“Laws and medicine clash over medicinal marijuana use. If it weren’t for his few daily tokes from marijuana cigarettes, Kiyoshi Kuromiya believes he would no longer be alive.The Philadelphia AIDS patient and activist had lost 40 pounds over a four-month period and spent most days nauseated before he began smoking pot in 1995 to boost an appetite suppressed by his disease.”Marijuana saved my life,” says Kuromiya, 57, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. “It’s a great irony to me that I can buy cigarettes, which will kill me, anywhere. But marijuana, which has kept me breathing, is illegal.”Kuromiya and others with debilitating ailments have long argued that marijuana should be legally available when standard medical treatment can’t relieve a patient’s suffering and pain.”

More: http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/forbidden-medicine