* The Marijuana Policy Project has released statewide and regional polling about medical marijuana. Full Illinois results can be found here. Below are some of the charts. The statewide poll was of “625 registered voters interviewed February 9-16, 2008 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C. Margin for error is plus or minus 4%.”

Click the charts for larger images…

Not surprising. The public is often ahead of where the politicians believe the people are. But that won’t stop the fearmongering of the antis.

[h/t: Chambers]

       

58 Comments - taxmandan - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 10:55 am: I’m not against medical marijuana, but I’m opposed to the way they want to distribute it. Pot shops and medical marijuana cards are a joke. Why can’t it be dispensed at a real pharmacy after a real doctor wrote a real script for it? Just like any other controlled substance. - agreeable - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 10:59 am: I like that idea tamandan. Why wouldn’t it be controlled that way? - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 11:02 am: From the current bill’s synopsis… ===Creates the Alternative Treatment for Serious Diseases Causing Chronic Pain and Debilitating Conditions Act. Provides that when a person has been diagnosed by a physician as having a debilitating medical condition, the person and the person’s primary caregiver may be issued a registry identification card by the Department of Public Health that permits the person or the person’s primary caregiver to legally possess no more than 12 cannabis plants and 2.5 ounces of usable cannabis. === - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 11:03 am: Also, I seriously doubt that the state or anyone else could convince Walgreen’s to dispense medical marijuana as long as the feds frowned on that sort of thing. - Centrino - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 11:05 am: Right, it’s still illegal federally. Federal law supersedes state law. - Bill - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 11:38 am: Just think of the taxes Illinois could collect for a pack of doobs. - alsatian - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 12:53 pm: All drugs should be local and federally legal and dispensed by prescriptions through a pharmacy. War on drugs encouages criminal activities, wastes money and only uses tax money instead of collecting tax money. - chiatty - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 12:56 pm: Marijuana and a number of other drugs ought to be legalized, to ease the burden on our criminal justice and prison systems. The medical marijuana effort is a noble, but small, part of the overall solution. Maybe while they’re at it, the legislatures can legalize prostitution so we can keep all of our politicians in office. - Ghost - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:00 pm: I think the State will need this to get through the next budget negotiation. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:09 pm: The Illinois Review-ers think if we allow medical marijuana all our parents will be sedated too much and leave their kids alone in the bathtub to drown, so anyone recommended medical pot should automatically lose their children. Do they have no concept of what marijuana actually does? Marijuana is a softer drug than many of the current legal pain killers and allows medical marijuana patients to use less of the drugs that are heavier and sedate at higher levels. Or they find they can stop using the much harder drugs altogether. Those Illinois Review-ers are pushing parents to use heavier, stronger, more dangerous, more addictive, and more narcotic drugs around their children. Brilliant! Here’s an interesting question. Since legislation has already passed allowing medical marijuana in Illinois as directed by the Dept. of whatever Health and whatever, could Blago issue an executive order to those agencies directing them to define their rules on medical marijuana and start allowing it without any further bills passing? If so, some reporter might want to ask him about this. More legislation would be needed eventually than what is on the books, but it looks to me like this administration has the authority to set up a medical marijuana program without this bill passing. Look at the poll numbers. Blago needs all the help he can get. Then again, Republicans in Illinois need more help than Blago, but their only proposal thus far on this matter is to automatically take the children away from sick and dying patients that find more relief from medical marijuana than the much more dangerous Oxycontin/Valium/Vicodin etc. - In the Meantime.... - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:13 pm: sit back, enjoy Sinatra… “Doobie, doobie doo..” - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:17 pm: ItsMeDave, the legislation hasn’t passed yet. “In the meantime,” remember that we’re dealing with very sick people here. Sinatra, red wine and weed may be fun for some people, but what we’re talking about here is relief from agony. Funny post, though. - yinn - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:35 pm: In Belgium: http://www.brugesinfo.com/faq-24/85.php I mention it because I have a friend in Brussels who laughs about all the gloom-and-doom that surrounded legalization a few years ago and says he hasn’t even seen or smelled it–not even at Stones concerts! Medical marijuana should be a no-brainer. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:38 pm: California counties estimate they brought in $100 million in sales taxes from medical marijuana in 2006. Probably close to $200 million now. Then there are the taxes on employees and sales taxes on stuff they buy etc. California’s laws are a little more loose than ours would be, but that should give you an idea of how much tax revenue could be generated in Illinois. Then there are the cost savings from the process of prosecuting and locking up fewer people. If you want to talk legalization, the state of Illinois could bring in $1 billion easily every year if the state allowed the counties to make their own rules on Amsterdam style “coffee” shops and a few counties were willing, and save another $200-300 million in enforcement costs. Heck, allowing industrial hemp that nobody can get stoned from could potentially create a multi-billion dollar industry in Illinois and all the tax revenues from that. I was a kid once and the message our current policies sent to me was that our “leaders” are a bunch of paranoid idiots with too much power. Would our society and our government really lock a farmer up in a cage for growing industrial help that is not a drug and has been used since the dawn of man for all kinds of things? What kind of a message is that to our kids? Save the trees, plant hemp for paper! - legalize it - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:40 pm: My mother passed away at 83 from bile duct cancer. She lost half of her weight because of the nauseau associated with both the disease and the treatment. Watching the news one night something came on about medicinal marijuana. I half-jokingly asked her what she thought; she said she would use it in a minute if it made the nausea go away. She said that she figured it was less potent than a number of other medicines she took. We asked at her next visit to the Doctor and he prescribed Marinol (sp?), a pill version. It helped a little but not much. Would smoking it have helped more? I don’t know, but it certainly would have been worth any risks. And she was a non-smoking, non-drinking wife of a Baptist minister. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:47 pm: Rich, I was talking about the legislation that passed years ago and is still on the books now. 70s or 80s? It allowed medical marijuana and put it’s control under the Dept of Health and the State Police, or something similar. But the Dept. of Health and Police never developed rules for it’s use, so it was never in effect. Kind of like the parental notification laws, but with the agencies/administration holding it up instead of the IL Supreme Court. From my recollection of what I’ve read previously. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:48 pm: OK, I think I remember that now. Thanks. - wordslinger - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:54 pm: Hard to believe that we’re still so rigid when it comes to this issue. Throwing marijuana, medical or otherwise, into the same boat as crack, meth and heroin in a “war on drugs” is just silly. I’ve been around the block a few times and have sampled my share of mind-altering substances. Based on that, I’d be more concerned about catching my kid with a bottle of Jack Daniels than a joint. I hope he does neither. But if you want to hear yourself sound stupid, try explaining to a kid why pot is illegal and whiskey is advertised on Sunday tv sport contests. It’s 2008, not 1958. The Woodstock generation is pushing 70. Next issue, please. - Mary Jane - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 1:55 pm: I had to take Vicodin after surgery and have never been so sick in my life. Talk about a horrible drug. Give me marijuana any day if it helps ease discomfort and nausea for those that are sick. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:03 pm: legalize it, marijuana is most certainly a milder drug than what your mother probably was using. Taking any pill to offset nausea is not ideal, and especially not Marinol, which is only THC without the cannabinoids and other compounds in marijuana. A lot of people find ingesting marijuana or Marinol causes more nausea initially, which is why Marinol is not a real alternative to medical marijuana. There is a big difference between absorbing the drug throw the stomach versus the lungs. Smoking it does a much better job of relieving nausea, but there are health risks to smoking. Still, if you are 83 and already have cancer, the risks associated with smoking it might not be a factor unless you have lung problems already. But pill form Marinol and smoking it aren’t the only options a patient has. Cooking with it is possible, but that is more for pain relief than nausea. No harsh lung effects eating pot brownies. And instead of smoking it, vaporization is the better option. With vaporization, the medicine is heated to the point of releasing the oils (THC, cannabinoids, favinoids, etc) without reaching a temperature that causes the medicine to combust or burn. No smoke is inhaled, just vapor with medicine in it. This is the best method for patients treating nausea and vaporizers are readily available and getting cheaper. Medical marijuana patients don’t have to smoke it, and should probably avoid smoking it. Luckily they very easily can, so don’t let the fear mongers argument that smoking medicine is harmful fool you. - Bob - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:13 pm: Nothing helps my illness/nausea more that a little toke. My doctor thinks it should be legalized for this reason. Thanks for the info ITSMEDAVE. You really seem to know what your talking about. - ArchPundit - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:17 pm: Think of the horrible danger. Someone who is dying might get addicted to pot. The horrors. - Princeville - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:43 pm: My late grandfather who died of stomach cancer in 1978 had medical marijuana. No idea how he got it, but I highly doubt the 75 year old gentleman went down to the high school street corner to get it. I was only 18 at the time so it was hush-hush round us grandkids I suppose because my parents thought I might wanna try it as long as Grandfather was, but I’d would have had to be dead not to smell it as I entered his home. Advanced stages of stomach cancer is a horrible way to die and if medical marijuana helped him through it, so be it. Was just reading on the Drug Policy Alliance that Illinois has had medical legislation for marijuana on the books since 1978 but due to lack of clear wording among other things,it has never been implemented. Article went on to say that another bill attempt was made in 2004 but was pulled from lack of support. But I’d say right now with JCAR nothing but an advisory committee (or so Blago says) that now is not a great time to get clear regulation/wording into a another new attempt. - Lefty Lefty - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:44 pm: You know, I got on the mailing list for the Illinois Campaign for Better Health Care a few years ago, just thinking by helping out “crazies” like them universal health care could remain in the news until the people and our reps caught up to the reality of the situation. And now here we are, with even republicans trying to figure out a way to get everyone health care! The issue of marijuana use, medical or otherwise, is similar. A big thanks to the “reefer addicts” who are fighting this good fight. - Ghost - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:58 pm: Legalize it, I beleive the Gov sponsored study (Institute of Medicine http://www.nap.edu/html/marimed/ ) has a study which concludes that with nasuea smoke form is better thne pill form “However, in patients already experiencing severe nausea or vomiting, pills are generally ineffective because of the difficulty in swallowing or keeping a pill down and slow onset of the drug effect. Thus, an inhalation (but preferably not smoking) cannabinoid drug delivery system would be advantageous for treating chemotherapy-induced nausea.” Its a nice study, idnetifies other scenerios where it is beneficial and where it may not be. The Govt interpretation of the report on the DEA website does not match the actual report. - Ron Burgundy - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 2:59 pm: One thing’s for sure, the increase in legislative support for legalization will be directly proportionate to the amount of campaign contributions from the snack food lobby. - taxmandan - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:03 pm: Look at California, it’s not just the gravely ill who are getting MM cards: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories /2007/09/20/60minutes/main3281715.shtml - Ghost - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:12 pm: taxmandan, its not just the sick and in pain who weedle prescirptions for oxycodone either. All drugs are unfortunetly subject to abuse by dr’s who will prescribe them under questionable circumstances. Notice that we do not outlaw oxycodone depsite the rampant abuse in prescribing and taking it. We just try and monitor it and shut down abuse. - VanillaMan - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:24 pm: How much of the active ingredients found in pot is in each joint? How much of an active ingredients is found in a pharmaceutical medication? We don’t know in the first case, and we know exactly in the second. That is what separates us from our medieval ancestors. It is called science. Science allows us to isolate the active ingredients found within nature so that we can give exact dosages to cure illnesses. We don’t grow white willow to get the bark and make our own version of aspirin, so why are so many of you guys in favor of this? There is just no real scientific reason to legalize marijuana. You might like to get high, and want a nice reason to justify a stand for legalizing pot, but don’t pretend that you are doing this for science. Science doesn’t need boiling caldrons, eye-of-newt or dragon’s bane to cure illnesses, or in this case, to ease sickness due to chemotherapy. You guys are also assuming that being sick from chemotherapy will be a medical condition for many generations to come. So, when we create new treatments for cancer without resorting to old-fashioned chemo drugs, will you return to banning pot? Of course you wouldn’t! Because you guys don’t have a problem with legalizing pot anyway, and this is just a big RUSE to justify it, isn’t it? This is the 21st Century, get with the times! We don’t need pot to cure illnesses any more than we need leeches to cure headaches! - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:26 pm: Correct Princeville, I found some more on the 1978 legislation at IdealReform.org, if links are allowed. http://www.idealreform.org/facts/politicalhistoryillinois.shtml taxman, California isn’t the best comparison to the legislation proposed in Illinois. Try Oregon or Nevada or Washington State or any of the others besides California for a better picture of what the proposed legislation would allow in Illinois. Also note that possession of less than 28.5 grams is a $100 fine in California without an arrest. The maximum possession charge in California is still a misdemeanor with 6 months and a $500 fine. In Illinois any possession is an automatic arrest and anything over 30 grams is a felony with 1-3 years and a $25,000 fine for a first offense. California is probably the worst comparison of any of the medical marijuana states as to how it would work in Illinois. But California will be used to exaggerate opposition to this legislation. Nevermind their state hasn’t “gone to pot” after a decade of their laws that have decriminalized marijuana possession for the most part and legalized it for a broader range of medical needs than is proposed in Illinois. - Poopy Faced Gangstar - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:30 pm: look I am all for the distribution of Marijuana to those who are terminal, or in cronic pain, but 12 plants? My buddy just got done with harvest in California with his “orange cush” and his high yield plants give 5 oounces every 3 months. Are you telling me we need to let people in any state cultivate almost 4 LBS of weed every three months? I mean this stuff will blow your mind, its one hitter quiter (so I am told), you couldnt smoke a pound of it in 3 months let alone 4 pounds. If it was 3 plants, or even six I would be all for it. 12, thats jsut excess and anyone who knows anything about what they are growing these days knows it. - Princeville - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:39 pm: V-man, you just tossed us all into the same handbasket, unfair of you. I don’t believe anyone has stated that marijuana will cure any illness, but it can be used for treating sympthoms so to say. My grandfather was requested by his doctor to drink a can of beer every afternoon. Was it to cure him? No. It was hoped to help with forcing out built up gas and to entice the urge to want to eat. I am not in support of legalizing marijuana for the general population, I am aware that some are though. What I said above was my opinion of giving pot to seriously ill/dying people who if they are willing to try it may benefit some relief from it. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:44 pm: Oh Vanillaman, you are wiser than that. I’ll bite. “There is just no real scientific reason to legalize marijuana.” Really? Scientific reason requires theories and hypothesis and research and evidence and studies to come to conclusions. Show me the science that says there is no reason to legalize marijuana. We’ve banned scientific studies on marijuana for decades, so how can science tell us its of no use? Sorry, you just defend that sentence, you are wrong. The multitude of scientific studies that have been done (mostly outside of the US) on medical marijuana prove you are wrong. “So, when we create new treatments for cancer without resorting to old-fashioned chemo drugs, will you return to banning pot?” Curious you should mention this, because a recent study seems to suggest cancer cells in lungs exposed to THC and other compounds found in marijuana show slowed growth, which is good. If we were actually using scientific reason we might find a cure for cancer from marijuana, because the science is still incomplete. VanillaMan, it appears that the science is on our side if you would want to Google it, while all your side offers is a big RUSE that marijuana is a boogey-man that is going to turn us all into zombies that eat children and rape old women. This is the 21st Century, get with the times. Kids know smoking a joint is “safer” than gulping beer bongs at frat parties. Well, most kids, since tragically there still are alcohol poisoning deaths all over the US in colleges each year. But not one overdose death from marijuana. Prohibition didn’t work in the 20th Century, what makes you think it will work in this one? - South of I-70 - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:44 pm: People opposed to medical marijuana are worried about the ’slippery slope’ effect that would someday legalize it for recreational use. Anyone remember the original restrictions on riverboat gambling (as it was called then) compared to what we have now? So to them the issue is opening Pandora’s box, while recreational users just want to keep their stash inside it. - J. Bacon - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:49 pm: VanillaMan: Did you not see the above poll? Are you trying to say that 68% of the populace believes in medieval alchemy and witchcraft? And what part of the “exact science” of Big Pharma is responsible for Vioxx, Trasylol and a handful of other dangerous, yet legal, drugs? To deny that alternative medicines can relieve suffering simply because they’re not made by Bayer or Merck is closed minded and dangerous IMHO. And to do it under the guise of “I’m science, you’re potheads” is even worse. - Ghost - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:52 pm: VM you may want to read the Govt science report I linked. I need to go home and eat the spinache salad and oranges my scientific Dr has told me to comsume for certain of my ailments. Oddly, the doc never said how much active ingredient was in each leaf of spinach, or in each ornage, or the exact weight etc for each one. She is pretty convinced though that I should use them in my treatment. dang her lack of science for not having precise measurements for these healthy foods!!! That must make their use bad. We should probaly just eat vitamins with precise measurments in them…oh wait, the pill form of vitamin delivery is ineffective as many of the active ingrediants pass through before being absorbed…. Its almost like in an educated scietific world we include a wide variety of treatments not limited to precise measurement. Unfrotunetly science long ago failed to deliver a magic pill. Turns out that precise active ingredients in childrens cough syurp were doing bad things for our kids, but it was precise doasging!! dang that science for its constantly evolving standards and openness to new knowledge and ideas. next thing you know we will be using maggots to treat burn victims and leeches as well….. ah science, does thy name not hang in effigy for the rejection of ideas that fail to follow popular thought. poor Galilelo, forced to renounce coperinicus and his idea that the earth was not the center, but then again galilelo was going against science with such crazy talk. - Captain America - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 3:56 pm: We’ve been fighting the drug war for 4 decades and losing. At least marijuana should be decriminalized and possibly legalized and taxed. Use of marijuana for purposes of nausea/pain relief is simply common sense and a total no-brainer. - Centrino - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:04 pm: We’ve been fighting the war against violent crime for thousands of years, yet it continues to happen. Since we continue to fail, we need to legalize murder. It continues to happen, so we should just go along with it. The above statement is in jest, but follows the same logic. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:05 pm: And VanillaMan, exactly how did science figure out aspirin and eye of newt and dragon’s bane without boiling calderons? Wouldn’t that be considered part of the trial and error process that led to the development of aspirin etc.? So without the risk takers eating willow bark where would we be? Certainly not the 21st Century. More like the 16th. In essence you are in favor continuing to ban the willow bark BEFORE the science has been exhausted on it. Fascinating logic. If you believe medical marijuana proponents are behind the times with science it’s mostly because of your paranoid obsession with people that like to get intoxicated. The science is behind because you’ve banned scientific studies for decades on something that, for all we know, might cure cancer. - Leigh - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:11 pm: I think it should be legal period. And for anyone that has watched someone suffering through a horrible cancer knows, if there were any chance mary jane would work, it would be cruel to withhold it. - Ghost - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:12 pm: Centrino, your argument is not a correct logical Comporable. Laws are formulated based upon a cost/benefit to the social structure. If we outlaw somthing at a substantialy higher social cost then the benefit, then it would be a comporable. The better example is prohibition. We outlawed drinking, but the cost to society of making it illegal far outweighted the benefit. So it is legal to drink today even though we have thousands of alcohol related deaths and injuries. We outlaw murder generally because we consider the harm to far outweight the social cost of allowing it. - Gene Parmesan - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:20 pm: ItsMeDave makes a great point. The study of cannibinoids is a very exciting new area. Studies are showing marijuana can help a whole host of health problems, not just glaucoma and cancer. The relationship between cannabinoids and endocannabinoids could lead to huge advances in medical science, but some folks just can’t see past the haze. - ladeda - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:38 pm: amazing to see that smoking to relieve stress has been stamped out but dope smoking is a wonderful thing–FAR OUT!!! - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:42 pm: Centrino - “Since we continue to fail, we need to legalize murder.” That’s where the logic breaks down. Try this instead, since we continue to fail to prevent murders, we need to try other policies to prevent murders. We do that all the time with new laws, but not to the extreme of ignoring murders and doing nothing about it. No one is proposing we just ignore drugs and do nothing about it. Many believe other policies including legalization will actually reduce the harm drugs have on people and society, and that by taking the illegal profits away from the really bad guys, it would also help to reduce murders and other violent crime. That is a far different proposition than taking murder off the books. A physical substance (alcohol or drugs in this) can be somewhat controlled better if it’s legal rather than illegal. Murder is not a physical substance, its a human action, and can not be controlled with laws. Drug use is also a human action that can not be controlled with the laws. Laws can only react and punish human actions after they occur. The drugs themselves that are consumed can be somewhat controlled, but not entirely as we have learned. The drug war has failed in that it can not control the existence and supply of drugs no matter how many people we lock up or how much money we spend. With murder, there is no outside factor besides the human action. That is why murder doesn’t equate to drug use when it comes to policy. Apples and oranges. - VanillaMan - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 4:56 pm: You pot supporters are assuming that there is no medicine out there to help people with chemotherapy side effects. Nonsense! The very idea that we need to smoke to get the benefits of a drug is ridiculous. We have many different drugs available. But what you guys want is pot lealized, and this is the opening you want to use. The problem is, there is no reason to give pot when we have perfectly fine REAL medicine out there to help. And again, you people are willing to legalize pot assuming that chemotherapy will always cause these side effects. Also nonsense. What’s next? People claiming that pot helps them become more fertile? Perhaps claiming that it clears up acne? What snake-oil based nonsense are you willing to embrace in order to legalize pot? What the poll shows is that the majority of people believe that there is some way of distributing pot so that it can be used as medicine. Baloney. The poll shows that people think that pot isn’t a big deal. It shows that people want to help people who are suffering. What’s new about this? For a few generations now, we have been told that everyone should be able to do whatever it is they want to do, and that pot is a victimless crime. So, naturally when presented as a “medicinal cure”, the majority of us are willing to let the cat out of the bag and believe no harm will be done. It is the 21st Century. Time to open a science book and take a look at how we distill drugs from nature. Lets let our scientist do what it is they do and leave the medieval backwoods witch-doctoring to Granny and the Clampets! - Freezeup - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 5:15 pm: Good post, Vanillaman. The California system is fraught with abuse. The California system is causing an influx of marijuana grown there and shipped all over the country, and certainly not for medical use. I too question why it needs to be smoked to realize the benefit. Perhaps the taboo of it somehow increases it’s effect in a placebo sort of way? Last time when this issue came up, “patients” would have been allowed to grow more than five people could consume in a year. Let’s assume for a minute I buy into the idea that medical marijuana has a place in modern medicine. I am still against the idea of “growing your own” psychotropic medication. Todays marijuana is many, many times more potent than the “Woodstock” version. How do you control dosage? Who dispenses it? Who gets it? Is there oversight from abuse? Work all that out and I’ll support it. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 5:20 pm: “You pot supporters are assuming that there is no medicine out there to help people with chemotherapy side effects.” No, we are listening to patients with chemotherapy side effects tell us medical marijuana works better for them than other currently available and much harsher drugs that are more narcotic, more addictive, and with more of a danger of overdosing on. Medical marijuana is a softer drug than most alternatives. Apparently, you prohibitionists think medical marijuana is a harder drug than what is commonly prescribed now. I think that is where the nonsense is. You are assuming that medical marijuana is NEVER a better alternative than other harder and more dangerous drugs. I think its nonsense to ignore medical marijuana in favor of Vicodin, for example, that is highly addictive and very harsh and hurts a low more people than marijuana. “The very idea that we need to smoke to get the benefits of a drug is ridiculous.” So eat it or vaporize it. Problem solved. That was easy if you just stop making stupid assumptions. Medical marijuana patients make all kinds of tinctures and lotions and oils and extracts. There are countless ways to administer medical marijuana without smoking it, so VanillaMan, you can’t make that argument into credible opposition. “It is the 21st Century. Time to open a science book and take a look at how we distill drugs from nature. Lets let our scientist do what it is they do and leave the medieval backwoods witch-doctoring to Granny and the Clampets!” How can scientists do what it is they do to study something if that something is banned? Are you in favor of lifting the ban on the study of marijuana in the US? If not, you have a very empty argument. I’d be fascinated the hear your arguments against industrial hemp too. - Princeville - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 5:34 pm: hmmm, V-Man, never had a wad of tarragon placed upside a tooth for a temp fix until the dentist gets you in. A wee bit of sage in your blackberry tea. Guess that’s the difference between city boy and country girl. Nobody ever stunk you up with a mustard plaster? Anyway, plants and researchers being able to work with them , such as digitalis (from foxglove), echinacea, and feverfew, to name a few, have or are finding their uses. I, for one, support research and trail of medical marijuana, not so I can go on to try and push it for the general public, but instead I see it as a possible to really help and/or ease the sick and dying. Yes, we have or will have a lab drug for this and that, some works, some doesn’t, but the price of these drugs are lining the pockets of the industry and investors. Does one need a high priced drug if one from nature may do the job? Is my insurance agency going to foot the bill for whatever drug doc orders? I would highly doubt that all the people called for this poll were preselected so that the poller knew the majority of them would answer ‘approve’ just so they might someday sit in their backyard and puff their joint. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 5:46 pm: “I too question why it needs to be smoked to realize the benefit.” It doesn’t need to be smoked to realize the benefit. End of story. “Last time when this issue came up, “patients” would have been allowed to grow more than five people could consume in a year.” Exactly how much could five medical marijuana patients consume in a year? This is BS. Are you talking consuming it by smoking it in joints, or bongs, or one-hitters, or blunts, or hookahs? Or are you talking consuming it by making butter with the oils and using the oil to cook with. Perhaps you are talking about eating it raw, or extracting the oils for a tea or tincture. What method of consumption is being assumed to come up with the “more than five people could consume in a year” statistic?. It’s not as simple as whoever provided you with that propaganda wants us to think. “Todays marijuana is many, many times more potent than the “Woodstock” version.” Really? How many more overdose deaths has this “many, many times more potent than the Woodstock version” of pot caused? Zero? Amazing how something supposedly so much more potent still can’t be overdosed on, while we have a multitude of legal drugs that people overdose on everyday, including aspirin. More potent pot being any type of problem is just a myth created to continue using fear mongering to protect the lobbyists that make billions from the continued drug war. “How do you control dosage?” The patients themselves control the dosage to fit their need, which is precisely exactly how all doctors wish they could prescribe medicine. Current pills are one size fits all, or a few sizes fit all. A patient might be prescribed 5mg of a pain killing drug but their body weight and tolerance levels suggest 8mg would be ideal, but the pills only come in 5mg or 10mg. So they take one pill and it isn’t enough, but 2 pills are too much and knocks them out. By self-dosing, as medical marijuana patients will do, they will learn how much is enough and how much is too much, just like everyone has to do with current drugs. If the pain or nausea or muscle spasticity or appetite isn’t helped, they can use a little bit more without taking another full “dose”. If you are assuming that drug dosages are an exact science I’m afraid you are wrong. “Who dispenses it?” State licensed, regulated, and monitored dispensaries. “Who gets it?” Sick people as defined by the legislation. “Is there oversight from abuse?” I assume by abuse you mean illegal activities that are not allowed by the law, such as forging IDs, selling it to non-patients, giving out phony recommendations, etc. Yes, we have a legal system and law enforcement in Illinois that goes after those that break laws and this will no different. I look forward to your new found support for allowing medical marijuana instead of arresting and jailing Granny and the Clampets for doing something that doesn’t hurt anybody else. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 6:10 pm: You know VanillaMan, I hear guns are more dangerous than medical marijuana, especially to kids. So you are in favor of gun bans based on the evidence and facts that science provides us? Guns are getting more “potent” than they were in the Vietnam Days also. There are numerous other ways to protect ones self than with a gun, albeit, less effective with more risk, but you don’t care about what works best for an individual right? Hunters can use bow and arrows or blowguns (if legal) or throw knives or spears instead of using guns, right? That’s what your logic on medical marijuana applied to guns suggests. Science is developing fingerprint identification locks and trigger locks to help keep kids safe, but you’d rather just stop all that nonsense scientific harm reduction stuff and just ban all guns and not use any more science to reduce potential harm cause a complete ban on guns will work just as well, right? You can’t have it both ways. Locking up people with AIDS or cancer or MS in cages is what is nonsense, VanillaMan, no matter how much you want to defend your extreme position, and that is what the poll reflects. People generally do not want the big government, nanny state you are favor of on this policy. - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 6:39 pm: “The California system is causing an influx of marijuana grown there and shipped all over the country, and certainly not for medical use.” This may have been true ten years ago but not now. Because of a number of factors including the federal raids on state licensed medical marijuana clinics in California, they are no longer keeping up with their native demand. A lot from Canada and Mexico/S America still ends up in California. With their more lenient laws in California, they are actually draining supply from the rest of the US. That means less illegal stuff here. Same thing very well could happen if we started allowing it for patients in Illinois. That would mean less marijuana would be in the hands of teenagers and more in grandma’s pain relief brownies. - so-called "Austin Mayor" - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 6:45 pm: Semi- sorta- kinda- tangentially-related: http://tinyurl.com/2al7sj – SCAM - ItsMeDave - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 6:55 pm: Yup, the world is a much better place with dangerous criminal masterminds like Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island locked up for 5 days for having a little pot in her car. VanillaMan’s marijuana boogey-man turns out to be Dawn Wells. - Legalize it - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 7:09 pm: I wish “Vanilla Man” was my Mom’s doctor. Her Doctor was unable to find a medicine to stop the nausea. We aren’t just talking about the quantity of life but the quality. I suspect if Vanilla Man knew he would spend his last six months feeling a constant need to vomit, he would have a different viewpoint. - Four Doors Down - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 7:38 pm: I had something to say about this… Umm… wait, it will come to me. What we’re we talking about again? - enrico depressario - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 10:09 pm: you get what you pay for, whether it’s a lid of columbo or poll results. I’m not opposed to legalization, but screw polls. They are easily manipulated, and ALWAYS favor the SOB’s who paid for them. This one obviously is as honest as pro wrestling. - Bookworm - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 10:38 pm: No substance is “good” or “evil” in and of itself. It all depends on how it is used. Fire is good in your stove or furnace, but bad when it burns down your house. Water is essential to life but also kills a lot of people by drowning. I would apply the same principle to all drugs or chemicals — it is their abuse, not their mere use, that is bad. Even substances normally regarded as highly poisonous like digitalis, nitroglycerin or botulism toxin have medicinal value in small amounts. I would apply the same principle to marijuana. Why should it not be treated like any other controlled substance? For that matter, why not treat it exactly like alcohol and tobacco — legalize it, but tax and regulate it heavily, and impose stiff penalties for driving or engaging in other dangerous activities under its influence. - Bookworm - Tuesday, Mar 11, 08 @ 10:44 pm: Also, why be any more concerned about someone dying of cancer smoking a joint than we would be about them taking morphine, which is far more addictive? Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.