Humanitarian deficit exists in application of marijuana education and laws

Medical Marijuana

Carol Forsloff----In Oregon if you have a state card authorizing you to be able to take medical marijuana according to state law, what are the risks under Federal regulations?  Worse yet, what are the humanitarian concerns with respect to those who work within state law and guidelines as providers for marijuana patients?

The hypocrisies that exist between state and federal regulations concerning marijuana bring questions that go to the heart of American justice, as it takes away from patients rights to have medication that might work.  It also removes from many doctors the additional item in the arsenal of treating glaucoma, diabetic neuropathy, chronic pain and a host of other conditions.  Many diseases, like glaucoma, and eye condition that can lead to blindness, are said to be treated well with marijuana, with the science of this going back to the 1970's.

Recentlys there have been raids by Federal authorities and closures of hundreds of  medical marijuana clinics in the State of California and other states where the laws allow the use of medical marijuana.  At the same time, the Department of Justice and state authorities several times weekly, on respective websites and in press releases, the authorities underline how crime doesn’t pay but the recitation of crime events specifically with transporting marijuana from place to place along the United States corridors.  As growing marijuana is a crime under Federal law, despite a number of states passing legislation to allow the drug for medical purposes, the drug is associated in crime stories with cocaine and heroin when crime and drugs are discussed.

And as the Federal and State laws conflict, the increase in suppliers going underground and becoming part of that world where violence and other crimes occur, the solutions to reduce crime, provide a humane approach to legislation, waver unsolved because of the lack of humanity in the regulation of marijuana.

Jennifer Southby, who asked her real name not be used for this article,  is a patient of one of the doctors who fills prescriptions for marijuana in Portland, Oregon.  Her scars tell the story of physical pain, pain she observes often required large doses of addicting painkillers.   Sciatica can be very painful, and Southby said, “I tried everything, and nothing seemed to work.    One day someone gave me heroin, telling me it was no different than marijuana, which I had never tried.  Besides I was told that it was just as safe and would help me more with the pain.  That led to me becoming a junkie.  I could have avoided that had medical marijuana been legal at the time.  As it is, you can see the tracks in my arm that offer evidence of the addiction that took my years to break.”

So is marijuana a gateway drug?  Not if Southby is right, for she lacked the medical information that had the moral authority to help her with her pain with medication that has been observed to be non-addictive and that is legal in the State where she lives.  But like many people she thought marijuana and cocaine were comparable.

In fact some researchers maintain that marijuana is a reverse gateway drug, causing people to seek prescribed, addictive painkillers because of marijuana's status as an illegal drug.  And whereas some researchers maintain there is new research substantiating marijuana to be addictive, the study on your people did not look at other behaviors surrounding the use of marijuana and the legal or illegality of the drug with respect to personal, not medical use.  Marijuana was found to be associated with other drugs such as nicotine and alcohol, but again without differentiating between adolescent behaviors outside of drug use nor does it prove that marijuana causes addiction to other drugs, which would go against the scientific notions that because two things are associated does not mean one causes the other.

It is the lack of education and fairness to those who dispense medications of marijuana to patient, and the contradictions that take place between Federal and State laws, that makes many people question the motivations of those who continue to create more and more barriers for medications that some people find helpful and maintain they would suffer without.

Mob mentality, media sin and response to Casey Anthony verdict

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Carol Forsloff - The Orlando Sentinel in Florida covered the case against Casey Anthony for three years, and that coverage has been bastardized with opinion arguments by other newspapers, bent on making judgments far too soon in a fashion that demoralizes the fabric of our justice system.

It is that tendency to create a mob mentality that is likely at the core of the media’s lingering demise and lack of public trust.  It is the tendency on all sides to make judgments before the facts are in.  This has been true in criminal cases and politics, where it’s the latest  sport to follow the popular view instead of the facts themselves.

Objectivity has been lost in many ways, from the Andy Weiner saga to the Casey Anthony case.  Weiner’s public career is ruined, his marriage likely frayed, and his personal life in disarray because the amount of media focus along with judgment made more melodrama than fact for entertainment.   The titillation about the sex itself was of far more consequence than understanding the nature of the behavior itself and how in many ways it has gripped so many folks.

In the Casey Anthony trial, and the background before it began, much of the media focused early on Casey’s alleged guilt.  The back story of how decisions are made for trial had little focus when the fun was in the description of an alleged baby killer, made worse by the fact that it was a mother accused of killing her child.

Public response reveals, however, that the truth is lost in the lie fostered early on, a lie that Casey Anthony was guilty of killing Caylee before the facts were known and sorted out by experts.  People took the sides that had been outlined by the media, reinforced by talking heads on television too.

Those who care for justice, and for the long-term welfare of the news and the true preservation of American values, hesitated to give their public views.  There were experts early on, like Kim Iannetta,  a behavioral profiler, who cautioned folks should wait and not crucify Casey Anthony, as was happening in the press.  Instead her analyses focused on the kind of behaviors that develop aberration in families and the learning we can derive from understanding those behaviors.   The courts, she pointed out, are the true places where decisions are made.

Decisions should also not be made by the press who have not been given the authority to establish one’s guilt or innocence, as occurs in a court of law.  It is not their Constitutional position.

When the decision was announced that Casey Anthony was found not guilty of killing two-year-old Caylee, the commentators issued their surprise and interviewed the people all around the courtroom who gave the same response.  Surprised they were, and we should not therefore be surprised when the truth about the law is lost in the maze of media  hype.  Those of us who focused on case elements to demonstrate how the system works were pummeled by page-view hounds who looked for ego strokes instead.

American justice outlines a process that may not always seem fair when folks don’t understand just what that process means.  In the case of Casey Anthony, the goal was to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  When doubt is reasonable, the legal innocence is fair.  The moral guilt or innocence has other judgment apart from human view, the pain and suffering that occurs in trials such as these.  It also comes in other ways we must now trust and remember as we do, that judgment always comes in its own way.