My Sister

In 1986, following an operation for bowel cancer, my sister - then aged 39 - spent the next 12 months or so feeling uncontrollably sick and nauseous. She could not eat anything without feeling sick. She lost so much weight that she looked like an intern from Auschwitz. She felt weak and giddy 24 hours a day. She could barely move most of the time; though she tried to, for the sake of her children. 

She felt like she was a burden on everyone, because she was too weak to do anything. And she also spent much of her time in considerable pain. All the medical experts thought that she was going to die very shortly because she was so emaciated.

But she didn't.

After about a year, she began to put on weight again. And though she remained pretty thin and not very strong, she managed to potter around and do the various things that mothers do - albeit rather tentatively.

Somewhere in the middle of 1989, things started to go wrong again, because the cancer had spread to her liver.

She was put back again on the chemotherapy, and from there on it was pretty much the same as before; but this time it was downhill all the way, until she died at the end of 1990.

Once again, she could not eat anything without feeling sick.

And, again, she also spent much of her time in considerable pain.

Five years she had to live with this.

And it now seems pretty clear that medical marijuana might have saved her a considerable amount of suffering because it can reduce the nausea and make people in her position feel hungry again. And they can eat without throwing it all up. And this means that they do not become so weak and thin. It can also reduce massively the amount of pain that they experience. 

And, as such, it might also have alleviated much of the terrible stress that her husband, her father, and her children had also to endure as they saw her waste away in such appalling discomfort.

Well. That was all happening some 15 to 20 years ago. And I am as furious now over this as if it had happened yesterday.

 I pray that one day I will be able to pay back those revolting officials ...

And I pray that one day I will be able to pay back those revolting officials who sit in government circles and who make tens of thousands of people like my sister every year go through such terrible experiences throughout the remaining few years of their sapping lives just so that they can make themselves wealthier on the back of the drugs war.

Please Wake Up, open your eyes, and see these people for who they really are.

... A Spanish medical team's study released in Madrid in February 2000 has shown that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, destroys tumors in lab rats. These findings, however, are not news to the U.S. government. A study in Virginia in 1974 yielded similar results but was suppressed by the DEA, and in 1983 the Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade U.S. universities and researchers to destroy all cannabis research work done between 1966 and 1976, including compendiums in libraries.

... An exciting new areas of research on cannabis and cannabinoids relates to their effect on the growth and vascular supply of cancers of various types.

... some recent articles here at MPP (NOTE: Archived link as site is seldom working).

War On Drugs - Medical Marijuana

Why Hurt People Who Are Seriously Sick?

 The government is violating federal law by obstructing medical marijuana research, scientists contend in lawsuits seeking faster action on applications to grow the drug. Link now defunct

How anyone can look at these deeply uncaring people in Washington and ever see them as anything but loathsome is a mystery to me.

These self-serving shysters would rather that tens of thousands of seriously ill people every year were denied a drug - medical marijuana - that could alleviate much of their suffering simply in order to feather their own nests and to maintain their empires.

A large percentage of you will experience the agony of watching a loved one dying slowly and in terrible pain.

And, take it from me, you will never forget it.

"Instead of providing relief for critically ill Americans, our government refuses to allow the research that would free sick and dying members of our collective from living in fear of an administration that views medical assistance as criminal activity."

And have you seen the type of people who work for the DEA?

They are not very nice.

They are the most arrogant egotistical gun-toting knuckleheads you can imagine,

They are the most arrogant egotistical gun-toting knuckleheads you can imagine, who seem to swagger around as if they were all John Wayne.

They really are knuckleheads. I am not exaggerating.

And the characters portrayed by John Wayne they most certainly are not.

Indeed, judging by the numbers of them in the photograph that follows, they have probably turned up to arrest an old lady in a wheelchair.

They often strut around the place with puffed up chests trying to give the impression that they are very macho and very brave, and they like to call themselves 'special agents'.

They think that this gives them an air of mystery.

The truth, however, is that they are little more than a government-funded bunch of mindless thugs who are armed to the teeth and who take pleasure in hurting people.

And this includes those who are seriously ill and dying.

Brave men they most certainly are not.

Brave men they most certainly are not.

And the question that we need to ask ourselves continually with regard to the drugs 'problem' is this.

Do we really want to continue to fund, fuel, enlarge and empower the organism that largely consists of the uniformed goons in the picture above?

Would it not be much better for everyone if we dealt with the problem by funding, fuelling, enlarging and empowering the organism that largely consists of the type of uniformed people in the picture below?

There are many reasons why politicians choose to tackle the problems of drugs by using the criminal law and brutish force instead of doctors, nurses and careworkers (e.g. see AH's War on Drugs) and one of these reasons is that they want to train and maintain a huge force of brutality that they can one day use against you - should they feel so inclined.

And people really need also to keep asking themselves this question.

Do they really like to see billions upon billions of dollars being used every year to employ many thousands of people whose idea of a job is to hurt people, or would they prefer to see their money being used to train and employ many more thousands of carers?

Tell me.

Which kind of organism would you prefer to nourish?

Which kind of organism would you prefer to have power over your loved ones and over the world in which they live?

America

A Supposedly Christian Country

And here is another time and place wherein so-called christians institutionally denied seriously ill and dying people access to drugs that would help alleviate their suffering enormously ...

Concentration Camp

And, if you can possibly believe it, my sister actually looked worse than those inmates above, following five years of pain and nausea, and, hence, an inability to eat properly and to keep down her food.

And America considers itself to be a Christian country!

Huh!

What. 

A.

Joke.

Also see The Evils of Cannabis? which shows medical experts referring to marijuana as a wonder drug akin to aspirin, and this piece about Peter McWilliams who fought and lost when he was actually forbidden from telling the jury that he was using cannabis because it reduced the horrors of his incurable illness.