Politics

Chelsea Clinton Suggests That Marijuana Kills

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Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
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Chelsea Clinton implied that marijuana kills while campaigning for her mother, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, in Ohio Saturday.

Chelsea did admit there is a degree of medical value to cannabis, but she also claimed that it can be fatal.

“Anecdotally we have lots of evidence in … epilepsy, but also in autism, in stimulating appetite for people who are on intensive chemotherapy regimens, for people who have non-epilepsy seizure disorders and challenges,” Chelsea explained.

“But we also have anecdotal evidence now from Colorado where some of the people who were taking marijuana for those purposes, the coroner believes, after they died, there was drug interactions with other things they were taking.”

Chelsea did not specify to what anecdotes she was referring. There have been no documented cases of fatal marijuana overdoses, which includes the studying of potential deaths resulting from interactions between marijuana and other drugs.

“She supports states making whatever choices they think are right vis-à-vis medical or recreational marijuana use,” Chelsea said.

Chelsea is doing her best to defend her mother’s wavering opinion on marijuana after a question was posed to her about federally rescheduling the substance.

At a town hall event in April, Hillary explained at least part of her opinion on the issue to the crowd after Evan Nison, a National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) board member, asked her to elaborate.

“I’ve said I want to move marijuana off of Schedule I, which you understand means that you can’t do any research about it. You can’t do anything, and I think that’s wrong,” Hillary said, according to Politifact.

“We have enough anecdotal evidence, as you well know being a member of the NORML Board, about what marijuana can do for medical conditions, easing pain. And we need to be doing research on it because I am 100 percent in favor of medical uses for marijuana. But I want to know what the evidence is.”

This claim was asserted to be untrue, since the Schedule I classification puts more restrictions on research, but does not make it impossible, according to Factcheck.org.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) explains that “Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Most empirical data shows that marijuana helps people, especially small children, with severe epilepsy as well as a number of other serious ailments such as cancer, like Chelsea said.

Hillary may be waiting for more “anecdotal” evidence, like the kinds her daughter references, before making any firm decisions.

“On recreational, you know, states are the laboratories of democracy. We have at least two states [Colorado and Washington] that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is.” Clinton said during a broadcasted town hall discussion.

She continued:

“I don’t think we’ve done enough research yet, although I think for people who are in extreme medical conditions and who have anecdotal evidence that it works, there should be availability under appropriate circumstances. But I do think we need more research because we don’t know how it interacts with other drugs.”

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