Medical Marijuana Can Become Big Business

It took me a while at first to realize that everyplace I saw a green cross, it was going to be a medical marijuana facility. After all, the green cross is some kind of an international symbol for a “druggist,” for someone who sells prescription drugs (primarily) as prescribed.  In France, as well as in Canada, I remember following such signs to get a prescription filled.

This one substance, this marijuana, is unique in a couple of ways. First, it is the only prescription drug that has never been required to be tested for safety or efficacy.  Second – there is no government oversight as to quality or purity.

Marijuana seems to be something that people want first, then figure out a reason for later. The results are not exactly what I consider beneficial.

There is some kind of a chronic user profile, cheerfully called “amotivation syndrome,” that I have seen freeze patients — lots of patients (and probably lots of other people who would never even think of considering themselves anything like a patient) — in time and in lifetime evolution.  It is not uncommon to see users who spend decades talking about that business they will open, that college degree they will get – the type of life transformations that people who are not under the effects of “Cannabis sativa” usually obtain at a seemingly instantaneous interval.

Marijuana has long been of interest to people in politics.  It represents all that is free and radical and swinging – as well as illegal — so of course people in power want to stop it. Making it a medicine – and it is usually portrayed as a last-chance at merciful relief – was a way to get around the legal-political aspects.

As a free-thinking radical myself, as well as a civil-liberties supporter, I have no trouble with people killing their brain cells recreationally with drugs, alcohol or whatever.  If they are competent to make such a choice, I don’t think they need to be clogging our courts and prisons (and I saw many convicts serving time for minor drug infractions during my tenure as a prison doctor).

Me — my main concern is that I cannot think of ANYTHING so freely available with so little proof of efficacy that purports to be effective.

Whatever.

There is a purely political way of getting rid of it. Yep, the Internal Revenue Service,which can apparently invoke some clause in some law once meant to stop drug lords; but the method, IRS to get folks, seems eerily reminiscent of how Al Capone was finally stopped for tax evasion rather than murder or the other rackets he governed.

Sounds an awful lot like Prohibition all over again. Like they say in France, and it is also true here, “plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme chose….” Translated, that means — “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Or better yet, like in the movie about Bob Fosse, All That Jazz, “Everything old is new again.”

If you have any doubt that anyone — but anyone — who wants marijuana can get it, the reporting by Mother Jones moves forward to prove that beyond any doubt.

People are talking about big business, teamsters endorsement, the large union of service employees international diving in to endorse recreational smoking.

I suspect that part of the interest is, well, that supplementing the value of marijuana for many may be the profits still available in resale. With food and beverage interests against, are we talking booze vs. pot?

With at least one professional sports team not wanting this around, are they really saying “keep it away from my players?”

Whatever financial interests are, people ignore the real clinical effects, the potential interactions and potentiations with prescription drugs.

A choice of chronic marijuana use has potentially devastating effects on individuals, who seem often to get separated from their hopes and dreams. When asked why they smoke, invariably the answer is something like “it is good for me because it relaxes me.”

Once again, people choose short term feel-good over long term quality-of-life. However – I’m fully aware — harangues are of little help where this basic insight does not exist.