Medical Marijuana: Blame Congress, Not the DEA

We keep reading stories and opinion columns castigating the DEA for enforcing federal law prohibiting all consumption of marijuana--regardless of state laws permitting its medical use. This is a problem that needs addressing, alright, but not by the slight-of-hand trick of making law enforcement agencies pretend that long-standing federal law doesn't exist. That is a prescription for selective law enforcement based on politics, which is to open the door to all sorts of abuses.

Why does nobody address the real problem here? It isn't the DEA, it isn't the FBI, it is the wording of federal law! Specifically: When Congress passed the Federal Controlled Substances Act, it explicitly stated that marijuana has no legitimate uses. That inhibits research into the proper uses of marijuana as a palliative agent, prevents the FDA from allowing it to be prescribed, and forces the DEA's hand. Yet, despite this being the cause of all of the consternation, even medical marijuana boosters don't bring it up! Take for example, this column in the Missoulian byTom Daubert. He writes:

The nation's Drug Enforcement Administration agents can sleep a little easier tonight. They now have one less medical marijuana patient to worry about policing.

That's because Montana's leading medical marijuana patient-activist took her own life last week, a direct result of DEA actions earlier this year. As the sad news spreads, every patient in the state and all their relatives and friends grieve the loss of Robin Prosser.

It's time for our federal government to end its anti-scientific and brutal war--a war not on drugs, but on sick people like Prosser.

But that is misdirection. The real answer is to urge that Congress change the law! But even in this powerful indictment of the stifling of medical marijuana--the issue isn't addressed.

There is no logical reason why morphine--a truly addicting drug--can be used medically but marijuana--which is not addictive--cannot. Moreover, maintaining the law as is breeds disrespect for law and has opened the door to the anarchic procedures currently employed in the states to distribute medical cannabis.

Will any presidential candidate have the courage to make this an issue? Will the media? Or will we merely continue to gripe about those evil DEA agents who supposedly want people to suffer?

"Medical Marijuana" Political Follies

The House of Representatives has voted down an amendment that would have prohibited the DEA from enforcing federal drug laws against medical marijuana participants in states where cannabis as medicine is legal. And the bill only got two more votes than the last time the House considered it before the recent Democratic takeover. What a dumb approach, so typical of our gutless politicians!

The reason why marijuana can't be used as medicine under federal law is simple: The Controlled Substances Act states explicitly that marijuana has no medical uses. That is the law. It is wrong. And it chills efforts to study marijuana's potential medicinal uses--which definitely need to be studied.

So instead, we have the surrealistic state systems in which doctors write letters instead of prescriptions, and patients go to "pot clubs" instead of pharmacies to obtain their "medicine." This kind of chaotic distribution leads to crime, people getting pot for "stress," and etc. And it breeds disrespect for crucial distinctions between using drugs for medicinal and recreational purposes.

What needs to be done is change the federal law, conduct studies to determine what conditions for which marijuana has and does not have medicinal benefits, and allow formal prescriptions for cannabis distributed through pharmacies to treat those afflictions against which cannabis has a medicinal benefit. And not permit prescriptions for ailments in which it doesn't.

Unfortunately, the government doesn't have that kind of wisdom. And some supporters of medical marijuana aren't interested in that approach either, apparently, because their cause too often seems to be about legalizing pot, not helping people who are sick.

This leads to the nonsense we have now of at least three different approaches toward medical marijuana in the country: The federal government's strict prohibition, most states' strict prohibition, and some states' permissiveness with few effective regulatory controls. This ridiculousness has to change--and that starts with removing marijuana from the category of no medical benefits in the Controlled Substances Act--which should be done as a matter of integrity, in any event, because it clearly isn't true.

Time to Change Dumb "Medical" Marijuna Federal Policy

A federal court has ruled against finding a constitutional right to take medical marijuna. That is the right decision. But I think the Feds have missed an important bet on this issue. When the Controlled Substances Act was enacted, marijuana was explicitly defined as having no legitimate medical use. When states passed their medical marijuana laws, the Supreme Court ruled that such state statutes did not prevent the Feds from enforcing federal law in this regard. This too, was the right decision as a matter of law.

But it is now clear that at least for some maladies, marijuana provides effective palliation. So, why is it still identified in the law as a drug with no legitimate medical use? If this status were changed, then a rational policy could be adopted that would eliminate the two, opposite-ended problems with medical marijuana as it is currently dispensed. First, the status of marijuana should be changed to that of say, morphine, permitting it to be prescribed for conditions that it palliates. (This would also permit medical testing to identify those.) At the same time, the ability to prescribe and dispense through a pharmacy would obviate the need for marijuana clubs. It would also do away with the "letter" system where a doctor merely writes a note to a patient recommending marijuna. This system is too loose to prevent improper prescribing.

I think one of the Bush Administration's biggest mistakes in the areas about which I engage has been its failure to push for a better medical marijuana policy. This would have been true "compassionate conservatism." At the same time, now that the Dems are in charge of Congress, why aren't they making this a policy priority?