Pubdate: Sun, 03 Jul 2005
Source: Orange County Register, The (CA)
http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/07/03/sections/commentary/ 
READER%20REBUTTALS/article_582107.php
Copyright: 2005 The Orange County Register
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321
Author: James T. Hamilton
Cited: Gonzales v. Raich ( www.angeljustice.org/ )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Note: The clinical professor of family practice at U.C. Irvine 
college of medicine is certified in addiction medicine.

MARIJUANA RULING MADE LEGAL SENSE

Many recent articles and letters and an editorial - "Marijuana 
ruling: status quo," Opinion, June 7 - have castigated the U.S. 
Supreme Court decision upholding the power of the federal government 
to control the use of marijuana in this country.

The medical criticisms have some validity, but have been very 
one-sided. The legal criticisms have been unreasonable.

Voiding the authority of the federal government to control the use of 
marijuana would have required twisted logic overturning several 
precedents and would have been the kind of judge-made law that the 
Register usually criticizes so rightly.

Saying that the court has denied marijuana to patients reveals 
ignorance of our federal system or is dishonestly inaccurate. The 
court did not deny anyone anything; it only said that Congress has a 
right to pass the laws that it did, whether they are stupid or not. 
Although studies have shown that marijuana grown in a state would 
probably have little effect on interstate commerce, that is not good enough.

The constitutional requirement is that there be a certainty that it 
would have noeffect.

Moving on to the medical issues, we come to the fact that only the 
viewpoint of those who proclaim the benefits of medical marijuana 
have been presented.

I fully agree that we should let people who are severely ill try just 
about anything they want to either get better or relieve their 
suffering, especially if they are terminal, but that is not the 
sticking point with legislators. They are deathly afraid that 
allowing any legalization of marijuana would lead to a view that it 
is safe and so the demand would increase and marijuana grown for 
medical purposes would be diverted to the black market to satisfy the 
increased demand. This could lead to a huge increase in medical and 
social problems because marijuana is about 50 percent more toxic than 
tobacco and its sedative and memory-loss effects last much longer 
than alcohol and are much sneakier in developing.

Marijuana advocates often proclaim that it is not addictive, but that 
is not true. About 10 percent of marijuana users become dependent or 
addicted - about the same as alcohol.

But the 10 percent addicted to alcohol already cause huge problems 
and marijuana, even though illegal, also does. If marijuana were 
legal to any extent, it might well cause even more problems.

One major fear is that young people would believe, even more than 
they do today, that marijuana is safe and harmless, and they would 
use it even more than they do already.

Marijuana is not harmless; it is the No. 1 cause of drug-related 
emergency room visits for teenagers and the No. 1 drug involved for 
teens seeking addiction treatment. Perhaps if the marijuana advocates 
would get real and admit that it can be dangerous to use, but could 
be beneficial for those already debilitated, they could get a lot 
more support from scientists and doctors (and even legislators).

The last point is that there is virtually no evidence that smoked 
marijuana is statistically superior to modern medicines for any of 
the problems for which it is advocated, with the possible exception 
of wasting syndromes.

In fact, modern medicines are usually better and more reliably effective.

Even prescription oral THC (the most effective ingredient in 
marijuana) is often statistically more effective than smoked marijuana.

That is not to say that individuals could not be the exception to the 
rule, because individuals are not statistics. Doctors see all the 
time individuals who respond to a medication much differently than the average.

Although I would like to see marijuana available for medical use and 
I think that it would be reasonable to let individual states 
experiment with different policies of legalization ("the laboratory 
of democracy"), those who are afraid of its use becoming widespread 
are not foolish and it was legally very reasonable for the Supreme 
Court to uphold federal oversight of marijuana use.

We want to be able to hold the people we vote for accountable for 
their policies.