Medical marijuana making gains, still too restricted

By Claude Peters

Canandaigua, N.Y.

Finally, the state Legislature has legalized the medical use of marijuana. However, it is with such restrictions on manufacture, implementation, prescription and locations for distribution that the medical benefits of cannabis will be severely restricted. All because of a public fear that access to marijuana will increase addiction to it.

In 2002, I was in a car accident and suffered numerous broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a ruptured diaphragm. During the most critical pain, I received morphine. I left the hospital, still in pain, with a prescription, limited to one refill, for a small amount of Percocet, a drug containing the highly addictive opiate Oxycodone. I thank God for that drug. It helped me survive a very difficult time. I did not become addicted to it.

In 2009, I had surgery and, to help with the post-surgical pain, I left the hospital with a limited prescription for Vicodin, a drug containing Oxycontin, another very addictive opiate. I am grateful for this drug. It eased my pain until I recovered. I did not become addicted to it.

Those two drugs are highly addictive. Yet, fortunately, they are available to all qualified medical personnel to prescribe. And they are available at the nearest pharmacy.

However, not cannabis. It’s a drug that has been shown to be effective in controlling or treating symptoms of cancer, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, irritable bowel, glaucoma and a host of other medical conditions. It has been shown to minimize suffering from chemotherapy and post-thrombotic syndrome. It has been widely used in many societies since 2000 B.C. (And this is not an argument for legalizing marijuana for recreational use. That’s a completely unrelated debate).

Yet, because of public prejudice, it has made its way through the legislative process only laboriously, so that even today, medical marijuana is not available for widespread prescription. And, when it finally is implemented in New York, patients must apply and pay for state certification, prescribing physicians will first have to pass a four-hour course, and centers that can fill the prescription will be limited and many miles away from the homes of most patients. How different from my ability to access legally much more addictive and potentially dangerous drugs.

That makes no sense to me. I have never used marijuana or any other drug illegally. However, if a loved one were undergoing excruciating pain or disability that only marijuana could relieve, and if because of public prejudice, I could not, with a physician’s prescription easily access it, I would seek to procure it in other ways. There are times when love, compassion and morality trump legality.