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Media General News Service
Published: May 4, 2009
To help battle pain and other problems caused by his debilitating bone disease, Irv Rosenfeld used to take multiple doses of at least eight prescription medications, including strong pain pills Dilaudid and Percocet.
Rosenfeld no longer takes any of those medications to curb the effects of his disease, multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses.
Nowadays, the Florida-based stock broker, who routinely takes disabled children sailing and plays softball, relies on just one medication: Cannabis sativa, commonly known as marijuana.
“Without cannabis, most likely I would be homebound and on disability. That’s if I was alive,” Rosenfeld said this week in a phone interview. “It has literally made my life bearable.”
Rosenfeld is one of just four participants grandfathered into the now closed federal Compassionate Investigational New Drug program.
The 56-year-old has been in the program nearly 30 years, during which time he has continued to push for cannabis to be legalized for medicinal use.
Rosenfeld is not alone, as there has been a surge in recent months by pro-medicinal cannabis activists pushing for changes in law.
One local activist group, Patients Out of Time, for years has been at the forefront of the fight to make cannabis legal medicinally.
Based in Nelson County, just across the Albemarle line, POT is run by Al Byrne and Mary Lynn Mathre, and Rosenfeld is on the group’s board of directors.
They think that, with a presidential administration that appears to be open to their cause, now is the time to win the fight to make cannabis a legal medication — and they believe the change can come at the federal level. Yet there are still many activists and government agencies that condemn marijuana as a dangerous drug that should remain illegal.
For more than 30 years, cannabis has remained a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it is considered to have the highest potential for abuse; there is no medically accepted use for it; and it is unsafe for use under a doctor’s supervision.
Byrne considers the government’s stance absurd.
“The myth out there by the government and people who believe the government is that (cannabis) hasn’t been recognized as a medicine yet,” he said. “There is no logical explanation for the government’s approach.”
He said research has proven cannabis’ medicinal value, noting a study sponsored by POT in which four of the federal Compassionate Investigational New Drug program patients were thoroughly tested and the results showed that cannabis helped relieve their symptoms with minimal side effects.
There also is the Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Researchers there have reported positive results of smoked marijuana in HIV patients and in a study focused on alleviating nerve pain, for instance.
There is much more medicinal cannabis research being conducted worldwide.
But others are not convinced of cannabis’ medicinal value or they believe science can isolate the herb’s medicinal properties and thereby create a safe drug.
Steven Steiner, founder of Dads and Mad Moms Against Drug Dealers, believes legalizing cannabis is a bad idea.
“My stance on marijuana is it is not a benign drug that people equate it to be,” he said. “It’s a drug that intoxicates people who make bad choices.”
He admits that cannabis seems to help some with their health problems, but said science can, and has in the form of Sativex, isolated marijuana’s medicinal properties without the need to smoke it.
Mathre and Byrne believe the federal government for too long has used propaganda and lies to keep cannabis illegal.
Reader Reactions
You are in denial if you think most people didn’t go along with discrimination 100 years ago. We only just began to address it in the 1960s. Right. Nobody has ever died from marijuana use. Please present a case if you think you have one.
Slavery, 100 years ago?
“Almost everybody” believed in murdering black people?
NOBODY has EVER died from marijuana abuse?
Sorry. I WAS taking you seriously, but you’ve gone way overboard in your historical perspective and your fanaticicm toward legalization. Ta.
I don’t believe the people of 100 years ago were more “moral” than people today. Many still believed in slavery, and almost everyone went along with the monstrous discrimination, exclusion and even murder of innocent black people. It is only fundamentalist religious people who make a big issue out of recreational drugs. Again, marijuana makes up 85 percent of all “illegal” drug sales. So, for all intents and purposes, we’re talking marijuana here. Marijuana is not addictive, and niether does it “screw” you up.—Only in the mind of the fundys. —- And, again, NOBODY has ever died from marijuana use, no matter how much they smoked, or for how long a period they consumed it. The government does not provide health support for marijuana consumers, because marijuana does not cause significant health problems. More and more consumers are switching to vaporization, instead of smoking it, so even the minor irritation to the lungs becomes a non-issue.
There is no down side to ending the monstrously destructive fraud of marijuana prohibition.
It’s also interesting to look back 100 years ago, when opiates and all these other drugs were legal and uncontrolled.
My opinion is that it worked (that is, we did not have a large population of helpless, dependent addicts) because of two things:
1) People more often believed in “right” and “wrong” than they do now in these morally relativistic days. They knew, mama and dad and grandma had told them, that it was wrong to screw yourself up with drugs and alcohol, or take a chance on becoming addicted as so many do. We’ve lost that.
2) If you became a drug addict, you just died. There were no government programs to provide drugs, and money for drugs, MUCH LESS to provide a check and housing to allow a drug addict to have children and propagate the problem into the next generation.
If we’d drop the government-funded health support for chronic drug abusers, I’d go along with legalizing all of it. But we wouldn’t survive that the way things are today, and I think people know that; it’s why drug legalization initiatives fail early and often.
It seems to be a correlation between gun control and drug control? The argument against gun controls is always “its the man that harms, not the gun”. So applied to drugs, is it the “addicted” man that harms, not the drug - regardless of the preferred drug: thus, treat the addiction.
As to drug test required by employers, how interesting it would be to do those same tests for alcohol and prescribed drugs. A responsible person is that way across the board: the addicted personality needs direction and education - not a prison record.
>>>“Why do not your same arguments hold true for the legalization of almost any intoxicating drug, such as narcotics?“
Again, we do not have the same alcohol policy, as we do tobacco policy, as we do caffiene policy. Each recreational drug is a different subject. Just as with the currently legal drugs, each should be regulated differently.
Apart from saying no one should go to jail for the possession of any recreational drug, we must look at the unique circumstances surrounding each to tailor a policy that is the best fit.
We should start with marijuana, since science and experience has shown it is most benign of all recreational drugs, even more so than coffee - and the public is ready for it.
Everyone will pass out after a certain amount of alcohol. On the contrary, many marijuana consumers, especially medical marijuana patients, consume constantly all day long, and function well. There are a very few who react badly to marijuana. They are likely allergic to some degree or have a rigid mindset that can’t handle altered perception. It’s not for everyone.
Again, I’m not suggesting “continued criminalization” of hard drug users. As I said, no one should go to jail for using any recreational drug. I do believe the hard drugs should have more restrictions on their use.
I am confident once the public sees the sky doesn’t fall with the end of marijuana prohibition, they will lose their propaganda-induced hysteria and do the right thing about the small remainder of hard drug users.
jontomas -
OK, then, clear as crystal. Next question. Why do not your same arguments hold true for the legalization of almost any intoxicating drug, such as narcotics?
You may say they are more addicting, or stronger, or more dangerous, or something (IN YOUR OPINION), but the same holds true for alcohol. Take anything in excess, and you pass out or go wild.
I’m not suggesting a Reefer Madness scenario where smoking a joint leads inevitably to a needle junkie’s life.
But if it’s OK for you to draw the “hard drug” line where you do, and it’s OK for you to suggest continued criminalization of, say, heroin and PCP, even though some people may say they have a right to enjoy those in the privacy of their home ... it hardly seems fair to castigate those who suggest exactly the same thing, but who choose to include marijuana on the “banned” list.
You both advocate putting people in jail who use “the wrong stuff” in their bodies in private, eh? It’s merely a definition of what the “stuff” is?
There would likely be a temporary spike in marjuana usage with the advent of prohibition’s end, but country’s that have been less hysterical about marijuana, like the Netherlands, have HALF the usage rate of the U.S. Plus, Dutch officials report that seperating marijuana from the illegal drugs market has caused an aging out of the hard-drug-using population. Even if there were a sustained increase, so what? It’s likely most of that increase would be people switching from alcohol. As every major government study has shown ( http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/Library/studies/studies.htm ), marijuana is non-addictive and far less harmful than alcohol. So it would be a boon to society.
It is often counter-productive to speak of a “drug use policy.“ We do not have the same alcohol policy, as we do tobacco policy, as we do caffiene policy. 85 percent of ALL “illegal” drug sales are those of marijuana. The idea of marijuana “impairment” is a largely misunderstood point, most confusing marijuana with alcohol. There’s a big difference. Take driving. Studies have shown marijuana is less intoxicating and less impairing than alcohol. More importantly, while the alcohol consumer thinks he has become a better driver, driving faster and more aggressively, the marijuana consumer is more aware of his milder state of intoxication and prefers not to drive. If he has to drive, he drives slower and more caustiously to compensate. Some studies have shown these ‘incautioned’ drivers have less accidents than totally “straight” drivers. So it’s important not to make assumptions about marijuana “impairment.“
Having said that, I don’t think there is any serious reformer who is demanding to be able to smoke pot while working, or just before working. The vast majority of consumers are responsible adults. As someone once said, “A buzz gets in the way of the job, and a job gets in the way of a good buzz. 8^)
Drug testing, as it stands now, is a witch hunt to make criminals out of good, innocent people who harm no one, in their personal activities on their days off. Implement a testing policy that only indicates current consumption. That is the only one acceptable and just. Ending this cruelly legal discrimination is one of the many great benefits ending the fraud of marijuana prohibition will bring.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if marijuana use was decriminalized.
Most all employers have a drug-use policy - not because the drugs are illegal, but because impaired employees are dangerous (truck drivers, manufacturing workers, etc). Every employer I’ve worked for in the last 30 years had a zero-tolerance policy for drugs picked up in the system on a random test - and marijuana stays in there for 30 days or more.
So if more people started using it then than are using it now, there’s going to be a lot of fired-for-cause employees on the street. That may be more of a deterrent than the law.
I see there’s mostly agreement to end marijuana prohibition. That’s great, an reflects the way sentiment is building all across the country. 46 percent of Americans believe it is time to decriminalize marijuana - for ALL responsible adult uses. Some states, like those on the West Coast, have a majority with more than 50 percent wanting the legalization of marijuana.
Now, if the marijuana-prohibition-industrial-governmental-cartel-complex will just get out of the way. It’s about our freedom.
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