Pubdate: Wed, 29 May 2002
Source: Metrowest Daily News (MA)
Copyright: 2002, MetroWest Daily News and Herald Interactive Advertising
Contact:  http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/619
Author: Paul Campos
Note: Paul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

AN IRRATIONAL MARIJUANA POLICY

As a rule, political disputes feature conflicting positions that are 
obviously or at least arguably rational. There are, however, exceptions.  A 
particularly striking illustration of an exception to the rule is provided 
by the dispute over medical marijuana laws. Currently eight states, 
including Colorado, feature such laws, which allow physicians to authorize 
the dispensing of marijuana to patients to relieve pain from conditions 
ranging from glaucoma to cancer to AIDS.

The federal government in general, and the Bush administration in 
particular, has taken the position that, since there is no federal law 
permitting doctors to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes, people who 
supply or possess marijuana legally under state law for medical purposes 
should be prosecuted under federal law.  This is not a rationally 
defensible position.

Under federal law, marijuana is categorized as a Schedule I drug, which 
means that, according to federal government, it is both highly dangerous 
and has no recognized medical use.  Both of these claims are obviously 
false, and the federal officials who are charged with carrying out the laws 
that flow from this indefensible categorization of the drug are well aware 
of that fact.

The argument that marijuana is both so dangerous and of so little medical 
value that -- unlike, say, morphine -- it is something that doctors should 
not have the professional discretion to administer to their patients is 
beneath contempt.  It is, in short, the kind of argument that fails what 
lawyers refer to as "the red-face test."

Marijuana is far less dangerous than the literally hundreds of prescription 
drugs that can be ingested in fatal quantities ( there has never been a 
recorded case of someone dying from an overdose of marijuana, and indeed, 
as a practical matter, such a thing is physiologically impossible ), and 
that are far more addictive than cannabis.  Furthermore, despite the 
strenuous efforts of the federal government to block scientific research 
regarding the potential medical uses of marijuana, a great deal of evidence 
has accumulated in recent years that marijuana is an effective -- indeed, 
sometimes the most effective and least problematic -- pain killer for 
people suffering from a wide variety of serious and often excruciatingly 
painful conditions.

Given all this, it isn't surprising that several states have enacted laws 
designed to offset the effects of the federal government's profoundly 
irrational policies regarding the medical use of marijuana. What is rather 
surprising is the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's response.  Now, of 
course, only the terminally naive are surprised when politicians deal with 
drug questions hypocritically.  Even so, the depth of the current 
administration's hypocrisy should perturb even the most cynical observer.

Even if we leave aside the utter irrationality of the federal government's 
attitude toward medical marijuana use, the fact remains that federal 
prosecutions of people who are acting perfectly legally under state law 
when they use marijuana for medical purposes violates every principle of 
states' rights that George W.  Bush has repeatedly pledged to 
uphold.  Indeed, when he was a presidential candidate Bush announced that 
he opposed the precise policy that his own Justice Department and DEA are 
now carrying out.

There is, needless to say, a rational explanation for all this. Although 
the federal government's marijuana policy isn't rationally defensible, 
politicians from the president on down are terrified of the accusation that 
they are soft on drugs.  As absurd as that accusation is in the land of 
Budweiser and Percodan and mandatory prison sentences for millions of drug 
offenders, it still carries enormous political power.  The Bush 
administration's policy on medical marijuana use seems clear: If values 
such as democracy and federalism and common human decency happen to 
conflict with the administration's policy, so much the worse for them.
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