Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, what the gentleman said was a one-size-fits- all answer. The fact is, when I first spoke on a similar amendment about the DEA and marijuana, it was about a gentleman named Oral James Mitchell, Jr., a Navy SEAL who served this country in Vietnam and died in 1996 of pancreatic cancer. He violated the law in 1996 in the State of Maryland because he used marijuana to ease his nausea. Also, as his mother said: It is the only thing that allows Oral to smile and to eat. He didn't like the Marinol. He said it didn't do as much good as smoking marijuana. When we are talking about somebody who has cancer and wants to use marijuana to improve the condition they are in and suffering from the nausea--and there is a lot of evidence that it is better than Marinol-- then we don't have to worry about the situations that the doctor mentioned about possibly causing somebody heart disease over a period of years, which we know tobacco does and it is sold all around and legal. We are talking about saving people pain, and we are talking about a VA doctor being able to distinguish between allowing somebody who might be in the last months or years of life and alleviating their pain with one of the best agents known to man to do that, rather than a situation where somebody might be young. We don't have that many veterans who are as young as the AMA study discussed and their ability to think. That was talking about kids who were teenagers. They are not veterans.…”