Good point with the fact that phony scrips harm NO ONE. Most people I tell about my mmj assume its phony at first. I'm a healthy lookin guy. I have IBS & other prescription drugs to treat it. The problem is that those drugs only treat the symptoms, don't always work, and have shitty side effects, while MJ prevents the IBS from flaring up in the first place by releiving anxiety / stress & soothing the intestinal lining. If anyone thinks I don't deserve the MMJ I challenge them to take laxatives for 2 weeks straight & see how it feels to pee out your butt 15 times a day. Its not fun and MMJ legitmately helps prevent it.

As a skeptic and a supporter of medical maijuana, I'm torn here. The skeptic in me wants to see some reliable evidence being put forth to the general public about how MM works, and some good studies to show its efficacy, especially when treating pain. Anecdote does not equal data.

But, the MM (and recreational use) supporter in me says, fuck it, anecdotes are enough, let's just legalize it already. Damn...

I'm pretty healthy for a 41 year old fat man. But I am 41, I am fat, so it's a relative thing. I screwed up my back a several years ago and it's slowed me down, contributing to my weight problem, but it's not bad enough to justify surgery. I have Asperger's and occasionally suffer bouts of paralyzing anxiety. Pot helps a lot with both. Here in South Carolina, that makes me a junkie and a criminal. Can't wait 'til I can afford to move to one of those states where I can tell a biddable doc, "My back hurts. I'm afraid to go out. Can I get some pot, please?"

For thousands of years cannabis has been in the pharmacopeia of every society and culture in which it was available including the US pharmacopeia until 1942. It’s been helping humans with pain for thousands of years. Not only is it good medicine, it's great medicine with an extremely low toxicity and multiple benefits other than just pain. And there’s substantial peer reviewed evidence to boot.

If we don't cherry pick studies and examine the full scope of the literature, there is a continuous recurrence of analgesic action since the very inception of the studies on cannabis. It is my opinion that any claims on a lack of scientific evidence for medical cannabis are simply not founded in a proper understanding of the scope of the literature.