Exchanging Lies, Exposing Truth

Henry O'Brien is a 58-year-old legal citizen of the United States of America, has never comitted a crime, is a loyal employee for a local corperation and even watches four of his grand children on Saturday evenings. He's also a suffering cancer patient, having chemotherapy once a week without any medicine to ease the pain. However, O'Brien does have one option: medicinal usage of cannabis; more commonly known as marijuana.



Over a decade ago, the state of California legalized the medical use of marijuana to much controversy. The boundaries of this law weren't exactly well known "marijuana" or "green" cards were handed out without much questioning. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) did not like California's incredibly liberal decisions even though the ill were satisfied.

Through the years, it has been an ongoing debate between state and federal law, the only prisoners of war however are patients themselves. While only a slight percentage of the green card purchasers only are using the drug for recreational use, patients with chronic migranes & nausea, Alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer, anxiety, schizophrenia, among many other "uncurable" illnesses have no other option to marijuana. Is it right for our country to discriminate against its citizens based on an illness and the medicine they need? The US continues to fuel its obese society, regardless of whether the public considers it a sickness or a personal choice and lifestyle.

The difference here should be obvious: the patients with the aforementioned illnesses had no choice in the matter. One final argument against the use of medical marijuana is that children would be more exposed to drugs because of legalization. In fact, 21.4% of high school seniors used marijuana in the past 31 days, while 19.2% smoked cigarettes.[1]

At the moment somewhere in the world someone is in pain due to other's negligence. Would it be so hard to just let them live in peace? For the next few moments, try thinking of your grandparents and how much they struggle. Does it truly offend you to let them have a medicine to feel better? I feel personally offended every time I watch MTV. Does this mean MTV should be taken off air? No, I'll just change the channel and move on with my life.

In the meantime, Henry O'Brien's television is running out of electricity and the oppressor could care less which channel it is set to.