So far, the feds are mum. Crime rates are unaffected, from what I can tell.

I dislike the stuff but believe it’s far less of a health risk overall than alcohol.

That said, there is a small minority within the movement which legitimately does seek MJ for relief or to get rid of nausea. Personally, I think that if the Israeli research pans out (and if the FDA isn’t fool enough to block its approval), that would be great — advances in medicine always excite me, and many people who could use the relief would rather not have the side effects of MJ. More choice is always good in the context of informed, personalized medicine.

I am curious to see what happens when the first state decides to legalize marijuana (i.e., Federal government response, crime rates, addiction rates, etc).

But of course we know that morphine and other drugs are better at pain relief that marijuana. I mean we can numb a person up with pills. Now, I understand that patients are different and that some have had better results at some level with smoking than pills.

But I must say that I had never heard that pot was a pain reliever. I thought this was mostly about its effectiveness in relieving nausea for people with certain diseases.

My main point in the column is to decry the whole ruse by many that just want to get high by getting their doc to prescribe it as a way to go around the main issue.

I favor being up front about it, but I know that many are sincere in their belief and that science is inexact.

Used to work with a woman (a Catholic, an athlete, really bright and well-educated), who discovered in her mid-20s that she had MS.

I began working with her about 10 years later, by which time the MS symptoms were beginning to become something of a problem for her; in particular, the pain.

We got got to know one another fairly well; and on one occasion in the late 1990s, she told me she was smoking pot, at home, because it was the ONLY thing that would touch her pain.

This woman, now deceased, was the farthest thing from a druggie or a hippie.

I personally agree that most of the pro-mj activists arguments are annoying.

I personally wouldn’t mind if marijuana was legalized, but is not going to solve any significant problem.

No it wouldn’t solve the problems of the war on drugs, as the money, and most of the crime, has much more to do with the harder drugs like heroin and cocaine. Especially if they taxed it like alcohol or tobacco, as they would have to patrol illegal production and smuggling anyway, they would just move the responsibilities from the DEA to the BATFE one floor up in the federal building.