Pill vs. Pot

Recently the state of Illinois has thrown its hat into the medical marihuana ring. Not only that, CNN medical correspondent and doctor, Sanjay Gupta, announced he was wrong about the benefits of medical weed. This has sparked new debate over the issue and I'm sure the potheads will find a way out of their parent's basements to rally around the cause. 

I will not say that cannabis is bad for people. Cancer patients, multiple sclerosis, and HIV/AIDS patients can no doubt benefit from its use to ease the side effects from their treatment. But why are we advocating smokable weed when it comes to a medical issue. People who smoke weed take in more tar and carbon monoxide than cigarette smokers do. We have entire movements trying to ruin big tobacco and there are people promoting smokable marihuana for "health" reasons?  Doesn't make sense to me. 

Their is a pill for everything these days and there is a pill for this. It's called Marinol and it is a much safer way to give these folks what they need. Granted it does take a little longer for the effect to set in but it does the job. 

Now I'm happy to say that I'm a moderate liberal and I'm usually for doing what makes us happy. In this case I think we are headed down a slippery slope to recreational weed. So I say to lawmakers, have the guts and make the move. Don't hide behind the sentiment that you are helping patients when you don't even pay your bills to doctors and pharmacists. The "medical" tag on marijuana doesn't fly when there is a pill that does the same thing. 

http://www.drugs.com/mtm/marinol.html

Baseball Cards

You can learn a lot about a player from his baseball cards.  Baseball cards fueled my passion for the game.  I collected and traded like it was an addiction.  I did the most damage I could do with a paperboy’s earnings and to this day I have a great collection to show for it.  My most sought after player was my favorite player, Mark David McGuire.

Growing up in So Ill it is hard to find an Oakland A’s game on TV.  Baseball cards were a way to keep up with the only team I made an effort to follow.  I can’t pinpoint when I became an Oakland fan but I was dedicated.  I collected every card of every player on the team but I would trade anything away for a Mark McGuire card.  That grew into an effort to try to swing like him, to throw like him and if I could have grown facial hair, I would.  I idolized him and by the time I got to high school and took my freshman health class, I knew he was on the juice. It’s a shame that it was obvious to a 14 year old that had only minimal exposure to a health textbook.

My wildest dreams came true when not only Tony LaRussa came to the Lou but so did my first baseball idol.  I knew he was a product of alleged cheating but I got the chance to find some of my childhood in the games I saw him play at Busch.  I was giddy and hoping for a homerun every time he came to the plate and he delivered.  When he was identified as a cheater, it didn’t break my heart.  That kind of thing was never on the back of his baseball cards.  I had slowly accepted his choices over time and I never turned on him.  I had amassed a great deal of love for him and was loyal.  I stand firm that using steroids and PED’s are cheating and does not belong in professional sports.  My boyhood hero cheated and I have made peace with that.

What’s left is a box of great baseball cards.  I have rookie cards of nearly every player associated with drug use.  Aside from my McGuire cards, Sosa cards, Clemens cards and so on I have memories of how I felt about those players when I followed them.  I remember how excited I was about the game because baseball cards brought me close to them.  I kept these cards because one day I know I will pass on the stories to my kids and hopefully they will be turned on to the game as I was.  I will have to tell about how this era of the game was full of cheaters and those looking for shortcuts but I will also have the pleasure of showing them some other cards from the era.  I have cards for Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and many others who played clean.  I am a Cardinals fan and I know how we feel about Albert Pujols, but I know when he hits his 500^th homerun he will have done it clean.

The hard reality is that some of our heroes aren’t really heroes, they are just regular people who make bad choices.  Natural talent wasn’t enough for my hero.  The thirst for big numbers and success will made him experiment with the rules and the people around him.  His story is one worth telling but not because he was a fallen player but he has to live with his choices.  He put up hall of fame numbers but will be excluded until the writers feel he has suffered enough.  He has to live with the long term effects of a short term decision and that’s a life lesson worth teaching.