myopic myth that modern is best

ok, i don't do drugs. i drink, yes, and i am trying to cut back on that. but i have never done drugs, not sure why, just never have and i have no desire to start.
but the drug czar just looked like a big idiot on CNN. here he is, the drug czar, and he's advising people who are recovering alcoholics on how to get through the holiday season without relapsing. so...let me get this straight. we have no national health plan or program that *helps* people recover, we funnel them into religious programs like AA, require them to link their only chance at recovery with god, not their own self discipline. but the drug czar thinks that he can authoritatively advise already recovered people how to make it through the pesky holidays. he takes personal credit, by the way, for the number of recovering people, inexplicably.
like there aren't bigger issues on the drug front (hello columbia) than how not to have a cocktail at your work mixer this season.
then, when broached about an actual subject: medical marijuana, he looked like a bigger moron. he seems offended by the fact that people, who are in unbearable pain, who are not going to recover, who are just trying to live out their last moments in relative comfort, are just a front for young people who want to smoke pot. now, i'm sure some young people want to smoke pot, but i doubt the chronically ill would take kindly to this characterization. "We don't smoke weeds in modern medicine," spake the Drug Czar. So, its cheap, its natural, it has less harmful side effects than most FDA drugs on the market, and its effective. We have, what, a hundred years of medical research on the effects of marijuana, (more than that actually), but we should instead use other man made drugs with unknown long term side effects, really expensive to make and research because....its illegal? isn't morphine illegal without a prescription too? we don't tell patients they can't have that or a dozen other narcotics under supervision, just because some drug addicts would love for it to be legalized for them to use it.
so it comes down to that one statement really, "We don't smoke weeds in modern medicine." why? because no huge pharmacuetical companies make millions manufacturing marijuana. if you can't fleece the chronically ill pain sufferers of their last dollars before they die, you're not a drug company worth your salt.