Yes, you’re wrong on that.

My husband was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer at age 48. two years ago. His only symptom was losing a bit of weight that we’d thought was due to new job stress, more running around, that sort of thing. Instead we were told he had a huge tumor, and that it had spread.
He had a nephrectomy at UCLA, with chemo at Cedars. Chemo and the other new drugs have a lot of side effects, including making the taste of many foods unappealing to say the least, and of course a general, severe loss of appetite-although he did eat as much as he could bring himself to. The problem with cancer is that just eating a cheesburger isn’t going to do it–you have to force yourself to eat 4x what you normally would, as the invading and spreading cancer literally “eats” the enrgy/calories that otherwise would nourish your body(at least that’s how the Dr. put it to us).
To try and jumpstart his appetite further, our Cedars-Sinai Dr.prescribed big phrma-produced pills with THC(pot’s active ingredient) which he then also told us were so weak that (after shutting the door to his office)he strongly advised us to find “some real pot” anywhere we could. We did, and it did help.
By the way, you don’t have to smoke it-there are marijuana-containing drinks, candy, cookies and more at the various shops-in fact, the food items are stronger and last longer in the system than the leaf-smoke variety. As for doing damage via smoking pot, the amount of smoking required to get the munchies (which si the point) is so minimal-a hit or two-that there’s ZERO chance of “doing serious damage” to the lungs from smoking pot-not to mention that for dying or very ill cancer patients that’s the least of their worries.

Like Dmac said, just continue your outrage if that’s what you feel you need to do, but leave the mention of cancer or other critically ill patients OUT of your argument. You-fortunatly for you-have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.

By the way I don’t smoke pot myself and didn’t so much as try my husband’s; it holds no attraction for me now at all, though I did smoke it occasionally in my early 20s. I enjoyed it, then got bored with it–funnily enough as a result of meeting my husband, in fact. We were together 24 years until his death in our home, 15 months after his diagnosis. There was no marker or reason the doctors could think of for him to have develped kidney cancer,especially at such an early age. Just one of those things.
Personally I haven’t seen the world end or any other disasters happen in our fair city, which is odd considering the supposed plague of millions of these pot shops all over L.A. Perhaps it’s because it really isn’t that dire of a substance. I’m one of those who’d much rather deal with a pothead than an alcoholic any day, as I’ve heard more than one patrolman assert.

And if you’re so sure about your assertions, then ask the host of this site to release my e – mail address, then we’ll get together and do a conference call with my oncologist at Northwestern Medical Center here in Chicago, and you can tell her all about your awesome findings about the evil weed that’s been growing all across this country in a natural state for over a hundred years.

How about it, sweetheart?

> The government, of course

In other words, we the people.

> What you don’t get is that some seriously ill people lose their appetite

You don’t have to have an appetite to eat. Force it down. I mean seriously when I take medicine, I don’t crave it the way I might a cheeseburger. Indeed often the medicine is noxious to the taste.

Really this explanation is so feeble I cannot help but be convinced that this is really about the attitude of “F— it, I have cancer, so I might as well get high.” I could be wrong on that, but regardless it seems obvious that the arguments for “medical necessity” seems to miss what the term “necessity” means.

> Of course if you abuse it, your lungs will eventually suffer greatly

Yeah, that is called conceding my point. Indeed, if all of those pharmacists obeyed the rule “first do no harm” then they would never prescribe pot unless you at least had a real medical condition.

> Your point (if there is one)?

Um, that pot rots your brain, mainly, and that our interest in an intelligent and educated electorate justifies the ban.

Icy Texan

> The liberal version of libertarianism: Anything you want to do, anytime you want to do it; no problem.

Except liberals don’t believe in that. Try offering your workers less than minimum wage, to name a tiny example. Or for that matter, imagine you want to give $10,000 to a candidate’s political campaign. Or you want to make a diatribe disguised as a documentary aimed at a specific politician (at least if the politician is a democrat). And now they want to take over your entire health care. Liberals are generally pretty anti-freedom expect on a few issues like gay sex, abortion and pot. Some might consider at least two on that list that a screwed up set of priorities, but oh well…

That’s a great philosophy . . . for hermits.

When you have major-paper columnists making wink-wink jokes about how easy it is to score a toke under the medical marijuana laws, you’ve pretty much undercut parental authority and control.

The current population of California is about 37 million. I suspect that among those millions are a whole bunch of parents who would prefer not to have their children smoke marijuana.

If I were a parent in California, I would not appreciate these sophomoric writings. And one wonders why the Times’ circulation is going down?

I was a kid in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I grew up in the late ’70s and early ’80s, so I think I have a bit of credibility with this. And, believe or not, I’m not opposed to legalizing marijuana. At least it would keep a whole bunch of morons away from the polls and public office.

People grow up and put away childish things, except for the damn hippies I’ve had to put up with all my life. And by damn hippies, I mean the generation right before mine.

It’s all fun and games until someone puts his or her eye out, or invests in a bong.