Anti-marijuana claims dubious

Another great letter from my close friend and fellow reformer Dawn Palmer. Way to go Dawn!

Montgomery Advertiser

Anti-marijuana claims dubious

July 10, 2009

The Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency agree that smoked marijuana has no medicinal value, yet they have approved a pharmaceutical pill, Marinol, derived from the active ingredient in marijuana.
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According to the DEA's Web site, it even helped facilitate the research for Marinol. Since the DEA's mission is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations, why would it be facilitating research on a drug it considers illegal with no medicinal value?

The DEA said there are no FDA-approved medications that are smoked. Smoking is a poor delivery system for medicine. However, smoking marijuana is not the only delivery system that can be used. It can be made into tea, cooked in a variety of foods and now there is a vaporizer that takes most of the harmful carcinogens out.

The FDA doesn't approve of smoking opium either, so it has a pharmaceutical drug derived from opium called morphine. However, once morphine is prescribed and the patient gets it home, the FDA has no control over what type of delivery system the patient uses. He could snort it or inject it intravenously. I think the FDA and the DEA are insulting our intelligence with their excuses about why marijuana can't be approved for medicine.

Dawn Palmer
Tarrant