The biggest divide between DC politicians and America: medical marijuana [View all]

[RainDog]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-long-slog-to-legalizing-marijuana-in-the-us-is-just-beginning/267436/

Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and legal analyst for 60 Minutes. He is also chief analyst and legal editor for CBS Radio News and has won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal analysts and commentators...He is the winner of the American Bar Association’s 2012 Silver Gavel Award for his Atlantic commentary about the death penalty in America and the winner of the Humane Society’s 2012 Genesis Award for his coverage of the plight of America’s wild horses.

And he says:

Nowhere is the divide between Washington and America more evident than in this one court ruling on this one topic. (Medical Marijuana) The law may not permit the use of this drug to ease pain. Our government's tribunes may not yet trust the science that supports it. But the people have long since rendered their own judgment. For them, peer review begins at home.

Even though recent polls show huge public support for legalized medical marijuana, Congress has ignored the issue and the Obama Administration has been outright hostile to medical marijuana operations, especially in California

The plaintiffs in this case (recently ruled no by the DC Court of Appeals) asked the DEA to reclassify marijuana in 2002. The DEA then submitted the request to the DHHS. It took four years for the DHHS to conclude that such a re-classification was unjustified. And then it took the DEA five more years to formally deny the plaintiffs' request for a re-classification of the drug. To offer some perspective on the slow march in play here, during the nine-year span from 2002 to 2011 during which this issue was live before the DEA nine states and the District of Columbia passed medical marijuana laws.

At its heart, though, the ruling cements into place the image of the federal government's position on pot as something akin to a large boulder in the middle of a raging stream. It has been 40 years since the DEA concluded that that marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." Since then, 18 states and the District of Columbia -- one third of all such jurisdictions -- have legalized the use of medical marijuana while two states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized the recreational use of marijuana.

The Federal govt continues to insist that everyday Americans are criminals when the majority of Americans know the Federal govt is full of shit on this issue. Whether their blindness is racially motivated, class motivated - who knows. What Americans know is that, in this case, the Federal govt is the problem, not the solution, and, in fact, has become the enemy of people in regard to this issue.

But here's what we could do to make sense of this issue: remove marijuana, entirely, from the drug schedules and admit that it is not a drug. Cannabis is a plant, an herb, not a drug. Simply remove it from the drug schedules and the problem of a jurassic agency that wants to protect its turf will no longer be the issue.

Herbal supplements to other medications are also part of America's medicine cabinet, from valerian root to echinacea.

The AG could do this tomorrow.

But, of course, he won't.

And the Federal govt continues to target one group of people, harassing them, threatening them with prison, destroying their businesses, keeping cancer patients in jail for using and growing cannabis and, ultimately, killing those patients in more than one incidence. That's what the ultimate outcome of this intransigence really is - harm and death to otherwise law-abiding citizens.

thanks for the good work, feds! beat up on cancer patients. it makes you look tough.