From working with AIDS and cancer patients, I repeatedly saw how marijuana could ameliorate a patient's debilitating fatigue, restore appetite, diminish pain, remedy nausea, cure vomiting and curtail down-to-the-bone weight loss. The federal obsession with a political agenda that keeps marijuana out of the hands of sick and dying people is appalling and irrational.

Kate Scannell, M.D. is Co-Director, Kaiser-Permanente, Northern California Ethics Department. She is the author of Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic.

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