Since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, cannabis, also known as marijuana, has been federally classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no legally accepted medical use and has the same classification as, for example, heroin. Over the last couple of decades, however, that classification has started to be challenged, especially at the state level.
STAFF EDITORIAL
Currently, 13 states have passed some form of legislation allowing the use of medical marijuana. California was the first, passing the Compassionate Use Act in 1996 that legalized medical marijuana and ostensibly set regulations for the production and distribution of the drug. In recent months, New Mexico has begun “breathing life,” to quote an Associated Press report, into its own 2007 legislation that legalized medical marijuana. That New Mexico has taken so long to formalize the systemization of medical marijuana is indicative of a larger national resistance to the notion of legal weed in the United States.
Before further discussion, the fact that marijuana does indeed have undeniable and considerable medical benefits must be made clear. Marijuana is unparalleled in its propensity for alleviating the side effects endured by chemotherapy patients, and in general the drug has well-chronicled benefits for chronic pain relief such as combating migraines and nerve pain in HIV patients. As Dr. Donald Abrams, a cancer specialist at San Francisco General Hospital, said, “I can recommend [this] one drug for all those [pains], instead of writing five different prescriptions.”
In fact, even the American Medical Association, or AMA, agrees with the need to reclassify marijuana. The current classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug puts it on par with drugs like heroin and LSD, which clearly have no medical use. On November 10, the AMA called for a federal review of marijuana’s status under the Controlled Substances Act, stating its hope for “the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery methods.” The AMA was promptly ignored by the relevant federal authorities.
This dismissal speaks again to the long-standing unwillingness of our nation to enter proper dialogue concerning medical marijuana. The recreational and cultural use of marijuana, most prominently associated with the flowery 70s, has stigmatized the drug to the point where, it can be argued, many are unable to delineate between supporting the legalization of medical marijuana and supporting the legalization of marijuana for, simply put, getting high.
Nevertheless, there is indeed a distinction. Marijuana has scientifically supported medical benefits, ones that are so persuasive that even the AMA felt compelled to call for its reclassification. But marijuana seems doomed by its negative connotations.
To resist the legalization of such a positive social good for reasons extraneous to its inherent medical benefits is simply a fundamentally flawed approach to enacting progress.
Detractors say that there is a high probability that the legalization of marijuana for medical use will lead to rampant abuse. And a Sept. 23, 2007, “60 Minutes” special on California’s notorious “pot shops” seemed to confirm this worry. Essentially, as long as a patient — and this term is used in the loosest fashion imaginable — can convince the doctor that marijuana is necessary to relieve his pain (“You know, all I can do is take my patients’ statements as factual,” said one doctor), he can easily gain access to marijuana.
But this lack of discipline can be partly attributed to the incoherence of medical marijuana’s legalization. The aforementioned “60 Minutes” feature highlighted the blatant conflict between marijuana’s legal status as a medical drug and the virtually arbitrary raids that federal authorities conducted on California’s pot shops. This summer, furthermore, New Hampshire’s governor vetoed medical marijuana legalization, citing its inconsistency with federal regulation. But clearly, the evidence says the current federal regulations are wrong.
Unless the government — and this country — are willing to approach marijuana reasonably, we will not even get the chance to attempt proper systemization of medical marijuana. California’s marijuana policy, the state’s doctors readily admit, is of course not stringent enough, but that does not mean the law needs to swing back to the other extreme.
In New Mexico, then, cautious steps are being taken to define a template for the production and distribution of legal medical marijuana. There are 15 qualifying conditions for medical use of the drug and there are five nonprofit organizations permitted to produce it. Each producer is limited to 95 plants. The success of New Mexico’s scheme is far from guaranteed, but it represents a willingness to at least explore the potential and limitations of a properly regulated system of medical marijuana.
Nobody is denying that marijuana, as a product, has its downsides. Science is not yet sure of its lung cancer-inducing properties as well as its addictive properties. But these risks are analogous to (which, to pre-empt the decriers, does not mean “are equal to”) the risks of other drugs that the federal authorities seem willing to condone — Vicodin and Valium come to mind. Why should marijuana be treated any differently?
What is needed is a paradigm shift, one that allows us to look at marijuana not as some taboo indulgence but as a legitimate medical product. Condoning medical marijuana is not the same as condoning marijuana for other purposes.
To use the words of one of New Mexico’s approved marijuana producers, “The faster we move away from a paranoid drug dealer model to a normal business model, the better it’s going to be [for medical marijuana].” Fortunately for its proponents, medical marijuana seems to have a strong ally in the current administration. Obama’s stance on state legalization, as of February, is that the federal government will no longer interfere in the form of raids and other similar attacks.
But for real change to be enacted, there still needs to be a fundamental rethinking of whether it remains appropriate to oppose medical marijuana based on concerns peripheral to its merit as a medical drug. Until then, the question of how best to maximize its medical usefulness through regulation and systemization remains a theoretical one.
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Discussion
Phil E. Drifter
About 2 years ago
It wasn’t outlawed because it’s dangerous, it was outlawed so Uncle Sam could replace slave labor (outlawed in 1865 at close of Civil War) with prison labor. Read tinyurl.com/1mn :
“Well, there it was, you didn’t have to look another foot as you went from state to state right on the floor of the state legislature. And so what was the genesis for the early state marijuana laws in the Rocky Mountain and southwestern areas of this country? It wasn’t hostility to the drug, it was hostility to the newly arrived Mexican community that used it.”
Of course, we learned from alcohol prohibition what prohibition does: it funds the black market and causes violence on the streets. Why would prohibition of the most prolific plant on the planet be any different? Uncle Sam is CAUSING crime by keeping plants illegal. They grow right from the ground! Might as well outlaw GOD.
Phil E. Drifter
About 2 years ago
Meanwhile, alcohol, which causes thousand of vehicular homicides every year is legal, because it makes you fat and stupid, and that’s exactly how Uncle Sam wants its citizens: fat and stupid. They’re easy to control and arrest when they’re fat and stupid. See ‘Annual Causes of Death in the United States’
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30
rank cause # of deaths
#1: tobacco 435,000
#2: being fat, lazy 365,000
#3. alcohol 85,000
#6: motor vehicle crashes 26,347
#12: All Illicit Drug Use, Direct/Indirect 17,000
#13. non-steroidal anti-inflammitory legal drugs (aspirin, etc) 7,600
#14. MARIJUANA 0
joe stein
About 2 years ago
Given the scientific communities recognition there is a promise but lack of scientific certainty marijuana has a medicinal value it is clear any legislation enabling the use of marijuana as a medicine is, at best, premature. Recent event include:
1. American Medical Association & Washington Post are calling for extensive federal research of marijuana’s medicinal purpose(s). The A.M.A. House of Delegates have called for a review of the schedule I status of marijuana to allow for more research on the potential medicinal uses of cannabinoids.
2. The AMA refused to endorse state-based medical marijuana programs & the Washington Post (Oct 25) has called for a moratorium on new programs.
(www DOT washingtonpost DOT com /wp-dyn /content /article /2009 /10 /25 /AR2009102502293 DOT html)
3. Washington Post’s recognition the medical marijuana controversy may be moot in the near future as extensive clinical trials of a drug known as Sativex (cancer & MS) have or are near an end.
Brinna Nanda
About 2 years ago
Actually, the medical properties of cannabis are well established by research. Even the US Dept of Health and Human Services holds a patent based on these properties (see
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6630507.html )
The research for this patent was conducted at National Inst. of Health, and stated that cannabinoids are neuroprotectant and anti-oxidant and as such are useful in the prevention and treatment of a wide variety of ailments including stroke, trauma, auto-immune disorders, HIV dementia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Now, that alone seems like a pretty good endorsement of medical marijuana. All medicine does not have to take the form of a pill. This is a peculiar aspect of our current medical system that privileges chemically derived healing agents, and scoffs at herbs and roots. This is at odds with 10,000 years of medicine. Are we healthier today as a result? I think not.
Erick Lauer
About 2 years ago
Ok well it would just be smart of us as a country to just legalize marijuana. It is so much safer than any other drugs out their and estimates to bring alot of money back to the united states. Even if they can’t tax it because it can be grown. They still have lights, soil, seeds, hydroponics, and more to bank off of.
RFWoodstock Woodstock
About 2 years ago
Valid medicinal value, it’s a victimless crime, the War on Drugs WAY too costly, too many arrests for simple possession, tax it and use the money to pay for health insurance and to reduce the deficit…Need I say more?
Woodstock Universe supports legalization of Marijuana.
We will giveaway a Woodstock Universe Prize Package to the best member blog on “Why we should legalize marijuana?”
Prize package includes Woodstock Universe T-shirt and magnet, WDST decal, Radio Woodstock Live in Woodstock CD and Woodstock 3 days of peace and music Director’s Cut DVD.
Join Woodstock Universe to blog.
Add your vote in our poll about legalization at:
http://www.woodstockuniverse.com.
Current poll results…97% for legalization, 3% against.
Peace, love, music, one world,
RFWoodstock
Jason Kersten
About 2 years ago
More money for our economy… (Na, we don’t need that because we are doing so well right now)…
Arresting normal people with families, prosecuting them and making them sit in jail with real criminals over a god given plant…(just like Jesus would have done)
Spending state funds to conduct violent raids that cause destruction of property and goods…(Because it is their jobs and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said “it does not support the use of marijuana for medical purposes”. The FDA said it and other agencies with the Health and Human Services Department had "concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States”)
!!!!YEA RIGHT!!!! OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE!
We all know who the real criminals are. It isn’t the people using medical marijuana! It is the ones destroying these sick people lives and making them even harder than they already are.
I live in Iowa with my wife who has multiple sclerosis; I suffer from anxiety and severe depression. Under our state law we would be arrested for using medical marijuana and have our kids taken away…for using a god given plant…
We are good people. Attend church regularly and pay our taxes. Tell me different, I dare you.
Thank you Jesus
LLLou hellowthere
About 2 years ago
The longer the government plays this stupid “war on drugs” game the more I distrust them. Any government that enforces laws based on lies is not worthy of my loyalty
Ricky Tick
About 2 years ago
It makes me sick when issues like this arise in the U.S.. Must we keep our heads this deep in the sand? This relitevly benign plant causes so much harm, and so many lives to be ruined, and all because it is illegal. Its basicly a fre-bee for orginized crime. Drug dealers control the plant, we pay to have it, and we also pay to keep cops trying to bust us for having it, let the cat and mouse game continue. Americans are the dumbest group of poeple EVER!! Bunch of church goers, you think you so high mighty and moral that you will let a plant with so many benifets, tear poeples lives apart. Legalize it you stupid shi$#.
Ricky tick
About 2 years ago
No offence to you Jason K, with the church goer comment ;)
mckehl johnson
About 2 years ago
im 18 and i live in vancouver washington my mom and step dad both have nerve trauma and my mom has pinched nerves in her back and she is prescribed a nasty pill called oxy contin the more you get of it the more you want its never enough yet 1 joint can do everything this little pill can do and more
Dev Meyers
About 2 years ago
Bravo! It is important that everyone reads Pennsylvania House Bill 1393 – Compassionate Medical Marijuana which goes into public hearings on December 2 in Harrisburg. Please let your representatives know that the government does not have the right to deprive your loved ones of a treatment that a doctor recommends to alleviate their suffering. There is a lot of information on my site http://www.examiner.com/x-19678-Cannabis-Revolution-Examiner Yesterday Governor Rendell said that he will sign a well-crafted bill. So let’s be sure that the legislature gets it right.
james capers
About 2 years ago
Marijuana is not a bodily harming drug. The only studies that have been proven about it are that it increses heart rate… Also it is proven tha marijuana can help people that will not eat also help them if several other good ways.
Evan kerekas
About 2 years ago
I have epilepsy and asthma so I vaporize or eat some form of cannabis everyday, and I am nothing like the lazy and unmotivated pothead image that has been shoving down peoples throats for years. I have a full time job, am currently getting my masters in biology so I can become a doctor, I work out regularly, and run 15 miles a week. And I wouldn’t be able to do a fraction of all this with such easy if it wasn’t for the greatest plant known to man. I feel as if the government is waging a war against me, and people like me, because our medicines can be grown and doesn’t have to be bought from a pharmaceutical company that spends billions of dollars every year on lobbyist to try to woo politicians into making policies in favor of the pharmaceutical companies. Corruption. That is the real root of most of the problem in this country. God Bless America.
Louis Jargow
About 2 years ago
woodstock? what?
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