The importance of medical marijuana to people with AIDS is well-known, but many of the organizations that will be making the pronouncements are actively hostile toward medical marijuana.
See
NORML Special Bulletin -- IOM Acknowledges:
"There is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions
that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting."
But Still Opposes Smoked Marijuana --
This not only includes most of the worlds’ governments, and the pharmaceutical industry supported research groups, but also the World Health Organization, headed by the very prohibitionist former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, now the Director-General of WHO.
See
Swedish Prohibitionists Say That World Health Organization
Will Launch Global Propaganda Campaign
Against "'Medical Excuse Marijuana' Deception"

If the need for medical marijuana is great in advanced countries, which can at least offer patients some substitutes, however inadequate they may be, it would be of even greater value in the poorer countries, where AIDS is now rampant.
See
German Drug Czar Calls For Medical Marijuana:
"The suffering of patients with illnesses such as MS,
Cancer or AIDS could be eased with cannabis."

Sub-Saharan Africa is being called the "global epicenter of the epidemic," with an estimated 23 million cases. While in the West AIDS first hit gay men, female Africans with HIV now outnumber male carriers of the virus, with teenage girls facing the highest risk of infection. Life expectancy at birth in southern Africa, which climbed from 44 in the early 1950s to 59 in the early 1990s, is expected to drop back to 45 sometime between 2005 and 2010. According to a survey of commercial farms in Kenya, illness and death have already replaced old-age retirement as the leading reason why employees leave service.

Countries of the former Soviet Union have seen infection rates double in just two years. In these countries prostitution is the only way for many women to earn a living and intravenous drugs use is soaring at a time when health services are collapsing and even hospitals cannot afford new needles, much less a needle exchange program.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, 50 million individuals worldwide have been infected with HIV, of whom more than 33 million are still alive and over 16 million have died. AIDS deaths reached a record 2.6 million this year and new HIV infections continue, with an estimated 5.6 million adults and children worldwide becoming infected in 1999.

In these countries, most people cannot afford even aspirin, much less the incredibly expensive anti-AIDS pharmaceuticals that have been developed in the West. However, they could easily grow their own marijuana -- if it were legal for them to do so -- and if the information about its value to people with AIDS were not being suppressed as a part of DEAland’s global narco-imperialism.

Of course, local police and politicians are generally much more interested in currying the favor of DEAland to get economic and military support than they are in helping the poorest of their poor. Also they are the targets of the same prohibitionist propaganda that has become the ideology of law enforcement in most countries.

The fact that many people with AIDS can greatly increase their quality of life -- and sometimes even their life-expectancy by using only marijuana -- makes the suppression of medical marijuana in poor countries even more devastating than it is in developed countries.
See
Florida AIDS Patient And His Doctor Say That Marijuana Kept Him Alive;
Joe Hart Is Plaintiff In Class Action

This is a clear case of the poorest of the poor being victimized by the richest of the rich, but not only will this be ignored by the world AIDS establishment, it is also being ignored by the WTO protestors in Seattle. They feel self-righteous when they trash a Starbucks, but are ignorant of the fact that some Dutch coffee-shops for several years have offered discounts on marijuana to patients there under a program called MediWiet (medical weed.)

The fact is that both within the rich countries and globally, medical marijuana, like marijuana prohibition in general, is largely a class issue. The well-off have no problem getting it, while the poor suffer and die and/or go to jail.
See
Ottawa Citizen Practices First Class Journalism
A Brilliantly Insightful Editorial: "Marijuana isn’t just a serious issue. It’s huge."

Nonetheless, from the left, which claims to champion the poor, there is silence. Or whatever they are saying is being drowned out by the protests over other issues that they have anointed as "serious."

There is ample evidence that drug prohibition in general and marijuana prohibition in particular have contributed to the explosion of the AIDS epidemic. Dutch marijuana policies, along with enlighten treatment of IV addicts, has reduced the level of IV drug addiction and of related diseases. The ready availability of marijuana reduces the demand for hard drugs, and makes it easier for people to cope with a variety of ailments that come from both hard drugs and pharmaceuticals.

This is just more evidence that the suppression of medical marijuana is mass murder.

Even on World AIDS Day, you will not hear anyone in the health establishment say this. Shame on the silence. Shame on the silent.