Video Exposes Medical Marijuana as Hoax
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | June 30, 2005
The video footage . . . gives the lie to the claim that we often see in the media that smoking marijuana is a legitimate medical treatment for people with diseases.
Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri has vetoed a "medical marijuana" bill, saying it would encourage marijuana use and criminal activity. His veto comes as an anti-drug group has released dramatic video footage of a marijuana activist declaring that he uses dope for a health problem that he doesn't really have. The bottom line for this activist, Ed Rosenthal, is that "I like to get high. Marijuana is fun." The video has the potential of dealing a major blow to the "medical marijuana" movement, largely funded by billionaire George Soros.
The video footage, posted at the website www.sorosmonitor.com, gives the lie to the claim that we often see in the media that smoking marijuana is a legitimate medical treatment for people with diseases. Rosenthal, who was associated with High Times magazine for many years, is shown speaking to dozens of marijuana activists. "With all the talk about medical marijuana, I have to tell you that I also use marijuana medically (laughter)," he says. "I have a latent glaucoma, which has never been diagnosed (more laughter). And the reason why it has never been diagnosed is because I've been treating it (laughter)…But there is a reason why I do use it. And that is because I like to get high. (cheers, applause). Marijuana is fun."
The video proves that "medical marijuana" is a joke to those on the inside of the pro-pot movement who realize that getting the public and the media to accept the notion that smoking marijuana alleviates health problems is a major step down the road to complete legalization of dope. In fact, another video excerpt shows Richard Cowan, former director of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), saying that "The key to it [legalization] is medical access because once you have hundreds of thousands of people using marijuana medically under medical supervision the whole scam is going to be blown…Once there's medical access and if we continue to do what we have to do-and we will-then we'll get full legalization."
Cowan says that his reference to "scam" is a comment on the anti-marijuana "prohibition" movement. He stands by his remarks that the widespread use of marijuana on medical grounds "would hasten the full legalization of cannabis for non-medical use." He is quick to say, however, that he is not associated with the "medical marijuana" movement funded by billionaire George Soros. "I have never met Soros, I get no money from him, and have never sought any personally," he says. Cowan currently operates a pro-marijuana website.
Steven Steiner, who runs the anti-Soros website, www.sorosmonitor.com, and the DAMMAD (Dads and Mad Moms Against Drug Dealers) organization, was in the National Press Club audience last October 28 when Soros was preparing to deliver a Bush-bashing speech just a few days before the election. Steiner walked to the podium and attempted to say a few words about his son, who had died of a drug overdose. He was quickly surrounded and led away, where he was thrown into a door, injured and hospitalized. His hospital bill was $670. Steiner created his website to provide current news on the most prominent drug legalizer in the world. He believes that "medical marijuana" is a fraud designed to usher in full drug legalization, and that the video he has posted on www.sorosmonitor.com proves the case.
But will the major media report on the explosive and shocking comments on the tape? Most of the media, several states-and 161 members of the House-have bought into the notion that smoking marijuana somehow has medical benefits. That was the number of House members who voted on June 15 to prohibit the Department of Justice from spending any money arresting or prosecuting users of "medical marijuana." But the Steiner video is just the latest evidence that "medical marijuana" is just a front for the illegal drug movement and that it exploits sick people.
Six days after that House vote, federal authorities announced the results of an investigation which determined that "medical marijuana" clubs and dispensaries in California had been used as a cover for international drug dealing and money laundering. The problem emerged after California voters passed a 1996 proposition allowing the use of marijuana for so-called medical purposes. One suspect, Enrique Chan, told an undercover agent that if the drug traffickers got arrested and prosecuted for dealing dope they could beat the rap by bringing in "really sick patients with cancer" who were using marijuana and "have them sit on the stand for you." He said that "no jury is gonna try, is gonna convict you." While sick people were being cynically exploited by the dopers, Chan estimated that only about half the people buying the marijuana actually claimed to be sick. The rest, like Ed Rosenthal, just wanted to get high.
The video also sheds some light on a Soros-funded organization called the Drug Policy Alliance. It shows Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Drug Policy Alliance in San Francisco, providing a rather shocking view of how to educate children about drugs.
Rosenbaum says, "I think first drugs are inherently neither hard nor soft, good nor bad…Another assumption has to be that total abstinence from drug use, even if that's what we want, is unrealistic…Controlled drug use is possible…The first thing I would assign is Andrew Weil's book Chocolate to Morphine, which is a classic. It simply outlines pretty much every drug kids come across. And talks about not good drugs not bad drugs, relationships with drugs. He describes them. And I think that's how we need to start…Finally, and probably most radical, I think a goal of harm-reduction education would be to utilize positive role models. I think it would be very useful in a drug education program for people with non-problematic drug experience to talk to them. All the time my friend Craig Reinarman is always saying, you know, why is it that they always bring in addicts to talk to kids about drugs. It's like bringing someone in who failed at it to tell them how to do it or how not to do it. That just doesn't make any
sense. What if we had people who had used drugs for a long time in a controlled rational way-didn't get into trouble with drugs-to impart some of this information to kids-how they could do that."
At first, when I asked Rosenbaum for a comment on these remarks, she said that I did not have permission to use or quote them. When I replied that I wasn't seeking permission but only wanted her further comment or clarification, she called back to say that "If these are my words, I must have said them a long time ago. I'd like to think I'm more articulate now. I can't remember the context." On the matter of using "controlled" drug users as role models for kids, she asked, "Are you sure I said those words?" In any case, she said that her perspective has "evolved" and she has "learned a lot." She added, "That particular quote is not what I would want to say at this particular moment."
Rosenbaum said her position is that young people "need to be given comprehensive science-based information" about drugs because they "make their own decisions, despite our best efforts."
On her website, devoted to a "reality-based" approach to drug education, she features a letter to her own son Johnny about illegal drugs. Rosenbaum urges him to abstain. But if he doesn't abstain and chooses to "experiment," she recommends that he learn as much as he can "and use common sense." She adds, "And please, Johnny, use moderation."
Rosenbaum spoke to AIM after delivering a "Teens and Drugs" presentation at the national conference of the PTA.
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
13 Comments
There are some who for sure need to use it for health reason. For example, people with certain type of cancers don’t feel hungry and need to smoke for get apetite. There are lot of people suffering from chronic pain which requires them to smoke as well. So I see the reason behind the medical use.
You have some very good points here, controlling drug use is not an easy task. I am not against medical use of marijuana, and there are many people thinking likewise. Nevertheless it bothers me to see people using marijuana as a medical pretext when they don’t need to…
I smoke pot for fun and i have legit medical reasons for using it also.. as does my girlfriend, who would die if she didn’t use either Marijuana or some other type of medication.. Truth is, Marijuana is medically helpful in many different ways and is better for you than the real “drugs” that are on the market being produced in labs. I think Marijuana should be 100% legal, because 1 it has great medical values. 2 it can be used to produce about 85% of the things you own that are either, plastic, fiber, oil, fuel, food, medicine.. etc.. people who smoke Marijuana typically live longer than those who dont use drugs at all, and about 24 years longer than those who use alcohol and tobacco. all you anti-Marijuana people need to go do some research. Marijuana is a wonderful plant on our planet, and if you do some research you will find that it is more valuable to us than all other plants combined.. 1/2 the chemicals in the world are used each year for the growth of cotton. Marijuana / Hemp requires 0 chemicals.. so its a lot better for our environment.. also its the strongest fiber in the world, grows faster than cotton, the warmest fiber in the world, the softest fiber in the world, the Marijuana seed is the #1 best source of food on the planet out of about 3,000,000 possible food sources on Earth. The effects of getting caught by the police are so much worse than the effect of the drug itself (esp since its good for u.. look it up).. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for this wonderful plant to be illegal…
feel free to contact me via e-mail if u want more info.. i know almost everything there is to know about Marijuana
I would support medical marijuana if I knew that it really helps ill people. I think we need more clear rules and delimitations here so there won’t be any confusions for marijuana use.
This whole article is biased and total lies. Medical marijuana is nothing but a great medicine and fun drug for recreation as well.
Fun but damaging to peoples health… There must be other ways for patients to get better without further damaging their health. Besides if you legalize marijuana for these purposes there would be no end to illegal use of it, it would become popular and many would do exactly as this person did and pretend they are ill etc. And the worst part is that they will never admit they are wrong, and they will never try to cure themself in a rehab!
Great stuff.. Marijuana is a gate way drug and almost everybody knows it. I dont think there are any supposed medicinal values of it and if there are any, then they are totally hyped up.
One curious byproduct of our increasingly technological culture is the way we keep searching for natural solutions to otherwise-baffling problems.
It’s a drive that’s been a big part of the stuff we’re made of since the beginnings of time: an innate desire to find keys in the natural world to unlock mysteries of both body and mind.
It’s the impulse that discovered penicillin in a lab dish and which created vaccines for polio and smallpox out of the diseases themselves. And that same restless imagination is now being tested in the fight against AIDS.
I have had amotivational syndrome because of a preoccupied conscience - because of being an accidental criminal- on purpose. My profession is that hardest one in the world- I’m an artist. For years the guilty feeling has cut my attempts at performing my Job- to imagine and paint- in half or less. How great it could be to smoke and feel the full transcendental effects of infinity move me to create worthy windows for those who care to draw the blinds. Now I can’t smoke @ all. Because I got popped with 3.5 grams of cannabis. They want to prove their lies to me in 18 weeks of rehab classes and in 36+AA meetings- as if I were an Alchy. I’m an alchy, a little bit with beer, but not Like the Weirdos in there just to preach and brag about abstinence to “help”. I wish with all my heart that the persecution and the ignorance would end, and like gays, minorities and women we users of the pipe weed could have the bill of rights apply to us too. Need is present in the negative commentators to do more research and see the fact that an Oz. of PREVENTION IS worth two megatons of cure…
May 6 at 12:50 pm | #1 | Link
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