June 9, 2005
Legalizing medical marijuana
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that growing and using medical marijuana should be a federal offense because of its, er, “substantial” impact on interstate commerce, what next? Should we roll over and stop rolling, or is there a way to end the reefer madness?
The Medium Lobster, tongue firmly in cheek (do lobsters have cheeks?), rolls over:
At long last, the forces of justice have finally defeated the forces of tumor-wracked sick people. The Supreme Court has wisely ruled that Congress’s ability to defend against the pernicious terrors of marijuana overrides California’s meager capacity to make its own laws, and that the matter of a dying woman’s health care is a personal decision between herself, her doctor, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court, and the United States Congress.
All is as it should be: marijuana, after all, is a Drug. It is the undying dread, the nameless horror, the Leaf That Does Not Die, and we, the guardians of respectable civilization - who are at war, the Medium Lobster will remind you, to defend its very existence from chaos - cannot allow it to be used to comfort agonized women in their dying years. As Justice Stevens reminds us, even medical marijuana may be abused by unscrupulous physicians who prescribe it recklessly or for the sake of profit - unlike harmless prescription drugs like Viagra, Accutane, and Oxycontin.
Better perhaps to end the reefer madness. You can help do that by lobbying to get two Congressional bills passed.
The first bill, HR 2087, is bipartisan legislation that seeks to reschedule cannabis under federal law, so that doctors can legally prescribe it in states that have recognized its use under state law. It would also give state legislatures the legal authority to establish medical-marijuana distribution systems. Eleven states—Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—have enacted laws exempting qualified patients who use cannabis medicinally from state criminal penalties. These, remember, are the chronically ill patients who, in the wake of Monday’s Supreme Court decision, can now be raided by the feds even if they are abiding by state law. Congress can stop this insanity by passing HR 2087.
Rescheduling is the key to ending the medical-marijuana insanity, and as Cato’s Mark Moller notes (via The Agitator), the Court did leave the window open here:
Stevens, in footnote 37, suggests that “evidence proffered by respondents… if found credible after trial, would cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the findings that require marijuana to be listed in Schedule I.” I think that’s a clear signal to lower courts to give a serious hearing to any medical marijuana proponents seeking review of a DEA reclassification hearing under the current Controlled Substances Act—and a warning to the DEA to take those arguments seriously.
The second bill would ensure that federal juries hear the full story when medical marijuana patients and providers, operating legally under state law, are tried on federal marijuana charges:
S. 2989 is similar to H.R. 1717, the “Truth in Trials Act,” introduced by a bipartisan House coalition last year and inspired in part by the case of Ed Rosenthal. In January 2003, Rosenthal was found guilty of felony marijuana cultivation charges by a jury that was not allowed to consider that the marijuana was for medical use by seriously ill patients and was grown with the authorization of the city of Oakland, California. When they learned the truth, jurors who convicted Rosenthal publicly repudiated their own verdict and apologized to him, feeling they had been duped into convicting an innocent man.
… Because federal law does not recognize any medical use of marijuana, defendants have been barred from raising the issue in their defense. “As it stands today, federal law denies medical marijuana defendants a basic right that every other defendant has, the right to explain what they did to the jury,” said Robert Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., “If you shoot someone, you are allowed to explain why you did it, but if you’re a disabled patient growing marijuana to relieve your pain and suffering, you can’t.”
Write to your member of Congress. If they’re against these bills, ask them why they want to waste local tax dollars prosecuting sick people in other states. If you live in one of the 11 states that have legalized medical marijuana, ask them if they really value the whims of D.C. over the wishes of their constituents.
You might also want to write to your local paper, and have them ask the same questions.
Posted by Stephen at 12:34 AM in Drugs | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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