It is increasingly difficult to have sympathy for medical marijuana advocates, despite their chronic and even acute illnesses. This is especially so because these advocates take every opportunity to pose for cameras while taking "doses" of their medication and creating the appearance that their dosing is self-prescribed, self-determined, and self-administered according to standards that appear very different from conventional medical treatment.
When AIDS victims were campaigning for availability of various drugs for treatment of their malady, you did not see them injecting themselves or taking oral medications on television and appearing to savor the medication. Medical marijuana advocates lighting up joints and smoking them on television appear to look more like junkies than patients. And often they appear to be organizationally connected more closely to advocates for totally unrestricted use of marijuana than advocates for cure of the basic illnesses for which they claim to be using marijuana. It almost appears at times as if these "patients" would be using marijuana with or without the presence of illness and that they may be in some perverse way grateful to have the illness so they can justify their marijuana use.
No wonder law enforcement takes such a hard line on medical marijuana patients! Patients who appear proud of their ability to self medicate with a drug that is otherwise illegal, yet part of a popular culture; appear to be disingenuous about the real reasons for taking the drug. And certainly there is ample evidence to believe that a significant number and percentage of "patients" using medical marijuana are contriving illnesses to justify access to this "medicine".
It appears that the goal of some medicinal marijuana advocates is to create a "universal medicine", in which marijuana could be variously used to treat all forms of pain, all forms of stress, addiction to other drugs, and any other form of discomfort or "illness" that can be conceived. Marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal said on a radio interview with Amy Goodman today that he could envision "millions" of Americans benefiting from medical marijuana. I am sure that many joints were lit to celebrate that medical viewpoint!
No, if medical marijuana advocates wanted legitimacy, they would not self-medicate on television. They would not create ten different justifications for taking one drug for one illness. They would demonstrate scientifically that smoking the drug was absolutely necessary because oral medications using the active ingredients of marijuana did not solve their health problems.
There is something extremely unconvincing about the attitudes and demeanors of most medical marijuana patients, and because of this, these people have cost themselves a great deal of legitimacy and sympathy. These advocates are their own worst enemies.