Morosoph's Journal: Faith-Based Government

It becomes hard to take the American administration seriously when they are deliberatly ignoring evidence, as appears to have happenned here (NYT sign-in/bugmenot required):

Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said Thursday's statement resulted from a past combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded "smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment."

. . .

The Food and Drug Administration statement directly contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency. That review found marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting.

Let me say here that my youth experience of marijuana is that it is an extremely boring drug, and although I find it ridiculous that the drug is illegal, I think that there are many considerably more important things to get het up about.

My question is that if this administration engage in such outright lying, can you really trust them on anything? To me, this is worse as Clinton getting a blow-job and lying about it, as it involves a conspiracy of liars.

Lies and critical words

[Cyberdyne]

The statement was that smoking marijuana has no proven or accepted medical use. The latter is clearly true, since such treatments are as far from "accepted" as it's possible to get; the former is quite possible. All the IoM found was that it is suitable for treating certain conditions. More significantly, the Administration quote refers to smoking it, while medical studies of potential treatment tend (from what I've seen) to use more conventional medical techniques to administer drugs. It would be equally t

Re:Lies and critical words

[Cyberdyne]

The latter is clearly true only in the sense that at a federal level there is no acceptance. To argue that there isn't a not-insignificant amount of acceptance from various doctors and medical agencies would be absurd. Anything below the "official" position at the federal level, and such a statement immediately becomes highly arguable.

If you define 'acceptance' as 'some people support/do it', yes. I set the bar a little higher: I'd class aspirin as an accepted treatment because finding a doctor opposed to

Re:Lies and critical words

[Morosoph]

I'll give you Clinton, which was morally wrong. However, this report was about smoking marijuana, so the administration is definately lying, which is still destructive to rational trust, if not as morally culpable.

"[W]e concluded that there are some limited circumstances in which we recommend smoking marijuana for medical uses." [mpp.org]

Re:Lies and critical words

[WilliamSChips]

Speaking of Clinton, the sig on the bottom of /. pages currently references him:

2180, U.S. History question: What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what office did he later hold?

Clinton was impeached, blockheads. He just wasn't convicted.

Faith based Government

[FidelCatsro]

Blind faith that is