by Marc Phillippe Babineau

Created on: February 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 06, 2009

Medicinal marijuana most definitely has it's place as a medicine, for the treatment of patients with motor-neuron diseases, as well as cancer patients and pain sufferers. Many people, with no knowledge of the healing properties of marijuana, still believe the drug, weed or plant to be the "gateway drug", the harbinger of hard drugs to come. Heroin is an awful drug, and misused, it can lead a person to total personal and financial ruin, leading them into a life of hard crime.

However, many pain killers are made from the same plants that heroin is made from, the poppy plant, the same plant that the Taliban is forcing Afghanistan farmers to grow. There is a place for morphine, dilaudid and other opiates that are very good painkillers in the treatment of pain, but they have bad side effects, the least of which is a loss of appetite. Marijuana, being the only drug known to man that actually makes people want to eat, also kills pain, and when the proper strains are smoked or ingested, the side effects are minimal and the pain relief substantial.

Being a medicinal marijuana license holder, I can testify to the healing powers of the weed that grows so plentiful in the great outdoors, all on it's own, yet takes meticulous care to grow indoors, or in a new plantation outdoors. Medicinal marijuana makes a person need, or want, to eat, and when potent enough, and of the proper strain, has great pain and depression healing powers. Motor-neuron diseases, which cause shakes and other types of seizures, are helped by marijuana to great extents.

There are no other drugs, aside from medicinal marijuana, on the market that make people want to or need to eat, yet there are thousands of drugs that make the patient not want to eat (diet pills, etc.). When a person is in extreme pain, eating is the last thing on their mind. Now, picture a chronic pain sufferer, taking dozens of opioids daily, and living with pain that is the equivalent of a freshly broken bone. Eating is not very high on the patient's to do list, as the body rejects the food, or the interest in food is just not there.

Enter marijuana, the only pain relieving drug that also makes a person need or want to eat. Should the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) enforce federal anti-drug laws in states, like California, where voters have legalized medicinal marijuana? Of course they should, as it is still classified as a narcotic, and therefore not legal for someone without a prescription.

If someone with a bottle full of Oxycodone

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