This past week or so America is reading about how parents are carting up their kids and moving to Colorado in order to receive “Medical Marijuana” for seizures. I just watched the video on USA today and honestly, the one child who reportedly is having hundreds of seizures a day looked to me like she was just blinking. I don’t know how someone is objectively measuring this child’s reported seizure activity- call me skeptical. Also the father who is constantly clenching his jaw and not looking at the camera seems a bit unconvincing and unconvinced himself.
My intention of bringing this topic up again is not to bash parents who are desperately seeking to make their children seizure free but rather to point out the irony of average citizens making brazen claims that marijuana has therapeutic efficacy for seizures. The examples used in the video are certainly pretty mild conditions. Not all involuntary muscle contractions represent seizures either. Did the editors of USA today bother to test what was in that bottle the parents claim contains special street marijuana? For all we know it is a liquefied version of their therapeutic seizure medication.
In the US we have an agency called the FDA which is responsible for overseeing the approval of medications/drugs for indicated medical conditions. How in the world did this country get to where we are legalizing medical marijuana before the professionals have debated the topic? To this point the doctor community has never suggested in any substantive number that marijuana bought in the streets has any true medicinal value. Additionally how is it regular folks are out there informing the rest of us that there is a new indication for dope, namely childhood seizures? What’s astounding is that the media is so stupid they would publicize such claims as if gospel, suggesting doctors and the pharmaceutical industry are so stupid they never figured this out before marijuana was legalized in a few states. This really smells fishy.
A couple of years back I took a very honest and thorough review of the history of marijuana as well as the evidence (or rather lack of) regarding medical reasons to use marijuana. I will remind folks that this whole thing about using the herb of choice for everything from immune system health to seizures just flat lacks scientific evidence. Given its often desirable side effects, of course America wants to consume marijuana. As far as I am concerned that that is a topic of public debate but please don’t drag your doctor into this. Also, if there really is an opportunity to find an indication then lets by all means scientifically pursue this. Does anyone doubt Johnson and Johnson, for instance, wouldn’t jump on the opportunity to purify, test and seek FDA approval for selling whatever might be active in the concoction those parents are giving these anecdotal cases? I don’t.
Florida’s own John Morgan of Morgan and Morgan wants to set the democratic platform up for the medical marijuana topic, I say go ahead and seek legalization, just not for medical reasons.
One Response
Well said. And our youth sees and hears this and is lead to believe that marijuana is harmless. As always, follow the money. There are enormous sums of money to be made by legalizing marijuana. If John Morgan is successful in this endeavor, I wonder which of his colleagues will be first to fill the lawsuits for all the negative consequences.