Medical Marijuana Makes Sense
In a previous Commentary, I argued that the sale and use of marijuana is a “victimless” crime and therefore should be legalized. Marijuana used to treat medical conditions, symptoms, or side effects of pills and chemotherapy is in fact legal in the State of California and 13 other states. Advocates for the legalization of marijuana claim that marijuana helps relieve pain and nausea and stimulates appetite in patients suffering from cancer and other diseases.
Although in the mid-1990s California voters approved a law allowing for the compassionate use of marijuana, the fact that the sale, purchase, and use of marijuana for any purpose is banned by federal law. Accordingly, a patient who could benefit from medical marijuana could not use marijuana to treat his or her condition or risk being arrested on federal charges. All that changed on October 19, 2009, when the Obama administration announced its new policy that it will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers so long as they conform with state laws.
Under the new policy, federal prosecutors were told that it is not an “efficient use of limited federal resources” to arrest people who use or provide medicinal marijuana in strict compliance with state laws. The United States Attorney General sent a memo outlining the new federal policy to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that currently permit the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Those 14 states are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. California is the only one that allows dispensaries to sell marijuana and advertise their services.
The Obama administration’s stance on medical marijuana is in direct opposition to former President Bush’s hard-line (and hard-headed) approach outlawing the sale, use, or possession of marijuana for any purpose, even if it had been prescribed by a medical doctor to treat an ailment or help patients in chronic pain or who suffered from nausea due to chemotherapy treatments for whom nothing else alleviated their suffering as much as marijuana.
The same day the Obama administration announced its new policy on medicinal marijuana, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that Los Angeles’ ban on new medical marijuana dispensaries was invalid, putting an end to the city’s four-month-old drive to shut down hundreds of the stores. Despite the Obama administration’s decision not to go after medical marijuana users and dispensaries, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley announced that he would be following all state and federal laws, and stated that most dispensaries are selling marijuana for profit in violation of state law.
Of course, medicinal marijuana dispensaries that are using the dispensary as a front for the illegal sale of marijuana or other drugs are still at risk of being prosecuted, as are persons who use marijuana for non-medicinal purposes and are not in strict compliance with state laws and regulations governing the purchase and use of medicinal marijuana.
Just because marijuana can cause some mood changes is no argument for banning the drug for patients who are in severe chronic pain or are prone to suffer severe nausea—especially as a side effect of chemotherapy being administered to a cancer patient. Marijuana is no worse than alcohol, and no doctor’s prescription is needed to buy a pint of Jack Daniels. Marijuana has proven medical effects for certain patients, and such patients should be allowed to use marijuana without having to worry about being rousted by the authorities, taken to jail, put through the criminal system, and sentenced to a term in jail or prison.
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