Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, what the gentleman said was a one-size-fits-all answer.

The fact is, when I first spoke on a similar amendment about the DEA and marijuana, it was about a gentleman named Oral James Mitchell, Jr., a Navy SEAL who served this country in Vietnam and died in 1996 of pancreatic cancer.

He violated the law in 1996 in the State of Maryland because he used marijuana to ease his nausea. Also, as his mother said:

It is the only thing that allows Oral to smile and to eat. He didn't like the Marinol. He said it didn't do as much good as smoking marijuana.

When we are talking about somebody who has cancer and wants to use marijuana to improve the condition they are in and suffering from the nausea--and there is a lot of evidence that it is better than Marinol--then we don't have to worry about the situations that the doctor mentioned about possibly causing somebody heart disease over a period of years, which we know tobacco does and it is sold all around and legal.

We are talking about saving people pain, and we are talking about a VA doctor being able to distinguish between allowing somebody who might be in the last months or years of life and alleviating their pain with one of the best agents known to man to do that, rather than a situation where somebody might be young.

We don't have that many veterans who are as young as the AMA study discussed and their ability to think. That was talking about kids who were teenagers. They are not veterans.

I would submit that there are times the doctor should have discretion. We are not talking about the doctor dispensing marijuana. We are talking about a directive from the Federal Government prohibiting the doctor from saying: I think like Dr. Fleming, and I

don't think that you should use marijuana, I don't think you should go to another physician if you could afford it outside the VA system and try to get him to give you a directive to where you can go and get marijuana.

This prohibits the VA doctor from allowing Dr. Fleming, if he worked at the VA, to tell his patient not to do it. The VA doctor should be able to speak the truth.

This is censorship by our Federal Government--a directive--which I think most of the people on the other side of the aisle have certainly been against Federal Government influence in medical policies and have done all they can to stop the Federal Government from influencing medical decisions. Here is a situation where you are saying the doctor should be censored.

There is a lot of evidence that medical cannabis helps, but particularly with nausea. I know the Chair knows people in east Tennessee, as I know in Memphis, who have contacted me and asked me to allow them to be able to get medical marijuana.

They can't do it in Tennessee yet. They would like to do it in Tennessee at the veterans' hospitals, but where it is legal in the State, the doctor should not be muzzled and censored.

This Congress should be in favor of the freedom of speech and in favor of the doctor being able to use their best efforts to help their patients and exercise their Hippocratic oath to do what they think is best, which may be to say no.

I yield to Mr. Blumenauer to add to this discussion because he was exactly right. This doesn't say anything about dispensing marijuana. It doesn't say you are for marijuana. It simply says you allow the VA doctor to exercise their judgment.

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