Jackson Free Press

The need to immediately legalize marijuana nationally is the most pressing moral issue of our time. More and more present and former members of law enforcement agree. Please see leap.cc.

Like the majority of Americans, I strongly support the immediate, complete legalization of marijuana. But as a scientist with a strong interest in cancer research, I feel even more strongly about the need for its immediate legalization for medical use, and the need to ensure that no cancer patient is denied it, than I've ever felt about any issue, because I'm so impressed with its benefits for cancer patients.

Dying of cancer sucks. Ask anyone doing it. Cancer patients can't wait. I urge everyone reading this to please call and email the attorney general, the press, Congress and the president today.

It's amazing what a few well-written editorials and interviews on news programs can do. Medical marijuana not only helps with cancer therapy, seizures, post-traumatic-stress syndrome and chronic pain, but has helped countless Americans, including countless veterans stop using alcohol and hard drugs, both legal and illegal ones.

Every minute an American dies of cancer. Every 19 minutes, an American dies of a prescription drug overdose. Many vets become addicted to prescription opiates and die from them. Nobody has ever died from smoking too much pot. Lots of people's stage-4 cancer has been cured by a high dose of medical-marijuana oil, and every cancer patient that uses marijuana to ease their suffering benefits greatly from doing so.

It is immoral to leave marijuana illegal, for anyone, for even a second longer. But for cancer patients, it's a matter of life and death. Cancer patients can't wait. Medical marijuana has an unmatched safety profile, and for people who suffer from so many diseases of so many kinds, its a medical miracle, and the scientific evidence behind it is rock solid.

For example, medical marijuana encourages apoptosis and autophagy of cancer cells, while leaving normal cells untouched, is anti-angigogenic and is anti-proliferative. It's also synergistic with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, making both more effective. For many cancer patients, it's meant the difference between life and death. For everyone else, it's a far safer alternative to alcohol and infinitely safer than cigarettes. Either take them off the market too, or legalize marijuana right now.

The year 2016 is too far away. It's too long to wait. Every year we lose more Americans to cancer than died in WWII. Between now and the 2016 elections, roughly 1 million Americans will die of cancer.

And it's a horrible way to die.

Jeff Deutsch