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 ,_ 5 ¸
 Medical Marijuana and the Law:
 Somebody Making Law Must
 Be Smoking Something°
 Ralph Seeley
 INTRODUCTION
 As anyone can plainly see from the title, I am not impressed with the
 current state of affairs concerning people who have a legitimate medical need
 for marijuana. 1 As a cancer patient for the past seven years, I know without a
 scintilla of a doubt that for some of us, marijuana is nothing short of a wonder
 drag, and nothing else comes close to providing the same relief. The
 mythmakers and innuendo-mongers who say otherwise are simply wrong.
 One example will suffice. Those who remain opposed to legalizing
 access to a wonderful drug by desperately ill people contend that the
 synthetic THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) in tablet form (rnarinol or
 dronabinol), legally prescribable and available, is sufficient access to the
 drag, and that "smokeable" marijuana is therefore not needed. 2 Nothing
 could be less true. Chemotherapy4nduced nausea is not "an upset tummy."
 It is an overpowering, horrible loss of control, comple_ helplessness, and
 con s_t__g vomiting, for hours and sometimes for days on end. Giving a person
 in such straits a pill to take would be laughable, if the irow did not result in
 so much misery. It seems impossible that adult, thinking human beings cafft
 understand such a simple concept as "a person constantly vomiting will not be
 helped by swallowing a tablet," yet that appears to be the case with virtually
 everyone who stands against legalizing the drug for prescriptive use,
 including the Director of the Drug ErSorcement Administration (DEA). 3
 1 This paper is written in the first person because m do otherwise would require using all time and space
 available to set up my premise with research and scholarly analysis. My experience with chemotherapy
 and prescribed THC make me able to state the factual basis from personal knowledge for a legal analysis.
 2 Final Rule, Denial of Portion for Marijuana Rescheduling, Robert C. Bonnet, AdminisWatoro DEA,
 March 18, 1992o
 3 Id. Nowhere in the 46 pages of the Fhaal Rule does Bonnet recognize the possibility that getting a drug
 into _he bloodstream through the lungs is a reasonable alternative when the digestive system isn't
 available.