|
Times of Trenton Sunday, May 1, 2005 Forum boosts medical marijuana use
By P.G. SITTENFELD Forum backs medical marijuana PRINCETON BOROUGH _ State and federal governments are causing ill patients to suffer needlessly by denying them use of medical marijuana, said representatives from the Coalition for Medical Marijuana of New Jersey (CMMNJ) during a visit last month to Princeton University's Terrace Club. ``The worst thing about the government's death grip on medical marijuana is that they're blocking scientific inquiry,'' said Ken Wolski, head of the coalition. ``Marijuana in its natural form has been proven to be the safest therapeutic drug known to man.'' Wolski added that as a nurse for 29 years, he has seen the dramatic and positive effects marijuana can have on sick patients. The talk was sponsored by Princeton's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), which has 133 chapters at colleges and universities across the country. ``As part of the `D.A.R.E' generation, we grow up thinking marijuana is just as bad as heroin,'' said Reona Kumagai, Princeton's SSDP president. ``Once people realize that marijuana is a medicine too, things will change.'' Discussion panel members pointed to Richard Nixon's handling of the 1972 National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse as setting the pattern for how the government deals with data on marijuana. When the commission told Nixon that ``marijuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it,'' the president disbanded the committee. Advocates now are hopeful for passage of the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act. The state Senate bill, sponsored by Nicholas Scutari, D-Linden, was introduced in January. If passed, the bill would allow patients who have both a doctor's recommendation and are found eligible by a state review board to use marijuana without being subject to criminal penalties. CMMNJ members stressed the need for people to pressure their state legislators on the issue. ``Three million people will call up to vote for the winner of `American Idol,' but will 100 people call their local legislators to encourage them to vote to pass this bill?'' said Jim Miller, whose late wife Cheryl Miller, a victim of multiple sclerosis, was a medical marijuana patient. Medical marijuana is legal in 10 states, including California, Colorado and Maine. ``This isn't a fringe, hippie thing,'' said Jim Incollingo, CMMNJ coordinator. ``We've got mainstream public support. The problem is most people don't realize their neighbors agree with them.'' Panel members cited a 2004 poll conducted by the American Association of Retired People which showed that 72 percent of people aged 45 and older agreed that ``adults should be allowed to legally use marijuana for medical purposes if a physician recommends it.'' ``Despite the propaganda war the government's waging against this medicine, we're still trying to get the wounded off the battlefield,'' Incollingo said. ``We don't need to punish the ill.'' |