Friday, March 16, 2007

A Simple Test

Via Pete at Drug War Rant I learned that "Dr" David Murray from ONDCP was on Bill Bennett's radio show and said this:
This is really hurting us, and it's hurting the people because it's a fraud. There is no medical value to smoked, raw, weed marijuana -- the Food and Drug Administration, scientific bodies have weighed in on this. This is not an open, or a contested issue -- it's clear. It is risky. It is dangerous to the people who use it, and it is not therapeutically valuable. It's not a medicine, so the fraud is to keep offering it as a medicine. And in state initiatives supported by very powerful legalization lobbies with millions of dollars behind it, they've sometimes pulled the wool over voters in state initiatives in places like California, and now even New Mexico.

Like Pete says, it's not really worth debunking this nonsense because it's just an outright lie.

But I'd like to suggest that we agree on a simple definition of medicine: If a number of doctors (say more than 100) want to use something to treat patients, it's medicine.

Medicine is as medicine does. If trained professionals are using some treatment and believe it is effective it is ipso facto medicine.

Not all medicine is equally good, and its effectiveness depends on the circumstances and the practitioners ability to identify said circumstances. But the "market" of medicine will work best if we have different doctors with different ideas of what works using different strategies to treat patients. In the long run, more effective treatments will gain more popularity and wider use.

Whatever your personal (or professional if you're a "doctor" like David Murray) opinion of medical marijuana, there is clearly a plethora of doctors who have used it, are recommending it, and continue to believe that it has a place in medical treatment. Doctors today have wide latitude in prescribing accepted medications for 'off label' uses; denying them the ability to prescribe marijuana for any use is stupid, criminal, and representative of the demonizing politics that I unfortunately believe will continue to dominate American politics for decades to come.

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