Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Farr, bringing this forward. I agree with what he said, except for one item. And that is that somehow medical marijuana is intensely controversial. What we're finding is that with the American public it's no longer really that controversial. As he said, 20 jurisdictions, 19 States and the District of Columbia, have approved medical marijuana to be available to their citizens. Over 1 million Americans are people who are legally entitled to have the qualities of medical marijuana. It has long been recognized that it has therapeutic values. They use it to deal with chronic paralyzing pain, the nausea associated with chemotherapy, symptoms of multiple sclerosis. There are many applications that are going to make a difference to our veterans dealing with traumatic brain injury or PTSD. Now, it is ironic that when we are trying to have a veterans health system that deals with the total patient--and the committee just supported an amendment that I had earlier to help give them alternative therapies--that we would prohibit a VA doctor from even discussing a therapy that is perfectly legal in 20 jurisdictions. What is the rationale here to prohibit the doctor from being able to have that conversation, forcing our veterans to go outside the system and incur additional costs? I think it is a misguided policy in the extreme.…”