Pubdate: Wed, 19 Feb 2014
Source: Catoosa County News, The (Ringgold, GA)
Copyright: 2014 The Catoosa County News
Contact:  http://www.catoosanews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3324
Author: Donna Brazile

Page: A4

THE SOUTH GOES TO POT

Its Marijuana Laws Were Only "Getting Tougher."

In Louisiana (my home state), I wasn't surprised that the editor of
LaPolitics, Joe Maginnis, observed that Louisiana "is not a culture of
where marijuana is accepted." True dat. Harsher penalties were being
introduced in 2010 there, too.

Except that today, the reverse is true. Last month, the Florida
Supreme Court approved the language for a constitutional amendment to
legalize medical marijuana three days before citizens gathered enough
signatures to place it on the November ballot. And NORML, a group
working to reform marijuana laws, reports an American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) poll found that 53 percent of Louisianans favor
legalizing recreational marijuana. Support for legalizing marijuana
"is blooming in the South," it said.

Indeed it is. In Kentucky (where citizens are so politically
conservative that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is considered
by some to be too liberal), a recent poll found 52 percent favor
medical marijuana, while only 37 percent opposed it. (The remainder,
12 percent, were "not sure.")

Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo told the Lexington Herald Leader,
"There does seem to be in the public a growing awareness that the
medical marijuana issue is different from the drug issue." This week,
Kentucky state Sen. Julie Denton, a Republican, filed a bill that
would permit the use of cannabidiol, marijuana in controlled oral
doses, which reduces seizures in children.

In Alabama, state Rep. Mike Ball, a former hostage negotiator for the
state highway patrol, backs a bill to permit cannabis oil. "The
political fear is shifting from what will happen if we pass it, to
what might happen if we don't," Ball told the Associated Press. CNN's
chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, made a public apology
for an article he wrote for Time magazine in 2009, opposing legalizing
pot. "I didn't look hard enough," he said, "until now."

Dr. Gupta now finds compelling medical evidence that marijuana does
have medical uses. And in some cases, marijuana is the only recourse.
Gupta cites the case of Charlotte Figi, a child he met in Colorado.
She had seizures at birth; by age 3, was having more than 300 seizures
a day and was on seven different medications at once. Today, her
"brain is calmed" by cannabis oil, and she is down to about three
seizures a month.

"We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years
in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that," Gupta
wrote on the CNN Health website. Voters appear to be coming to the
same conclusion. More than one-third of the states have initiatives on
marijuana on this fall's ballots. Among those states considering
marijuana legislation are Southern states like Mississippi, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

In fact, the current push to legalize medical marijuana is a
renaissance of legislation that was passed in the 1970s after a
presidential commission recommended decriminalizing marijuana. New
Mexico was the first state to act, in 1978, and Louisiana, Florida and
Illinois followed the same year. Georgia did so in 1981. According to
the International Business Times, "Thirty-four states adopted laws
recognizing the medical benefits of cannabis between 1978 and 1982."

However, a get-tough-on-drug-users atmosphere then swept the nation,
and most of the laws were not funded, shut down or simply ignored.
Now, existing laws may be revived to ease the transition to legalizing
medical marijuana.

In 1982, Georgia enacted the Medical Marijuana Necessities Act, (now
called the Controlled Substances Therapeutic Research Program). It
cited restrictive federal laws that impeded clinical trials for
medical marijuana and "insufficient funding," to properly explore
medical marijuana.

Now, like Dr. Gupta says, the evidence is in. And the South may
finally be ready to resume a leading role in the legal use of medical
marijuana.

Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political
commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a contributing
columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.
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MAP posted-by: Matt