A Plea for Marjuana - Guess Who Created This ?

Message

I support AB 507! Cancer Patients Need Treatment for Pain!

Dear [Decision Maker],

I write to ask you to sign AB 507 (Hayashi). This bill will remove the provision in the current law allowing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to require any person who has been prescribed a controlled substance to submit to a medical review.

The under treatment and, sometimes, lack of treatment of pain is a serious issue. Unrelieved pain is the second-leading cause of medically-related work absenteeism and causes over $61 billion in lost productivity annually, according to an estimate published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer pain will be a problem in up to 60% or more of patients who are undergoing active treatment, more than 60% of patients with the advanced disease, and at least 30% of patients after treatment concludes.

Under existing law, people prescribed pain medicines, like cancer patients or people with chronic pain, can be treated like common criminals. Getting a prescription to control pain from a doctor is not illegal in and of itself. Just because a person is prescribed a drug that has the potential for abuse does not mean the patient is abusing it. The recent Institute of Medicine report on pain acknowledged that "the majority of people with pain use their prescription drugs properly [and] are not a source of misuse." The DOJ's potential involvement in screening people with prescriptions for pain contributes to the misperception that all people who are prescribed controlled substances are addicts and does nothing to solve the real problem of drug abuse.

This law contributes to an environment that discourages medical providers from participating in the legitimate medical intervention of pain and discourages people in pain from seeking the most appropriate treatment for it. When put together, it means too many people suffer unnecessarily.

On behalf of the millions of people in California who suffer from unrelieved pain, I ask that you please sign AB 507.

The National Cancer Society a branch of the American Cancer Society sponsered Hayashi to introduce this bill. It was chaptered , meaning it is now law. I wonder if the Cancer Society will post Hayashi's Bail for shoplifting or pay for her Brain Tumor Operation ?? What-dah-u-think......