After catching up on Channel 7's Sunday Night program tonight, it highlighted just how narrow minded Australian politicians are both the state and federal level.
Reporter, Helen Kapalos says this is the debate Australia has to have, too bloody right it is - should medical marijuana be made legal?
The story was essentially about 24 year old Dan Haslam who started using medical marijuana to ease the awful side effects he has to go through after regular chemotherapy treatment for a terminal case of bowl cancer, something he's been battling for 4 years.
Chemo can be as insidious as the cancer itself and if marijuana is a way of easing the misery then yes, it should be made legal.
For Dan, it has helped him battle his disease. He has been able to rest, eat properly and more importantly overcome some of the mental issues he faces due to the illness. Dan was very reluctant to use marijuana, primarily due to his father and the position he held as a former detective who fought against the illegal drug trade. Dan's mother, a former nurse convinced him to give it a go and now the entire family, including his father support the need to make medical marijuana legal.
The story went on to show how Dan and his family are forced to source their marijuana illegally and then Dan has to 'refine' his own cannabis oil, this takes a great deal of what he has left of his precious life. Yet he, and his family, are prepared to do this to ensure he does have some level of quality of life before he loses his fight with this terrible disease. The fight he seems destined more to lose is that against the narrow minded politicians who simple refuse to debate the merits of using marijuana.
Please, don't get me wrong, I have seen two close friends go through drug addiction, one who finally succumbed to the horrors of greater addiction which eventually took her life and the other who sustained severe mental illness due to using 'just' marijuana, so I am not an advocate for making a wholesale change to the law to make all marijuana legal however, if it can be used medically to treat such things as cancer then yes, it should be made legal for medicinal purposes.
Surely for patients who are terminally ill commonsense should prevail so that these people, who are suffering enough, have some form of life quality before they pass away.
Dan, and the whole Haslam family, my heart goes out to you all. Keep up the good fight and hopefully one day the leaders of our nation will come to their senses, on at a least one thing. Dan you're an inspiration to all of us.
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