FEDERAL COURT RULES MEDICAL MARIJUANA JUNK SCIENCE

Judges refuse to overturn the 40-year-old federal classification of pot as a Schedule I Controlled Substance

As far as I’m concerned, medical marijuana is nothing more than one gigantic hoax on the magnitude of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that has been perpetrated on a gullible public by the proponents of pot. I suspect that many of the doctors who swear by the healing powers of marijuana do so to justify their past, if not present, use of pot. Hence the junk science. A couple of good shots of Jack Daniel’s or Jim Beam will give the same results in relieving pain.

Medical marijuana has made its growers, dispensers and pot prescription-writing doctors filthy rich. In California and most other states that have medical marijuana laws, those laws have led to the de facto legalization of marijuana, and that is exactly what the proponents of pot were after in the first place.

The judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had their heads screwed on straight. Had this case been heard before the San Francisco based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the judges probably would have ruled otherwise.

MARIJUANA STILL A DRUG WITH NO ACCEPTED MEDICAL USE, FEDERAL COURT SAYS
There’s a lack of good science, say judges siding with the DEA

By David G. Savage

Los Angeles Times
January 22, 2013

WASHINGTON — Marijuana will continue to be considered a highly dangerous drug under federal law with no accepted medical uses, after a U.S. appeals court Tuesday refused to order a change in the government's 40-year-old drug classification schedule.

The decision keeps in place an odd legal split over marijuana, a drug deemed to be as dangerous as heroin and worse than methamphetamine by federal authorities, but one that has been legalized for medical use by voters or legislators in 20 states and the District of Columbia.

A marijuana advocacy group went to court, arguing that federal officials had a duty to reexamine the medical evidence and reclassify marijuana as a drug that has clear benefits for those who are suffering and in pain. Joe Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access, said federal drug officials had a bias against marijuana that caused them to ignore its benefits and to exaggerate its dangers.

But three judges said they had a duty to defer to the judgment of federal health experts who had concluded they needed more evidence before reclassifying marijuana.

"To establish accepted medical use, the effectiveness of a drug must be established in well-controlled, well-designed, well-conducted and well-documented scientific studies [with] a large number of patients. To date, such studies have not been performed," the Drug Enforcement Administration said in defense of its decision. The passage was quoted in Tuesday's opinion.

Judge Harry Edwards, writing for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, said the judges did not dispute that "marijuana could have some medical benefits." Instead, he said, they were not willing to overrule the DEA because they had not seen large "well-controlled studies" that proved the medical value of marijuana.