’s medical marijuana program.

Recently, research done both in Canada and the United States has demonstrated a synergistic interaction between cannabis and opioids. Patients who smoked a little weed along with their meds found they could decrease their opioid dose by between 60-100 percent.

So consider that if the entrenched drug warriors were finally outflanked, VA doctors would be allowed to prescribe marijuana and our vets could reduce their consumption of opioids.

3) Restore the reputation of the VA among veterans.

After all the criticism of the VA for limiting access, shredding claims, misdiagnosing illnesses as a cost-saving trick and using soldiers as uninformed guinea pigs to test pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, veterans invited by the VA to knowingly participate in a marijuana study might be inclined to allow the euphorogenic qualities associated with cannabis to blur their outrage, even to the point of forgiveness.

4) Israeli rats have less stress than American soldiers.

In an article published in the September issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Israeli scientists revealed that injecting synthetic marijuana into the brains of rats allowed them to recover faster from trauma. In fact, it “cancelled out the symptoms of stress.”

The researchers predicted that marijuana may help patients overcome life stresses that worsen reawakened trauma and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

5) And then there is Sativex.

Savitex is an oromucosal spray, developed by the British firm GW Pharmaceuticals, that has been called “liquid marijuana” because it is derived from the entire botanical cannabis plant. In 2005, the Canadian government approved its use for relief of neuropathic pain and the FDA has agreed to trials in the U.S. prior to an approval application.

It will be challenging to persuade patients that Sativex, which will surely cost more than what can be grown in your backyard, is the better choice. No pharmaceutical preparation, synthetic or natural, has yet proven as effective as the smoked plant. In fact, the only proven advantage of such medications is that they are legal.

Those FDA trials, by the way, were supposed to be completed by the end of 2009.

6) We gave Big Pharma 40 years of government handouts and they came up with zilch.

Instead of paying extortionist rates, imagine if the VA could say, “Sorry, Bayer, but you’re going to have to make it cheap and make it good, or they’ll just grow their own.”

It’s a piece of cake to go around Big Pharma on this one. All you need is a little sun, soil and TLC, or a grow-lamp in your basement. And the good fortune to get to your crop before the cops, the local kids or the deer.

How easy? Since 2006, entrepreneurial Americans have grown enough marijuana to displace corn as the leading cash crop in America.

7) The growing process is itself demonstrably therapeutic.

A recent study out of the Naval Postgraduate School and Stanford University predicts that as many as 35 percent of returning soldiers could have PTSD. The number of veterans who have already served in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached 1.8 million.

Another study, courtesy of the Pentagon, estimates that as many as 360,000, or 20 percent of the veterans of these current wars have suffered traumatic brain injuries.

That’s a lot of new fists that will be banging on the doors of an already overwhelmed VA asking for help. How serendipitous then, that a promising treatment option being offered to traumatized veterans across the country is gardening.

8. We could fill some budget gaps.

Imagine the savings for states like Washington that are currently facing huge financial deficits. Washington announced this month that a bill to legalize marijuana altogether will be on the ballot in 2010.

The circularity is sweet; the logic hopefully irresistible. Traumatized veterans could be hired by the state to garden, which relieves their post-combat stress symptoms and also affords them an income and the self-respect that comes with employment. The crop they grow will medicate their own psychic distress and that of other veterans, while at the same time replenish the state coffers when sold in state-run liquor stores.

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, a Seattle Democrat who is sponsoring the legalization bill, said she expected legal sale of marijuana could bring in as much money as alcohol; more than $300 million a year.

It will also challenge legislators in other cash-strapped municipalities to consider the billions of dollars worth of marijuana that is currently going untaxed, and whether they want to stand on principle or on solvency.

9) Suicide prevention.

The National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder acknowledges that there is “disagreement whether pharmacotherapy should be considered a first-line treatment for PTSD.”

As illustration, their manual, “Treatment of the Returning Iraq War Veteran,” states: “We recommend SSRIs as first-line medications for PTSD pharmacotherapy in men and women with military-related PTSD.”

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports that 89 percent of veterans with PTSD are prescribed antidepressants and 34 percent antipsychotics by the VA.

Of the specific medications identified as potentially useful, all but two come with black box warnings of suicide or increased risk of death.

In October, VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced that, “(m)ore Veterans have committed suicide since 2001 than we have lost on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan—each one a tragedy.”

Soldier suicides are at an all-time high and so are prescriptions for all kinds of new and dangerous drugs. Nobody can say for sure if there is a connection between those two facts, and I would never suggest that marijuana could or should take the place of SSRIs or any other drugs proven to be effective in managing PTSD. Or that marijuana could prevent soldier suicides. But the vast majority of drugs the VA prescribes for PTSD are known to worsen depression, increase suicidal thinking or increase risk of death in enough people to warrant the warning.

The same is not true of marijuana.

10) It would bring some coherence to our nation’s drug policies.

It is just possible that Tim Leary was right when he said that “(p)sychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in politicians that have never taken them.”

Daniel Robelo of the Drug Policy Alliance says, “The federal government has a duty to help veterans receive the most effective treatment available for their combat-related conditions, and for PTSD and chronic pain, marijuana is often that treatment. All veterans (and non-veterans) who might benefit should have unfettered access to this effective medicine, which is well within the margin of safety for any drug, and in fact, much less dangerous than most drugs commonly used to treat PTSD and pain.”