Legion Press Conference on Medical Marijuana
The American Legion sent us this to share with y’all;
OK, so The American Legion held a press conference today to discuss the issue of Medical Marijuana, and before launching into the video, I’m going to use a Stars and Stripes article to set it up:
Most veteran households, regardless of state, age or political affiliation, support researching and legalizing medical marijuana, according to a poll commissioned by the American Legion released Thursday.
The Legion, which recently joined the fight for marijuana research, hired Five Corners Strategies to conduct an automated phone poll of veteran households from Oct. 8 to Oct. 10. It included a sample of 513 veterans and 289 family members across 39 states.
The poll, with a margin of error of 3.45 percentage points, found 92 percent of veterans support research into medical cannabis as well as 93 percent of veteran caregivers.
That’s higher than the public’s support of medical marijuana. According to a CBS News poll from April, 88 percent of Americans support medical marijuana use.
“Ninety-two percent of veterans support it. That’s a landslide,” said Louis Celli, a director at the Legion. “We owe it to them to do the research.”
Again, LEGAL MEDICAL MARIJUANA, please be clear on that point. We make no comment regarding recreational, or self medicating or anything else, the point it that we should do the testing.
Our positon comes from our two resolutions on the issue, which read:
Resolution 11 was passed during the Legion’s 2016 National Convention in Cincinnati. The resolution calls on the Drug Enforcement Agency to license privately funded medical marijuana production operations in the United States to enable safe and efficient cannabis drug development research; and urging Congress to remove marijuana from Schedule I and reclassify it in a category that, at a minimum, will recognize cannabis as a drug with potential medical value.
Resolution 28 was passed during the 2017 National Convention in Reno, Nev. The resolution calls for permitting VA medical providers to openly discuss with veterans the use of marijuana for medical purposes, as well as recommend it where legal.
So, with that background in place, here is the video or our event:
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Category: Veterans Issues
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude
I was expecting more people with hemp clothing in the video.
I am not really a drinker, nor do I smoke weed but at the end of the day as a libertarian leaning (note the word “leaning”) individual I don’t care what you consume at your house as long as my personal and property rights aren’t infringed by you in the process.
The war on drugs is an abject failure that’s done nothing but aid in creating a violent black market the same as prohibition did for alcohol. We’ve used the war on drugs to create all manner of intrusions on the fourth amendment and allowed it to happen.
Free society my ass the list of what you can still do is a whole lot shorter than what you can’t.
Ayn Rand was a nut, but as Hondo often points out even nuts are right from to time…here’s one time I suspect she was spot on: “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
“The war on drugs is an abject failure … ”
Yep.
It is the character of the American people that must change. Or, we can just circling the drain.
That would be, “… just keep circling the drain.”
I wholly support medical weed, my pain management doctor has tried to get me to use it, but as long as I can get fired from my job, I won’t do it until it is totally legal. He says it would even help with my cancer treatment as well. I would have to take a lot less pain pills if I could legally smoke some weed instead!
After the magistrate recommendations in his dick slamming by the Legion, the Convict Formerly Known as #89963 could probably use a few doobies.
Worddddddd ^^^^^^^^^^^^
I read recently that magic mushrooms are the latest greatest treatment for the PTSD.
Pot, mushrooms and Viagra. It’s not your grandfathers VA anymore.
I can save the American taxpayer millions of dollars by announcing the results of a study on medical marijuana preemptively.
Marijuana makes people feel better. There ya go. PTSD, cancer, lost your puppy, or just because its Thursday night…Marijuana makes you feel better. For a while anyway.
Echo chambers are dangerous. The over diagnosis of PTSD is epidemic. I have no issue with doing a study with the exception of spending the millions on it to once again verify for the countless time that it makes people feel better. There are thousands of studies already done over decades that say exactly that.
I am against giving the tens of thousands of misdiagnosed PTSD patients access to it. At least not on my dime. I am against giving them access to the drugs most of them already have access to.
I already have too many brothers I served with who are smoked up, sitting on their ass and collecting a check every month.
This is just another magic pill that masks the need for other types of intervention. Lets give every veteran access to MDA and Marijuana…at least we wont hear them bitch about anything after that.
So called PTSD is not a Marijuana deficiency, neither is it an MDA deficiency. Eat all the magic rice crispy treats you want…just do it on your own dime.
I thought the Soviet was what made you feel better about yourself.
Ya, she is a real ego booster. When I assume room temperature the next guy better not expect any kind of emotional support.
Her concern is finding a man that won’t start crying on her couch after I am gone.
Imagine the study proved that THC or CBD alleviated the suffering in a significant way for patients of spinal cord injury or cancer or PTSD.
That result might help in the push to change the classification of marijuana from schedule 1 (having no medicinal purpose) to something else. Then patients that could benefit from marijuana or its derivatives might be able to access something else to help them legally, besides pills and drips.
If marijuana provides a medical benefit and could be prescribed, in the long run, it’s use could cost less than the medicine being prescribed now. Possibly saving you some of your dimes.
The study might prove that using THC/CBD has less harmful side effects.
I get it – you feel PTSD overdiagnosis leads to abuse, fraud and waste. However, your arguments here are unrelated to the good this study might produce.
The state I live in made CBD oil legal for my injury. Good luck trying to find someone to prescribe it. Last time I checked there were three clinics in the state. Buying something legal in another state? Not legal here; can’t ship it; can’t legally grow your own, even if you could get a script. I’ve got to take pills so my hands don’t lock into spastic balls. It would be good to try alternatives without worrying about getting busted.
For you though, Maybe you can go have a drink, you’ll feel better, for a while.
Nah, I don’t self prescribe drugs of any kind because the make me “feel” better.
I only get fucked up to have fun, its usually the people around me that end up needing therapy.
“I only get fucked up to have fun, its usually the people around me that end up needing therapy”
Been down that road – after a while the crowd around you starts to thin out.
At some point, you start to take something so you might feel anything again.
LOL, You could hardly call those that hang around me a “crowd”. You have more fingers than I have close friends.
Insofar as feelings go, I had a feeling once…didn’t much care for it.
Yeah, well. good luck with that.
I knew I had heard that line before>>
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3r31yf
Weed, the new “soma” (from Huxley’s book, “Brave New World”). They don’t call it “dope” for no reason.
There’s research into the active ingredients in cannabis, to see if they can be extracted and turned into something useful by duplicating the effect of the smoked weed. That, I do support.
But having spent the better part of 4.5 years working for people who lit the weed lamp at 5PM, and whose mistakes I had to stay late and fix – LOTS of mistakes – I despise that crap the same as I despise drunk drivers.
If you want to smoke something – ANYTHING – do it on your own property. Do NOT bring it into my house. Not even your effing briar pipe and bourbon-soaked tobacco, Bing Crosby.
Hi Ex, I think that if they let me have some weed, I could stop taking a lot of morphine and the other pain meds I have to take 4 times a day, it would also help me sleep? I currently have to take 32 pills a day! I think with weed, I could cut that in half at least?
32 pills a day? Eewww! And I gag just taking one vitamin!
I understand your point, Willy, but anything producing smoke, including burning leaves, generates an allergic reaction for me, so smoking is a no-no at my house.
Cannabidiol (AKA CBD) is documented as having some fairly amazing properties, re: cancer, chemo, etc., without getting one “high.”
The stuff that gets you high is THC – Tetrahydrocannabinol.
The addition of the extra Hydroxyl functional group completely changes the physiologic properties of the molecule.
That some people abuse pot, just like some abuse ethanol, is a human thing and will NEVER go away. IMO, the R&D should go ahead.
Like everything else under the sun, there’s a right way and a wrong way.
I will say this, though. Long term, heavy use is a REALLY, REALLY bad idea.
A lot of street drugs are opioids stolen from someone’s medicine cabinet. Kids steal them because they will do anything to get high.
That means that that stuff is either being over-prescribed (which is most likely) or no one is bothering to find an alternative resource that is less harmful.
Can’t argue with any of that, Sister.
“Long term, heavy use is a REALLY, REALLY bad idea”
It results in two things.
1. You stop dreaming while asleep.
2. ……forgot
The double standard of the war on smoking but weed is cool is so fucking ridiculous it makes blood shoot from my eyeballs. You weed smokers are obnoxious as fuck and smell like shit. You also make neighborhoods smell like shit.
Get fucked. Sincerely civil society.
oh yeah – so do regular tobacco smokers.
So I was having a psyc interview associated with my TBI compensation and the Doc asked me if I use Cannabis. I told him no-way am I discussing this topic inside a Federal facility as conspiracy to use Cannabis is a Federal Felony. So he said, “whatever .. it’s just that about 80 – 90% of my interviewed TBI patients state they use Cannabis”. And since this state does not allow an advisory for TBI patients, then all these vets are, as John would say, “self-medicating, recreational users: and thus beyond the pale….
One unmentioned fact: the only people willing to answer a robot survey are probably already too loaded to hang up on it. I’ll second the sentiments above: I don’t care what you do ion your own in private. Do not leave or drive, though – penalty, what, kneecapping maybe?
I have been doing casual research for 40 years. So far it has been effective in preventing glaucoma, herpes, impotence, ingrown toenail, body odor and flatulence. The research continues.
Maybe Dave’s Russian has a sister or cousin for you?
as opposed to to making loose marijuana sold by head shops legal for medical purposes, i would rather see funded research to pull out the components that help with pain, depression and all the other supposed benefits. i have never smoked in all of my 51 years so i have no first hand idea of the benefits it might offer an indivudual.
to me making weed as weed available to the general population is like saying ” Here, have some opium, because you know morphine, codeine and all the other derivatives are already in there. we trust you to know what to do” there is a benefit to pot, but it should be refined and regulated just like anything else, not a card to go out and buy an ounce of Purple Kush, Blue dream, gorilla glue #4, girl scout cookies, sour diesel, green crack, mendo breath & wedding cake.
just like booze is a Huge unaddressed problem in the country, i fear that self medicating can and will do more harm than good.
There have been heated discussions about cannabis going back years, and it seems to me those wanting legalization have some valid points:
Up until around 1900, there were pretty much no laws controlling drugs at all. You could buy, say, cocaine or laudanum over the counter. Somehow, when the government started to tighten the rules, cannabis got tossed in the bucket with all the other highly addictive narcotics such as opium. Whether it actually made sense or not.
It might also be worth pointing out that what was driving a lot of it was the same morality play which resulted in the Volstead Act in 1920. Nor is it likely too much of a stretch to say the nannies who drove Prohibition were close kin to the social justice warriors of today. Remember Bloomberg and the Big Gulp ban?
The group of drug companies sometimes called “Big Pharma” hates cannabis. These are the same people who, left to their own devices, would probably want to make aspirin prescription-only and charge $25 per dose.
Another group who hates legalization is the illegal drug trade. If some dude in Colorado is growing a potent strain of herb for his local market, it means less money for the Sinaloa Cartel, for example.
I’ll just leave this to amuse Hondo:
Shoot – that’s only somewhat apropos. I’m kinda surprised someone hasn’t posted this yet. (smile)
And I’m surprised no one has post THIS one:
https://youtu.be/Oqf8rpOt9v8
The issue of drugs is a conundrum
It is plain that the “ War on Drugs” has been a war on our own people and has caused far more harm than good
Locking up huge numbers of mostly black men for drug crimes has had the unintended consequence of generations of young people without any father to be a role model
With all the negatives that has caused the in our inner cities
Most murders in the U.S. occur in inner cities over drugs and drug dealing
As Perry said, before 1910 all drugs were legal and America managed to expand westward, industrialize, innovate and win the Mexican, 1812 and Spanish wars
Yet it is also plain that drugs have ruined many lives and killed lots of people
Marijuana seems to be least toxic of all drugs
We in Anesthesia are against smoking anything
If you are going to take cannabis, we recommend edibles
Medical marijuana is just a front for legalizing recreational marijuana
Which we should just go ahead and legalize
Except for Snoop Dogg. It should probably be a felony in 43 states just for walking around being Snoop Dogg.
Snoop Dog:
Not cool what he did:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ibtimes.co.uk/anger-snoop-dogg-shares-album-cover-featuring-donald-trump-assassinated-1645531
Just think about this who are the biggest lobbyists against marijuana. Big Pharmaceutical. Hildabeast would have won if she said I’ll legalize weed. But she tiptoed around it even though a high % are extremely pro legalization. Read between the lines if big pharm is fighting to keep it illegal and the dnc won’t fully support it legalizing it. These crooked entities must know… it’s all about the $$$
Also if it’s legal who else loses the most
Drug dealers
My father a marine (Vietnam vet) was always viciously against it until within the last 5 years now he just take the “legalize and tax it” approach. He’s 72.
We have rights, and one is or should be, you have the personal responsibility to destroy or thrive in life. It’s not the government’s responsibility to care for you. That’s what drug laws are.
Problem is, the government “taking care of you” is not an “a la carte” menu. It’s a package deal.
If the government has the authority to tell individuals they must have health insurance – and to tell hospitals they must treat anyone, regardless of the ability to pay – then we’ve already “bought the package”. Because logically, that implies the government can both ration care and control self-destructive behavior via statute.
I don’t agree with either a “nanny state” or most drug laws – with a very few possible exceptions. Self-destructive ehavior that poses an unacceptable risk to others IMO is a legitimate target for government regulation. That’s why driving drunk (or otherwise chemically impaired) is fair game for government prohibition. It’s also why IMO there are a very short list of drugs that are perhaps too dangerous to allow, because allowing their use poses an unacceptable danger to persons other than the user (PCP, for example, apparently often makes users both psychotic and violent).
Still: apparently the US public is OK with a “nanny state”. Well, logically that means said “nanny state” can control behavior “for your own good”. IMO that’s bullsh!t, but it’s what we in fact have today.
Veterans Affairs Canada covers 6g/day of Med Marijuana in herb and oil form.
This has eliminated painkillers, benzos and SSRI’s(which made me 10x worse) from my daily diet.
Most strains that I use are lower THC and high CBD, with the exception of my night time dose. I do not smoke it, I make oils, butter, tincture and vape.
I was listening to the radio on my way to work today (this is a conservative News/talk station) and the host said that states that have some form of legal marijuana (medical or recreational) have lower rates of opioid abuse than those that don’t. He didn’t cite his source, but if true, I’d support legalization.