Medical marijuana case being heard today

This is a huge deal. This is about so much more than pot-smoking hippies or even the wildly expensive and useless drug war. This is about the government's function in our democracy--are they here to protect and serve the citizens? Or are they fully committed to standing with the powerful against the weak?

The arguments against the use of marijuana for medical purposes are losing ground daily, as more and more people educate themselves about the myriad of uses for the drug for diseases like AIDS and cancer, and many of us come in contact with people who have used it effectively to combat these diseases. (A close friend of mine, for instance, watched a close friend of hers gain back a good amount of weight he had lost due to AIDS after taking up a daily regimen of pot-smoking. He's passed now, but for awhile there he was feeling better.)

We all know where BushCo stands--fuck sick people. There's money to be made for both Big Pharma (beats me what drug they have that combats weight loss from chemo and AIDS but whatever) and a hugely expensive drug war that laid the groundwork of power to take away your constitutional rights that the war on terrorism has only increased. The stink of stupidity in this whole situation is nauseating.

Some Republican members of Congress, meanwhile, urged the court to consider that more than 20,000 people die each year because of drug abuse.

"Drug abuse" is a catch-all term to hide the fact that of those 20,000 people, most of them are heroin and cocaine users. As far as I can tell, it's nearly impossible to overdose on marijuana. But you know what does kill people? AIDS and cancer--people die everyday from wasting away from chemotherapy and AIDS wasting diseases. If their doctors feel that marijuana can help reduce their pain and even help keep them alive, then I trust those doctors a lot more than a bunch of congressmen who were elected by constituencies who don't even quite understand that yes, Grandma was a monkey.

If SCOTUS decides that doctors don't have a right to treat their patients with medical marijuana because of some arbitrary federal laws, then that definitely puts abortion and birth control rights under threat. After all, the whole basis of reproductive rights is the assumption that the government doesn't have a right to meddle with the private health choices made between a person and her doctor. If a doctor doesn't have the right to help keep you alive with marijuana, it will be hard to argue that he does have the right to help keep you from getting pregnant.