I was a casual user of pot in the ’60s, but quit when we had our first child due to the increased threat arrest would pose to my ability to provide for my family. As the stress of life offered its ups and downs I found many occasions where I wished I had risk-free access to pot to take the edge off the downs.

My wife became a victim of pancreatic cancer shortly before turning 60 and our plans for the future we spent a lifetime working for were abruptly changed for the worse. Pot was very beneficial in her treatment, albeit unofficially approved, as the only way she could keep up an appetite sufficient to maintain her strength and helped greatly in her tolerance for the many other drugs she took. As her primary caregiver. I often joined her in a joint to manage my own stress level and assure her it wasn’t going to do any further harm. We worked out a schedule that was beneficial to both of us without interfering with her care in any way.

I had two years with her after her diagnosis that gave her a ninety-day prognosis, and I attribute much of that added time to her pot use. The link to our digestive system, especially the pancreas, with cannabis is well known and the THC gave her a reprieve from the unavoidable terror of facing one’s impending death. I can’t help but wonder if low-level use might not have prevented her cancer after researching the mechanism involved in how it is processed in our systems that evolved specific receptors for cannabis. Many forms of cancer seemed to increase dramatically after the eradication of pot and hemp became a top priority for law enforcement and agriculture.

I know that the time, money, and effort spent in that eradication could have gone a long way in destressing our lives if better appropriated. All of the signs of a negative feedback loop showed themselves very early in that effort, especially for the poor and minority communities, making one question if that wasn’t the real objective. Failure (or success depending upon how one views the war on drugs) is a hard pill to swallow, but it would certainly be less expensive than the “real” pills involved in cancer treatment. My wife’s cancer wiped out our life’s savings in just two years, with insurance, and indebted me for the remainder of my life. One can’t help but wonder if that could have been avoided if the investment in eradicating drug use, mostly unsuccessful, had been dedicated to research instead and addiction treated as a medical issue instead of a law enforcement issue.