never heard of him before but i now believe he is god

Phil, do you have any comments on the Supreme Court decision outlawing medical marijuana? The decision is surprising:

http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/03-1454.html

Yeah I read that this morning, quite disappointing. Kudos for the 3 judges who did support it.

What is Finland’s stance of medical marijuana BTW?

I don’t really know about the official government stance. I suppose medical marijuana is something that is being researched in Finland. I think the Finnish Medical Association supports it. My guess is that Finland’s stance is wait and see. On the one hand, waiting for further research on whether medical marijuana is really necessary and on the other hand, politicians obviously wait for the anti-marijuana stance among the general public to gradually change before they dare say anything about it.

To me, the issues of medical marijuana and legalizing marijuana for all are completely separate. I mean prohibiting medical marijuana is a bit like prohibiting medical morphine. Then again I suppose globally there has been coming so much new research on medical marijuana during the past 15 years that it takes time for both the people and the politicians to grasp it.

I don’t think that any government org. in Finland or FMA for that matter, is supporting medical marijuana.

I think the FMA presented the issue of medical marijuana in a 1998 issue of Duodecim. At least the pro-marijuana people seem to have interpreted their conclusions as supporting medical marijuana. I haven’t read their conclusions, so I wouldn’t know.

I find it rather disturbing that what medicine is okayed should be a this kind of political issue to begin with. Prohibition of a drug is a political issue but in medical marijuana (like in any other medicine) the restricted use of the medicine should be okayed when scientists have come up with conclusive proof.

Well I’m glad to hear that Finland appears to be open to medical marijuana. It’s a shame they don’t take a stand on it and make a change. Finland always seems to wait until Sweden does something so they don’t look like the lone idiots if the change goes sour.

‘One of federalism’s chief virtues, of course, is that it promotes innovation by allowing for the possibility that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”‘

That is from the dissenting opinion. It is fascinating that Justice O’Connor (the woman that decided the election controversy in 2000) and Justice Thomas (an arch-conservative on the court) both chose to dissent against the majority decision, using the above as one of their points.

I read some of the 1998 stuff on the Duodecim web archives. I didn’t find anything where there would be an endorsement for medical marijuana by the FMA as a collective body. This is probably wishful thinking on the part of the pro-marijuana activists. The way I understood it, the doctors writing in the FMA’s magazine Duodecim in 1998 were asking for more research on the topic and were critical of the fact that the effects of both medical and recreational marijuana had been a taboo issue in Finland until then. Lack of conclusive evidence and need of further research seemed to be the order of the day in 1998.

You’re right Finnpundit that the dissenting opinion is interesting. The third dissenter was Chief Justice Rehnquist. As he is himself gravely ill, it didn’t surprise me that he would judge in favour of medical marijuana.