Medical Marijuana

[bonoman]

Well my great country of Canada are taking the steps in the right direction. Many in Canada know by now what Alan Rock has done. But others outside of Canada might not of heard.

Canada has made pot legal to those with illnesses. I will post two articles about it and where and how it will be grown:
www.ctvnews.com

Canada opens up to medical marijuana


Mon. Jul. 30 2001 6:49 PM

Canada has become the first country in the world to allow severely ill patients to apply to the federal government for permission to grow and use marijuana for medical purposes. But some seriously ill Canadians say the law is still too restrictive.

Starting this week, terminally ill patients can apply to Health Canada, with the written approval of their doctor, to grow and use the drug to relieve pain and nausea, stimulate appetite, and relieve muscle spasms.

But others who want to smoke pot to reduce pain for multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS and epilepsy must first see a specialist.

“Perhaps this regulation is a little restrictive in that sense because they're trying to restrict who can actually recommend medical marijuana to their patients… Even though I see the bulk of the patients who would have the most benefit, I may not have the ability to prescribe it,” said Dr. Gordon Arbess, a family doctor in Toronto.

Until now, severely ill patients could only apply for exemptions from the law which makes it a criminal offence to grow and use marijuana. To date, 292 people have been granted that permission.

Under the new law, applicants can use marijuana if they have have:

-- symptoms associated with terminal illnesses, with a prognosis of death within a year;
-- severe symptoms from specific medical conditions, such as AIDS, cancer, or multiple sclerosis, that can't be treated with other drugs to alleviate their pain
-- other medical conditions in which conventional treatments have not worked.

But some doctors worry about being flooded with applications from patients. And the Alberta Medical Association has told its members to "think twice" about filling out forms for patients.

The Canadian Medical Association objects to the new regulations, saying they ignore normal protocols of pre-market testing that could put patients and physicians at risk.

Health Canada says it shares doctors' concerns and plans to release a manual for physicians, and will closely monitor the implementation of the legislation.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Allan Rock will tour Canada's first legal marijuana growing facility, located down a deep mine shaft beneath a northern Manitoba lake, later this week.

Rock approved the initiative called the Cannabis Medical Access Project, as a way to grow marijuana to treat terminally-ill patients. Health Canada is expected to harvest 185 kilograms of pot in its inaugural batch.

The cultivation site, however, is sealed under tight security. Health Canada officials say the growing facility is larger than three football fields, yet it's located inside an abandoned mine shaft, beneath a lake near Flin Flon, Manitoba.

Visitors must sport special clothing and pass a number of security checkpoints before taking the 25-minute ride down to the base of the mine shaft below Trout Lake.

The federal security level applied to the facility is seven - three higher than the federal lab in Winnipeg that handles lethal diseases, such as Ebola.

Steven Wishnia, editor of the United States-based High Times Magazine, laughed at the security and paranoia surrounding the passive drug crop.

"That is absolutely absurd," he said in an interview from New York City. "If you smoke pot, your blood vessels aren't going to burst (a symptom of Ebola). You are not going to bleed to death internally."

Other people in the community, located 600 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, are trying to cash in on the crop. Chris Pilz, owner of the Zig Zag Zone novelty shop, wants to make sure Flin Flon is known for much more than the birthplace of NHL great Bob Clark, trout fishing and mosquitoes.

He has already sold more than 6,000 T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan Flin Flon - Marijuana Growing Capital of Canada.

"Business is booming," he said. "We are very happy."


And this:

Rock impressed by Manitoba pot-growing facility


Thu. Aug. 2 2001 11:17 AM

Health Minister Allan Rock donned reflective coveralls and a miner's helmet as he toured a high-security underground marijuana-growing facility in northern Manitoba Thursday morning.

The facility, located at the bottom of a deep copper mine shaft beneath a northern Manitoba lake, is Canada's first legal marijuana-growing facility and part of a $5.7-million initiative called the Cannabis Medical Access Project.

Rock walked around the brightly-lit facility and said he was very pleased by the health of the cannabis plants growing under florescent lights, 360 metres below the earth's surface.

"It's an incredible experience to see this operation," Rock said as he watched staff tending the plants. "It's obvious that we have good growth. I'm quite impressed."

Growing and smoking pot for medicinal purposes became legal in Canada on Monday. Terminally ill patients can apply to Health Canada, with the written approval of their doctor, to grow and use the drug to relieve pain and nausea, stimulate appetite, and relieve muscle spasms. Others who want to smoke pot to reduce pain for multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS and epilepsy must first see a specialist.

Prairie Plant Systems Inc. (PPS) of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan will cultivate and produce the marijuana on behalf of the federal government at the Flin Flon site, 600 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg. PPS is expected to harvest 185 kilograms of pot in its inaugural batch at the mine and will deliver the first product to Health Canada by January 2002.

The cultivation site is sealed under tight security. Visitors must sport special clothing and pass a number of security checkpoints before taking the 25-minute ride down to the base of the mine shaft below Trout Lake.

The federal security level applied to the facility is higher than the federal lab in Winnipeg that handles lethal diseases, such as Ebola.

Steven Wishnia, editor of the United States-based High Times Magazine, laughed at the security and paranoia surrounding the passive drug crop earlier this week.

"That is absolutely absurd," he said in an interview from New York City. "If you smoke pot, your blood vessels aren't going to burst (a symptom of Ebola). You are not going to bleed to death internally."


So your opinions?

You all know mine...


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Running to Stand Still-"you gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice."

"we're not burning out we're burning up...we're the loudest folk band in the world!"-Bono

[rougerum]

Pot has proven to have no scientific purpose at all. It is used only as a painkiller when other prescription controlled drugs could do much better. On this case seeing these people are going to die and all, then maybe, only then, could i see them using pot.

I don't think people have the right to get intoxicated, meaning I think pot should never be legalized. Drugs like these have only one purpose and that is to get high. People can drink a few drinks and still stay relatively normal but when they become drunk, then they are in wrong and U.S. laws take place there. When people are intoxicated, other people become at risk and legalizing drugs such as pot will only make this world a much more worse place.

75% of all child abuse stems from intoxication.

80% of all major crimes stems from child abuse.

For a drug to be legalized, it must serve some purpose of good, pot does not, so it should not be legalized ever. People that want pot to be legalized I think are selfish.

I know this thread was not about the big argument of legalizing pot, just doing to for teriminally ill people but I think this thread would have anyways gone into the bigger argument.

~rougerum

[This message has been edited by rougerum (edited 08-02-2001).]

[Trash Can]

If we have legal drugs like alcohol, and harmful addictive tobacco cigarrettes, I don't see why marijuana is so "villianized".
Should it be legallized?? I don't think so.
But are we not hypocrites for saying that as we order our fifth bourbon and coke from the barkeepe, right before we drive home???

Which reminds me. God bless the Boys for their message on the dangers of guns during their concerts... but where is their message on how cigarrette smoking kills so many every year!???? OR on how alcoholism destroys lives???

Peace

[rougerum]

The reason why alcohol and cigarrettes are not illegal is because they have been legal in our society for too long that we have to live with them because making them illegal again would cause only chaos. Both were legalized long ago before people knew the extent to their dangers but I know for a fact if cigarrettes and alcohol were in the same position as pot is now, they would also be illegal.

~rougerum

[Manu Chao]

I don't know if it have a real medical value, but take this... when I'll be dying away on my hospital bed, I'd rather have as much as pot as I can in my system that be "there" and knowing what's hapening... then I could laugh of the disease and make it psychedelic.. (this comment has no scientific value, it's just not fitting in the proper mental-thinking of every day.)

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=HJ Clandestino=

Pis si ô moins y'en avait moins de pauv' crétins
Prêts à mourir pour la Patrie
Kalishnikov et compagnie
Pour faire rouler l'économie
~~Cuba clandestino, Marijuana illegal~~

[Crzy4Bono]

Originally posted by rougerum:
75% of all child abuse stems from intoxication.

80% of all major crimes stems from child abuse.

???
Where did these numbers come from.
And did you mean 80% of all major crimes stem from drug use (rather than child abuse?)
Thanks.

------------------
"I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me." - Bono
Visit my web page at www.u2page.com

[rougerum]

Is this better?

75% of all child abuse stems from intoxication.

80% of all murderers were abused as children.

75% of all major crimes comes from intoxication.

~rougerum

[Autumn454]

I don't have a problem with medical pot use.

[bonoman]

You've lost it rougerum.

I know we have this hate thing for eachother but you sir have lost it.

I don't think people have the right to get intoxicated

This is the most ubsurd comment i have ever read. If i get intoxicated in the comfort of my own house. Be it weed, alchol, or paint its my choice and if i am not running around like a lunatic then what problem do you have with it.

75% of all child abuse stems from intoxication.

80% of all murderers were abused as children.

75% of all major crimes comes from intoxication.

We have all been at free your mind long enought to know you dont make statements like this and not have backing for it. I could turn around and make some out of the blue comment like that about how pot is good.

For a drug to be legalized, it must serve some purpose of good, pot does not, so it should not be legalized ever. People that want pot to be legalized I think are selfish.

Selfish? Why are people who have terminal diseases and who are going to die in pain and want as much pain relief as possible selfish. I know you are going to say that you dont mean them but they want it legalized.


One more tidbit for people not very knowingly of Canada and B.C.(britsh colimbia, a province):

I read in an article two weeks ago. Now you dont have to believe me, because i was just looking for the article and couldnt find it, but i am telling you the truth.

B.C., pretty much the pot capital of the Americas exports to the U.S. every year 6 billion dollars worth of weed. That is untaxed by my and your gov't. That makes it the biggest industry in the province even bigger then logging and oil. Take it for what its worth.

Just to note i think weed should never be legalized only decriminalized. Which means if busted your weed would be taken and you would have a fine to pay. No clogging of the justice system and no clogging of the police time.




------------------
Running to Stand Still-"you gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice."

"we're not burning out we're burning up...we're the loudest folk band in the world!"-Bono

[rougerum]

Bonoman, first off, please read what I actually said. I supported people that were going to die to be able to smoke pot. Alright, you hear that or do I need to say it some 5 more times? I said I supported it and only for that purpose, no other purpose.

Now countary to what you believe, those statistics are exactly true and I want to know how statistics like those don't belong in here? I did make the mistake of how I wrote them first off but I realized my mistake with another post and corrected it. This was an honest make. Nothing more.

The reason people are not allowed to get intoxicated is by no means what they can do in the comfort of their own home, it is the fact that when people are intoxicated other people are at risk. This is where I think intoxication is wrong. Those TRUE statistics show enough of what intoxication does, one can make it even worse by getting out the statistics of how many people in die in car crashes from intoxication and how car crashes is the biggest killer of people of the age of 18 - 25.

~rougerum

[bonoman]

Go ahead go get the stats of how many people die in car crashes from being high on weed. I want you to go and get them. Please!

Secondly, i could care less about stats that are not backed up. Where did you get these stats? From a poster you seen? Where?



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Running to Stand Still-"you gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice."

"we're not burning out we're burning up...we're the loudest folk band in the world!"-Bono

[SicilianGoddess]

Bah. Pot shouldnt even be considered a drug in my book. It's proven to not be addicting and its a freakin plant for gods sake that grows from the ground, unlike various other man made drugs.





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~ Mother Sucking Rock & Roll ~

Sicy's Website

[BLOCK]

Originally posted by rougerum:
The reason why alcohol and cigarrettes are not illegal is because they have been legal in our society for too long that we have to live with them because making them illegal again would cause only chaos. Both were legalized long ago before people knew the extent to their dangers but I know for a fact if cigarrettes and alcohol were in the same position as pot is now, they would also be illegal.

~rougerum

Ya but still doesn't say why its a bad thing to use "pot" for Medical purposes


all that your saying is..marijuana missed the starting gun

p.s. I AM CANADIAN TOOOOO

[Cathy]

My uncle was prescribed a marijuana pill (Marinal I think) for his pain and he said it actually made him feel worse. I think he only took it a couple of times and quit it.
It didn't make him feel all psychedelic and happy but he is just one person.

[rougerum]

Pot has no medical purposes what so ever, pot was used as a painkiller in the past but since there are prescription controlled drugs that could do an even better job than pot could it was no longer used and that was the smart decision as it proved pot had not even one good purpose to it at all.

The stats I got I got from a news show in America known as The O'Reilly Factor on Foxnews, they got the stats from the FDA (Food and Drug Association) that had this study made. The stastics I showed are from what they found.

MADD found that 38% of all traffic crashes are alchohol related.

Pot would add nothing good to the above statistic at all, since all pot does is get someone intoxicated, it would only make that number go higher.

~rougerum

[U2Bama]

Just admit that what you want is easier access to pot so there will be another, more convenient way for you to get "f***ed up" and quit using the sufferings of terminally ill people as an excuse.

So you actually believe people should be able to "use" paint to get high or whatever? Where's the medicinal purpose in that? What are your thoughts on freon? A guy from my high school DIED because he started hitting on a canister of freon one night after he got bored with his pot.

~U2Alabama

[mikal]

I could use some medical marijuana right now! My arthritis is killing me!

[Manu Chao]

Medical use of not, I'd rather have a spliff and be in my world than be in the disease's world... like a big "fuck you" to the sickness...

------------------
=HJ Clandestino=

Pis si ô moins y'en avait moins de pauv' crétins
Prêts à mourir pour la Patrie
Kalishnikov et compagnie
Pour faire rouler l'économie
~~Cuba clandestino, Marijuana illegal~~

[bonoman]

Bama gettin a little testy are we.

I never brought up the issue of legalizing it.

I could get weed in 5 minutes if i wanted. But i dont. This isnt a issue with easy access or having it legalized. It shouldnt be legalized. We dont need more drugs legalized. Look at liquor and smokes, caffeine and many others.

I think it should be de-crimanilized.

This would be the best option for anything. The more generations that are produced the more weed will become less an issue. My parents smoked it in the 60's and 70's and i smoked it now and my kids will most likely smoke it. AND if you have kids i bet ya they have tried it or use it now.

This is everywhere. You and the gov't cant stop it. There are cities and PROVINCES that depend on it.

I dont know what to tell you. You have got to look at the bigger picture. If we stop the suppliers we stop the drug. There will always be people who will want it. We cant foccus on charging them. If we stop cloging our courts with petty weed charges then maybe they could work on the cases that really matter.

I smoke weed maybe once a month. If that. I never EVER want to use other drugs. You could sit there and tell me that it does this and that but there are so many things in this world that can make sittuations dangerous but we dont outlaw them.

Give me some reasons why de-criminalization of weed would be bad!??

------------------
Running to Stand Still-"you gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice."

"we're not burning out we're burning up...we're the loudest folk band in the world!"-Bono

[rougerum]

De-criminalization is not really a bad thing at all. But I still wouldn't go for it because people that start smoking weeds are usually teenagers, that is where it seems to start, usually from peer pressure. I would keep sending them to court and even jail just to scare the shit out of them even more because smoking weed can lead to even more dangerous drugs. I would also have them fined to their necks too along with that. I think the tougher you get on the teenagers the more they become scared to get caught doing it so they do it less and less because most pot charges lead up to probation which is basically nothing.

~rougerum