For years, activists have been trying to pass federal legislation which prevents the feds from arresting patients (or doctors, growing clubs, etc.) when they’ve been prescribed medicinal marijuana by a physician in the states where such prescriptions are allowed by law. Libertarians have often made valid points about Republican hypocrisy regarding federalism when it comes to medical marijuana.
Loretta Nall provides a brand new argument to use with Republicans on the matter:
I am sick of hearing Republicans scream about ‘socialized medicine that would put the government between you and your doctor.’ Just what the hell is the difference here? The Republicans want to be involved in your health care decisions if they seek to prevent you and your doctor from discussing/using marijuana as medicine…and that is the same thing. Socialized medicine. HYPOCRITICAL FUCKS EVERY ONE OF THEM! […]
[…] Mention that it is socialized medicine for Republicans to stand between a doctor and patient….no matter what their ‘justification’. Human suffering shouldn’t be used as a political football. There is no reason why marijuana should not be allowed especially when people benefit from its use. Many marijuana businesses have taken advantage of using the best marijuana packaging in order to provide customers with the best possible product.
Let’s take a look at some recent Republican stands on socialized medicine and compare them to the views of the very same people on medical marijuana. Surely they should see the successes of Florida medical marijuana and understand this meets a serious need within the healthcare market. Those looking to acquire marijuana products in an attempt to remedy certain health concerns may want to head online to find things like thc vape juice which can be purchased from websites like Leaf2Go.
“In any serious discussion of health care in our nation, this should always be our starting point — because the goal, after all, is to make the best care available to everyone,” said Senator John McCain in a 2008 presidential campaign speech. Later on, he added: “[With nationalized health care, ] we’ll have all the problems, and more, of private health care — rigid rules, long waits and lack of choices, and risk degrading its great strengths and advantages including the innovation and life-saving technology that make American medicine the most advanced in the world. The key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves.”
“Families also place a high value on quickly getting simple care, and have shown a willingness to pay cash to get it,” noted McCain, surely aware that the cost of home-grown marijuana is significantly less than the cost of Marinol. “Government can provide leadership to solve problems, of course. So often it comes down to personal responsibility — the duty of every adult in America to look after themselves and to safeguard the gift of life.”
When asked about medical marijuana on the very same campaign trail, McCain responded, “Right now my answer to you is no.”
On the same presidential campaign trail, Rudy Giuliani had a moment of libertarian lucidity when he stated that “government cannot take care of you. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
Here are some of Giuliani’s views on socialized health care:
Charging that Democrats’ health care proposals would lead to “socialized medicine,” Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday he wants to give American citizens more control over their health care.
“We’ve got to do it the American way,” Giuliani said during a town hall forum in Rochester, New Hampshire. “The American way is not single-payer, government-controlled anything. That’s a European way of doing something; that’s frankly a socialist way of doing something.”
McCain and Giuliani weren’t alone on the GOP presidential campaign trail regarding these issues. No stranger to hypocrisy regarding health care issues, Mitt Romney piped in, as well: “[Senator Clinton’s health care] plan is crafted by Washington; mine is crafted by individual states.”
Of course, Giuliani and Romney both opposed medical marijuana from both a federal and state perspective.
Let’s take it off the presidential campaign trail for a moment and pick on perhaps the most hated drug warrior in Congress. Here’s Congressman Mark Souder’s take on health care (from his website):
Every American deserves affordable and quality health care, not government control. I support a patient-centered approach to health care reform that provides every American, regardless of health or financial status, access to the affordable health care coverage of their choice. Nobody should go bankrupt because they get sick.
I will continue to fight to make health care family-focused and patient-centered. Access to the ohio medical card for marijauna has made a massive and extremely positive difference to patients lives. I think that patients, in consultation with their doctors, should have control over the health care they receive. The government, your employer or a health care plan selected by your employer should not decide what health care you receive. The road to affordable health care for all is not easy or simple but, by implementing more consumer choice, cracking down on frivolous law suits and lessening the bureaucratic paper work it is achievable. Forcing Americans into a government controlled health care plan will not solve the problem. I believe that it will only make things worse.
Here’s Souder calling for a non-patient-centered “approach to health care” which is neither family-focused nor “patient-centered.” Here’s a direct contradiction to “I think that patients, in consultation with their doctors, should have control over the health care they receive.” Here’s a crystal-clear example of the hypocrisy to which Nall referred.
If passed, this amendment would put people in danger of shysters and quacks willing to recommend a dangerous drug, marijuana, in place of federally approved safe and proven medicines. You can get Marinol. We have got other ways by taking a pill to treat this. There are multiple chemicals in marijuana. It is not medicine. Marijuana is just as much medicine as the carbolic smoke ball from the later 19th century was medicine…. The rhetoric about marijuana as a ‘treatment’ for medical purposes… probably was dreamed up at some college dorm…
[L]et me state that my mother and father-in-law both recently died of cancer as well. Compassion is not limited to either side, but there is science and there is not science. In fact, the Carbolic Smoke Balls and the snake oil is very similar; getting high is the same as getting splashed….
Furthermore, we have heard kind of a silly argument here on the House floor today that physicians should be making up FDA law. Physicians do not do trials of a different drug when they come to market. Physicians do not have big testing agencies. That is why we have a Food and Drug Administration. This is in effect asking to repeal the Food and Drug Administration.
Imagine being in the audience the next time a local Republican congressional candidate gives a speech. When it comes Q&A time, it might be fairly easy to ask the following:
Congressman Smith, I applaud your view that the federal government shouldn’t be able to tell states what to do. Furthermore, you are to be applauded for your views that the government shouldn’t stand between a patient and a doctor, that individuals should be empowered to make their own medical decisions, that federal bureaucracy harms the health care process, that when patients have the responsibility to make their own decisions health care costs are drastically reduced, and that health care choices should be made in a free market. Since it’s so obvious that you agree with how I feel about these issues, I’m pleased that you’ll be supporting both the Hinchey-Rohrabacher bill and our state legislation to treat cancer victims and AIDS patients with a bit more compassion.
