DR. TOD UPDATE

Tod Mikuriya, MD, his energy on the upswing, plans to appear at the
"Patients Out of Time" conference April 7-8 at Santa Barbara City
College. Last-minute arrangements to attend can be made by contacting
organizer Al Byrne at 434-253-4484 or emailing Al@medicalcannabis.com.

Dr. Mikuriya strongly suspects that Lipitor, Pfizer's blockbuster
statin drug, had a deleterious effect on the lining of his biliary
tract. He was put on Lipitor three years ago to lower his cholesterol
following coronary bypass surgery.

He has had three patients who attribute similar adverse effects to
Lipitor, including itching, a feeling of cold, and digestion problems.

A lawsuit filed last week by a Teamsters health-insurance fund
charges that Pfizer execs promoted sales of Lipitor for off-label
uses. They certainly succeeded -since 2001 they've sold $46 billion
worth, including $12.1 million last year, making Lipitor the world's
best-selling drug. The suit, according to the Wall St. Journal,
"cites internal Pfizer marketing documents, Pfizer-funded studies and
physician-education programs that encourage doctors to use Lipitor
early in treatment, despite the risk of side effects in some
patients. Pfizer says side effects with Lipitor are generally mild,
such as stomach upset, but the drug has been associated in rare cases
with muscle damage and liver problems."

"Rare cases" of a drug taken by millions equate to thousands of
individual catastrophes. The pharmaceutical manufacturers claim that
the benefits their compounds confer on many far outweigh the damage
they cause a few. (The WSJ piece flatly asserts that Lipitor "has
helped millions of people avoid or manage coronary artery disease,
including heart attacks and strokes.") Our corporate masters are
willing to see thousands of individuals suffer and die to achieve
these alleged benefits (that could be achieved by other means). "The
Sanctity of the Individual" could stand up to Collectivism but it
can't stand up to cost-benefit analysis.

Czech Reality Check

Kirk Muse muses: "There is only one country in the world where adult
citizens can legally use, possess and grow small quantities of
marijuana: The Czech Republic. (In the Netherlands, marijuana is
quasi-legal, not officially legal.) The Czech overall drug-arrest
rate is 1 per 100,000 population. The United States' overall
drug-arrest rate is 585 per 100,000 population. The Czech robbery
rate is 2 per 100,000 population. The United States' robbery rate is
145.9 per 100,000 population, according to the FBI... Could it be
that when people can legally obtain marijuana at an
affordable price, they tend not to use or desire any other
recreational drugs? Could it be that marijuana legalization actually
creates a blockade to hard-drug use -not a gateway?"

A Brief History of the U.S. Left

A federal prisoner who gets the AVA sent us a hearty right-on in
response to the 3/15 column on single-issue opportunism. He wrote
that he had "no knowledge of the 'movement' other than my own life
experience, first as a marine during Vietnam and then as an anti-war
activist. I was pro-Roe v. Wade back when Roe v Wade first happened,
as well as pro civil rights, pro economic parity for all, pro
nationalized healthcare, and pro environment. Experience in these
areas has brought me to the conclusion the best way to achieve
patient rights is to form common cause with people for civil rights,
people for prison reform, people against the war in Iraq, and people
against the war on drugs.

"I am amazed at the vastness and fertility of disaffected,
unattached, yet keenly interested citizens who would readily attach
to a 60's style movement as you describe. Wouldn't it be an
exquisite irony if medical marijuana patients could save the movement
and bring to reality the promise that once was? I think we can do
it, and with a minimum of compromise. I think we can mobilize huge
numbers of voters, many of whom have been prevented by apathy from
ever voting before. I want to help shape and lead such an
endeavor. I want to do this, not because it is simply the right
thing to do, but even more significantly, because it will work, and
we can make it happen!"

I realized that what I'd written about the movement of the '60s was
romanticized. What I really think is... The American "left" is now
in its third wave of opportunism. From c. 1925-1950 it was dominated
by the "Communist" party, which treated rank-and-file workers as
pawns (as if the CPers were smarter than and couldn't level with
"ordinary" workers about their ultimate goal of taking power). The
leaders of the "new left" of the '50s and '60s knew that the CP was a
failure so they decided, consciously or otherwise, to not build a
party but to build a movement with analogous goals.

McCarthyism was a factor, too. Membership in the CP had cost people
their jobs and their freedom, while lefties who had stayed out of the
CP in the '30s and '40s generally were unscathed.

So the new lefties stayed loosely organized for safety's sake. This
facilitated the fractionation into hundreds of single-issue groups
that started at the end of the '60s and continues today. The new
lefties had thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

The fact that the CP was elitist, dishonest, undemocratic,
anti-working-class, subservient to Moscow, etc. etc. doesn't change
this simple historical fact: it takes a party to organize the kind of
social transformation our country needs, a transfer of power from the
corporate owners to the hands-on workers. We need a party that
operates on democratic principles and doesn't lie about its goals.

I don't know how we in the medical marijuana movement can help launch
the party.

Few people who are currently making a good living in the medical
marijuana industry will have any interest in such an effort (except,
of course, to try and co-opt it).