I got a call last week from a friend who has been successfully battling cancer. She told me: “Marijuana tea and candy are the only things that helped my appetite. My weight had gone down to 98 pounds. I am now 112 pounds. And it let me sleep. I don’t think that I would be alive today without it.”

Several years ago I worked with a highly intelligent, sophisticated couple who were severely addicted to heroin. Month after month they struggled to stop, but over and over they found themselves “chasing the high” by taking larger amounts of intravenous heroin or scoring smaller amounts just to keep themselves functional. Finally, they left the States and moved to a kibbutz for a year. They went through a difficult and painful withdrawal syndrome but then lived a drug-free but isolated life for over a year.