Robin Prosser, who “struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded,” the Missoulian reports.
In 2004, Prosser had reason to celebrate: Montanans accepted a law legalizing medical use of marijuana. This was a great day for her: every day she had to live in tremendous pain. She couldn’t use normal painkillers due to an allergic reaction.
Then came the US Supreme Court decision ruling that “drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.”
Late March of this year, DEA agents “seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.”
A couple of months later, Prosser wrote in the Billings Gazette: “I feel immensely let down.I have no safety, no protection, no help just to survive in a little less pain. I can’t even get a job due to my medical marijuana use - can’t pass a drug test.”
She also wrote: “I’m 50 years old, low-income and sick. I spend most days in my apartment in bed, with no air conditioning, unable to go outside because I can’t tolerate the sun.” Concluding: “Give me liberty or give me death. Maybe the next campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would they help me to die, humanely?”
Since society refused to give her liberty, she chose death - the closest she felt she could come to liberty.
Those who have relatives or family members or friends who live with constant pain understand what Prosser must have felt. My uncle suffered from MS - he died from it a couple of years ago. At a certain moment, he was in so much pain, that he asked for marijuana. Luckily, using marijuana is legal in the Netherlands, and if you use it for medical reasons, the insurance company pays for it, just as it does for ‘regular’ painkillers. His ‘joint’ or ’sticky’ was a source of relief for him. It made his day, his life, doable.
Constant pain is one of the most horrific things that can happen to a human being. It takes every pleasure away. Life’s, quite simply, a constant struggle if one’s constantly in pain. Those people don’t need much to go on living; only to be painfree for a couple of minutes a day, or at least to bring the pain back to the a degree they can handle. That these individuals aren’t allowed to use marijuana is, in my opinion, a crime against humanity. These people are tortured, not because nothing can be done, but because individuals who consider themselves to be God think that they can decide for other people that they should just learn to live with the pain.
Andrew Sullivan has a good post up about this, so does Balloon Juice.
So, how many beatings are carried out by fellows with alcohol in their systems? How much time, money and potential is wasted because people see alcohol as something “casual and usual”? Let’s face it, the “crusade on citizens who use the wrong drug” (Alcohol is a drug)should be a big whopper of an election issue, but I guess it’s another important question that has been relegated to the libertarians, slippery-slopers and those who care about other’s freedoms as much as their own.
This is one of the saddest examples of the insanity of our so-called “War on Drugs” that I have ever read, and yet I know that in reality this episode is probably repeated thousands, or tens of thousands, of times each year. Yet another “war” that never should have been declared, never should have been fought, and never possibly can be won.
While I favor medical marijuana, I can’t say that I support the option of suicide if it marijuana is not available. Pain management is a diverse and growing field, and there are many drug and non-drug methods of dealing with chronic pain. The primary problem is that many patients are unaware of these options and many doctors aren’t well trained enough in this area, or scared of violating narcotics laws. Pain has only quite recently begun to be taken seriously in the medical field.
Remember this the next time you are told the feds only go after the really big people. This is a tragedy and it’s a tremendous waste of the government’s resources.
Legalize it.
[...] wrote an interesting post today on Drug War Gone WildHere’s a quick [...]
America has been thru this before. A century ago, and for almost precisely the same reasons, we made alcohol illegal. (Even went to the extent of amending the Constitution to do so.) Eventually, we figured out that Prohibition was enriching the criminals, and having minimal beneficial effects, so we backed off.
The only substantive difference in the War on Drugs is that some of the drugs actually have beneficial effects in addition to their their harmful ones. And it is taking us a lot longer to figure out that we would be better off backing off. Who says societies learn from experience?
The irony is that drug use IS dangerous to society, and we DO need to fight it —- but prohibition is simply not the way to do it, and counterproductive to boot.
For 25 years I have challenged defenders of the Drug War status-quo to answer why they expect the current Prohibition to work, when alcohol Prohibition was so patently a failure. I’m still waiting for that answer.
Well, alcohol use (not to mention abuse) really is dangerous to society, too. The folks who pushed Prohibition were not delusional is seeing a problem. They just had the wrong idea as to the solution.
As for why the Drug War proponents are so resistant to admitting failure, I don’t really understand it either. I don’t expect to get a sensible answer out of them. But I really wish someone else had an idea — because until we understand what is driving them, we aren’t likely to get a more sensible policy.
I live in the U.S. and I am a Medical Marijuana user myself, I was a Security Guard watching a place where they worked a mine.
Some people tried t steal TNT back in 1985 to blow up a school in California and I stopped the theft but for my doing so I was attacked!
I was hit in the middle of my back with a baseball bat then tossed 15 feet down to boulders and left for dead. Thanks to the attack I was left with nine broken bones in my spine and C-7 is blocking fluid from my spine and crushing nerves.
Every day I suffer more than can be thought of, I go through at least a dozen PAIN seazures and black out from them each and every day. The ONLY thing that stops this is the Medical use of Marijuana.
The Government has me on 500 MG of Morphine a day as well as 60MG of endocet and this was NOT even stopping the pain seazures. And thanks to the Drugs the Government does allow it caused me to have a foot and a half of colon to have to be removed!
Plus the Government tossed myself, my wife and our children out of our home over the legal use of Marijuana here in Washington state where they have Medical Marijuana under I-692.
It looks like my next fight with the Government will be for the right to die with what little pride I have left after the Government is the cause of forcing me to flop around like a fish all the time from the pain seazures and the suffering I am forced to live in.
Thanks BIG BROTHER for making me suffer while you rake in the bucks from pill makers.
Adam,
Let me say that I feel terribly sorry to hear your story and that I understand your anger completely. Of course, my sympathy doesn’t help you one bit, I realize that, but I have to say it nonetheless.
Now, I have a question; why don’t you try to move to a country where it is legal? It’s difficult, I realize that, but is that an option? Say to… Canada?
As for me, I would be prepared to break the law to help people like yourself: I truly consider it to be a crime to withhold it from people like you.
As apain patient, i can tell you that the drugs that are prescribed by Dr.s, DO NOT work for all types of pain. I have been prescribed everything from tylenol to oxycotin (240 MG/day) and nothing has been anywhere as effective as Marijuana. I aggree that this is a huge crime against humanity and hopefully the politicians who have the power to do something, will become enlightened to the fact that marijuana has medicinal properties. i wont hold my breath!!
Todd
fire bon all babylon but wit JAH, we give thanks