Kitsap County Superior Court judge Anna M. Laurie found medical marijuana patient Robert Dalton guilty. Her reasoning was that his pain could have been relieved by other medicines, so therefore it’s perfectly fine to arrest him and seize his property because he was growing marijuana plants. As Dalton’s attorney Douglas Hiatt pointed out, Dalton’s opiates made him sick and are far more addictive than medical marijuana:
Hiatt was “very disappointed” with Laurie’s verdict, reiterating what he’d argued in court: that Laurie was “second guessing” physician Thomas Orvald, who recommended Robert Dalton use marijuana.
“If Judge Laurie wants to be a doctor, she should go to medical school,” Hiatt said. “No patient in this state is safe if she’s right.”
I’m not sure any patient in this state is safe anyway. Dalton is now disallowed from using the most effective medicine for his pain while he hopes to have a potential jail sentence postponed while he waits for an appeal. In the meantime, Washington state taxpayers continue to pay to prosecute someone who can’t possibly be considered a danger to society by any stretch of the imagination.
Let’s keep up with the Honorable Laurie’s reelection status. I want to contribute to her opponent.
As the old saying goes, Washington judges are nothing more than politicians in robes.
Is there evidence that marijuana is effective for pain?
I am skeptical that marijuana is ever as potent as an opiate.
Lee,
Welcome to Kitsap county. That ruling should get overturned when a judge that isn’t living in the 1950’s gets a hold of it.
Kitsap County Superior Court judge Anna M. Laurie needs to be off the bench and out of any place where she can do further harm. Marijuana should be made legal immediately, and dinosaurs like Laurie need to be replaced.
Oh that’s just great!!! Turn them into opiate junkies, now that’s a life sentence for there is no doubt that if taken on a daily basis any opiate will be addictive and it will own you body and soul. Opiates are HARD drugs, marijuana is a SOFT drug. Hard meaning it is harder and more damaging to the human body. As for you SeattleJew, medical grade marijuana used in conjunction with opiate pain killers will allow the patient to recieve the same comfort but with less opiates. This is the conclusion of a study done this past summer at San Francisco General Hospital. Marijuana is much more effective in relieving Neuropathic pain than are opiates. This I know from personal experience.
SeattleJew: I am skeptical of your knowledge of this case. How did the patient describe his chronic lower back pain and what was this pain caused by? What were the physical and psychological effects of the medical marijuana upon the patient’s symptoms? What were the effects of the opiates, not only on pain but side effects on the patient’s overall health?
Ironic really that marijuana is a drug that should be used as a last resort but opium is a standard medical treatment.
SeattleJew
I am skeptical of any medicine a board certified doctor prescribes for you; so therefore I do not think you should have any. Of course I have no business saying this so I guess we are even.
Not paying taxes has an opiate effect on my lower back but yet I am denied this treatment. Screw medical marijuana.
6 Bananaphone,7
We all agree the issue would go away if MJ were as legal as similar drugs .. coffee, chocolate, tobacco.
That said, the rational for a medical marijuana law, as with any drug, is not that pateients who enjoy an illegal act can do it, but that the stuff has a provable effect .. as is required for every other drug.
In the case of MJ, there are things it is useful for .. esp eating disorders and nausea. From what I have seen there is no convincing data that it is effective as an analgesic. I do know there have been some such claims and would be interested in reading anything Lee or others can refer me to that shows that marijuana, esp in comparison to RHC (which is legal) has a use of this kind.
Until then what I see are marijuana fans misusing the medical marijuana law as a ruse to get the stuff legalized. I guess the end might justify the means if if you really think legalized pot is among the top dozen things we need?
7. CandrewB
Skepticism is good but it mystifies me why so many folks who are afraid of medical science are so accepting of health food, naturopaths, etc.
It is almost as if they think getting an MD makes one avaricious while NOT having the degree produces selfless saints who have no profit motive.
Seattle Jew:
Potency is NOT efficacy. As a scientist, you should know this.
Marijuana is probably a lot more effective than any opiate for weight gain – as opiates do not bind the cannabinoid receptors.
Opiates may be more effective for some pain – but they carry a higher risk of GI side effects and risks for respiratory depression and death that marinol does not.
@9: Maybe it is because there are a number of MD’s who take drug company money. Certainly not all MDs, but a significant percentage. Even the prestigious juounals have some concerns about drug companies influencing clinical trials and the FDA and the lack of reporting on negative trials sponsored by drug companies.
How many people know that Prozac failed it’s first two clinical trials?
@11 The stuff about drug companies bribing docs with money is mostly hype. Typically this is a few bucks for a meal, or maybe to give a talk someplace. Other “bhig deals” are buying stethoscopes for med students, etc.
Far more important issues affect how pharma works. For example,
the profit on drugs used chronically to treat a disease is VAST compared to the profits of a drug that might cure a disease.
drug companies avoid research on a drug if they know their competitors will be able to make competitive drugs very quickly.
research using non patentable drugs is usually not done.
patient advertising produces huge demand for drugs.
medical schools no longer emphasize critical reading of the medical literature.
this decision must be appealed
the experts are the doctors
the judge became her own expert on pain
I think she wanted a way out and was angry the guy was such a good case FOR med mj – no old hippie crack head type
what a legal sham
@13
I suspect it is unlikely that the judge made her decision without referring to someone with expertise.
I wonder if there may not be a different tack for the MJ evangelists? I would make an analogy between FUCK and marijuana.
When I was growing up we used FUCK as a normal part of language. “Fuck you” was even a pleasantry .. about like the contemporary use of “Nigger” as an affectionate term in the black community. As I have gotten older, the censorship of this useful explication has become very annoying to me.
Like marijuana bans or America’s censorship of porn, fuck bans are very much a cultural phenomenon. When I was first in Sweden I was struck by the huge and open distribution of rather tasteless porn. In Sweden, a country that has a public standard of morality far higher than our own, porn is as accepted as candy bars are here.
I asked a friend his thoughts on this and he told me that despite the general atheism of Swedes, they consider sex normal BUT abhor blasphemy! I asked about swear word using sex or feces and he told me Swedish lacks such terms. Goran then taught me the functional equivalent of FUCK. The Swede faced with a similar verbal need uses, FANN. The Swedish “fann”, however, means devil!
I later discovered that this sort of vocabulary decision is true world wide. In Japan the F word is “CHICKSHAW.” Although no Japanese will tell me what this means, they assure me it has nothing to do with sex, feces, or devils!
Back to the medical marijuana campaign. I KNOW that when I am sick or pissed at McCain , saying “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, ” makes me feel a lot better.
So maybe we should have an Medical Fuck initiative?