Arizona drug rehabs propagandize against Prop 203 medical marijuana

With less than a week before the election, Journey Healing Centers (AZ and UT drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, http://journeyrecoverycenters.com) is sending a medical marijuana wake-up call to voters with a new video: Vote No on Prop 203 and Medical Marijuana Abuse filmed in Venice Beach, CA, along with a message that “It’s Not Only Marijuana.”

What a shameful move by these rehab doctors, so dependent on the status quo of forcing marijuana users into their business through the criminal justice system that they blatantly misrepresent what Arizona’s Prop 203 is about.  They know damn well the Arizona initiative is tightly regulated and nothing even approaching the Venice Beach marijuana scene will be possible in their state.  Hell, folks in Arizona cities as large as Venice won’t even be able to grow their own marijuana in the home.  They’ll be forced to buy it from the dispensary within 25 miles of their home, a dispensary that requires security plans approved by the state, identification checks, and electronic tracking of purchases.

But this illustrates why passing Prop 19 in California is so critical.  While there are thirteen other states that have very well-regulated medical marijuana programs, opponents are always going to point to California, the least-regulated medical marijuana state, and to those in California who work in the gray areas of those regulations.  Videos like this one are the reason why patients in New Jersey have to virtually be on their deathbed to use cannabis, why sick and disabled Minnesotans, Connecticuters, and New Hampshirites still suffer thanks to gubernatorial vetoes, why patients in the existing medical marijuana states face hostile legislators trying to curtail their rights with every new session of the legislature.  Passing Prop 19 reframes the open-air-market feel of Venice Beach from the “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining” medical marijuana frame to an acknowledgement of what everyone sees in that video, cannabis consumers getting permissions slips to avoid police harassment.

Journey Healing Centers is one of the only Addiction Centers publically opposing Prop 203 and Prop 19 because the propositions are misleading and will increase addiction.

Completely untrue.  Hard drug addiction rates in places like The Netherlands, which tolerates marijuana use, and Portugal, which has decriminalized all drugs, have held steady or declined following those policies, and those countries’ rates are far lower than rates of addiction in the United States.

While these Addiction Experts support medical marijuana use for critically ill patients, the reality is that only 2% of the current patients use it for serious illnesses (Billings Gazzette). [sic]

This is that fuzzy math where someone counts the patients, counts those with cancer and AIDS, then divides the latter by the former, thus discounting the people who lawfully use marijuana for pain, nausea, seizures, spasms, glaucoma, cachexia, and other qualifying conditions.

And there is already an FDA approved drug on the market for this purpose, Marinol.

Which doesn’t work for most patients, has terrible side effects, and costs $20 per pill that you’re supposed to swallow and keep down for 45 minutes while you’re puking from chemo.

The Medical Marijuana Project (MPP) is misleading the public by saying Prop 203 was written to help people with HIV, Cancer and Glaucoma (MPP’s website clearly states that their goal is to legalize marijuana, which seems more about money versus helping sick people.) If the MPP goal is to legalize marijuana, why not come out and state that big objective and offer to educate the public about the risks of smoking marijuana?

Because legalizing marijuana and legalizing medical marijuana are subjects as different as drinking beer and drinking cough syrup.  While some people may use cough syrup for fun, its primary purpose is medical.

Pro marijuana groups and individuals say that treatment centers are opposed because they will lose clients if it passes. The exact opposite is true, it will increase those addicted to substances, yet Journey Healing Centers still opposes because of the misleading prop and the lack of education the MPP is providing on the subject.

Ha!  Marijuana is the listed as the “primary substance of abuse” by 17% of rehab clients, second only to alcohol (42%).  So of 1,881,736 people who went to rehab, 321,776 went to rehab for pot.  (Look for yourself; the government tracks rehab statistics.)

However, the reason those people when to rehab for pot is mostly because cops and courts forced them to.  A majority, 57%, went to rehab because of a criminal justice referral, otherwise known as the “jail or rehab” choice.  That’s 183,412 marijuana rehab clients nationwide who are only buying that rehab service because they were forced to, compared to only 15%, or 48,266, who thought their problem was bad enough to seek that service on their own.  Or another way to look at it, almost 10% of the people in rehabs wouldn’t be there if marijuana were legal.  (By comparison, twice the rate of alcoholics, 30%, admit themselves to rehab.)

The Medical Marijuana Project (MPP) is also misleading the public with stories about the importance of keeping people out of jail who need medical marijuana for critical illnesses and that legalizing it will reduce crime. The reality is that out of the half a million people serving time in prison for drug offenses, less than 1 percent are in prison for possession of marijuana (Chicago Tribune). The other 99% are serving time for drug dealing and distributing.

…which is misleading, because “drug dealing” can be a guy caught with weed in two or more baggies, whether he was selling or not, and “distributing” can be part of a conspiracy charge where a guy never touched marijuana and, in some cases, police don’t even recover any marijuana.

How disgusting that rehab centers that claim to care for people with serious drug addictions would oppose medical marijuana, a substance that allows pain patients to cut their use of addictive opioids like Oxycontin and Vicodin by a third to half.  How ignorant that alleged medical professionals would hide behind the “gateway theory” that has been debunked in study after study and by our own government’s Institute of Medicine.  How bullheaded that these doctors would ignore the endorsements of marijuana as medicine by their colleagues in the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians.  And how transparently greedy of them to let the sick and disabled suffer so police can continue to subsidize 10% of their business.