Good to Grow (medical marijuana)

NY Times ^ | June 8, 2005 | SALLY SATEL

[neverdem]

RELIEF for medical marijuana patients was snatched away this week. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that such patients will be subject to federal prosecution even if their own state's laws permit use of marijuana. Now, short of Congress legalizing medical marijuana, the only way that its users can avoid stiff financial penalties or jail is if it is turned into a prescription medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said as much during oral arguments last November with his comment that "medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum."

Fair enough. The problem is that the very agencies integral to facilitating the research and development of medical marijuana have actually been impeding progress.

The first obstacle is ideological. The Drug Enforcement Administration has fought marijuana's use as a medicine, maintaining that it has no therapeutic value. (It hasn't helped that activists have tried to use medical marijuana as a wedge to liberalize drug laws.)

But scientific consensus says otherwise. Surveying a range of findings, a federally commissioned Institute of Medicine report issued in 1999 noted the active ingredients in marijuana, cannabinoids, can relieve chemotherapy-induced nausea, stimulate appetite and suppress pain in patients who have failed to get relief from conventional treatments. Other countries have embraced such findings. Last April, for example, regulators in Canada approved a marijuana extract delivered in an oral spray for relief of symptoms of nerve pain associated with multiple sclerosis.

A more imposing obstacle to developing medicine in the United States is that there is only one legal source of research marijuana: a farm in Mississippi run by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health. As gatekeeper of the supply, the drug abuse institute must review and approve all...

[neverdem]

Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the co-author of "One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance."

[Torie]

The interest in the medicinal properties of this drug versus other drugs, is well because it is pot, and is portable outside of its "intended" uses.

[neverdem]

I wouldn't be surprised that medical marijuana has to be approved by almost three quarters of the states, before the congress critters think that a Constitutional Amendment looks viable, that they have the gonads to pass a law allowing medical marijuana. They can't look weak in the interminable war on drugs.

[neverdem]

Federalism, Up in Smoke?

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[The_Reader_David]

Once again we discover that the 'generalized right to privacy' is actually a 'generalized right to abberant sex and the disposal of inconveinent consequences'.

Isn't it perverse that the feds can stomp into someone's house for growing and consuming cannabis sativa (solo, no commerce, no user but the grower) an arguably absolutely private act, while an abortion (which involves four people--the woman, the father, the abortionist and the baby--and a commercial transaction) is protected by this so called 'generalized right of privacy'?

Today's ruling was idiotic (note the three dissenters were the conservatives!) But can we use it for something? The majority reasoning should apply to services as well as goods for which there is a national market. How about Congress get up the guts to ban or regulate abortions, and the Solicitor General file a brief based on today's reasoning.

(If it doesn't work, some one should launch a challenge to the drug laws in general based on the reasoning in Roe.)

[BlazingArizona]

Today's ruling was idiotic (note the three dissenters were the conservatives!) But can we use it for something? The majority reasoning should apply to services as well as goods for which there is a national market. How about Congress get up the guts to ban or regulate abortions, and the Solicitor General file a brief based on today's reasoning.

I like the suggestion that another FReeper had in yesterday's thread: now that it has been decided that federal law trumps state law in this area, why don't the pro-MJ states just eiiminate their drug laws entirely, throwing the whole burden of enforcement onto the federosaurus?

[RGVTx]

I like the suggestion that another FReeper had in yesterday's thread: now that it has been decided that federal law trumps state law in this area, why don't the pro-MJ states just eiiminate their drug laws entirely, throwing the whole burden of enforcement onto the federosaurus?

Because it is profitable to the local law enforcement due to asset seizures. Think homes, vehicles, boats, cash, etc...

[kingsurfer]

Isn't it perverse that the feds can stomp into someone's house for growing and consuming cannabis sativa (solo, no commerce, no user but the grower) an arguably absolutely private act, while an abortion (which involves four people--the woman, the father, the abortionist and the baby--and a commercial transaction) is protected by this so called 'generalized right of privacy'?

___________________________________________________________

Yes but abortion is a "right".
I know this as I come from a country that kills 200,000 unborn babies each year but thinks hunting Foxes is cruel and unusual.

[stradivarius]

Congress needs to pass an Act that limits the overreaching power of the Commerce Clause, reaffirms the principles of Federalism and limited powers, and confirms that the 9th and 10th Amendments are part of the Constitution and not atrophied gangrenous dead limbs of the Bill of Rights.

Now is the time to do this, while Conservatives are a majority of the Congress, if any Conservatives still believe the Constitutional mandate to the federal government of limited powers.

[A CA Guy]

Nobody is really going to stop the dying from using this drug unless they go out of the way to make sure everyone has to know what they are doing.
If they want to complain in the press about how the law wants to confiscate their plants at home, don't be surprised if there is an action in response.

The biggest problem for the really sick and dying who want to use this is:
#1 all the loser dopers who want to ride the backs of the sick and dying for their recreational buzz.
#2 there is often much better drugs out there for especially cancer patients. Maybe some early stages of cancer might have pot being beneficial, but once that stuff gets going, nothing shy of morphine will do anything for these folks.

I do sympathize with the true sick.
I do wish jailed all the recreational creeps that might try and jump onto these sick people for their illegal drugs.

[LibertarianInExile]

Q: why don't the pro-MJ states just eiiminate their drug laws entirely, throwing the whole burden of enforcement onto the federosaurus? A:Because it is profitable to the local law enforcement due to asset seizures. Think homes, vehicles, boats, cash, etc...

Well, that and the fact that the states generally don't have the guts to actually legalize pot entirely. They wuss their way into 'medical' marijuana, which is silly tapdancing, or they decriminalize, which is like saying that you can have a couple cookies but can't buy a jarful...or that you can have 500 rounds of ammo but 1000 is just too dangerous. It sure would be nice if just one of these states would grow the cojones to stop paying hundreds of cops to enforce consensual crimes, and tax those income streams instead like they do every other one.

[Born Conservative]

Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the co-author of "One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance."

I also recommend her other book, "PC MD".

[green iguana]

it is pot, and is portable outside of its "intended" uses.

Right. Nobody uses Hydrocodone, Oxycontin, Valium, Codeine, pseudophedrine, or any of the prescription amphetamines or barbiturates for anything other than their "intended" uses.

[BlazingArizona]

Well, that and the fact that the states generally don't have the guts to actually legalize pot entirely.

I'm not suggesting that states legalize. After all, this decision says they can't. I'm suggesting that states defund their own drug enforcement efforts on grounds of preemption, thereby making enforcement a huge, overpriced federal rathole. Let's see how long Republicans would put up with that.

[green iguana]

this decision says they can't

Of course they can. The states could legalize all kinds of behavior that are illegal under Federal laws. According to this horrid decision, the Federal law would trump the state's laws, but the Feds would have to do the prosecuting as no state laws would have been broken.

[bird4four4]

eliminate their drug laws entirely, throwing the whole burden of enforcement onto the federosaurus?

If that were to happen the Fed would not enforce, they would force the state to enforce by withholding all funding for anything, then the state would refuse to pay taxes, then they secede. I don't think we're going to have a civil war over pot. Never happen. Besides the states make good money fining little pot smokers.

[TKDietz]

The Hinchey Rohrabacher amendment is coming up for vote. It won't do all of what you want but it would stop federal prosecution of people involved with medical marijuana in compliance with state laws. At least that would be some acknowledgment of states rights. I think that this will be the third time that particular piece of legislation has been voted on in Congress. Last time it got a little better than a third of the vote. It will interesting to see how the vote turns out this time. I imagine it will fail again but I wouldn't be surprised to see it get more votes this time around. I think it got 152 last time, mostly from Democrats. Now though we are hearing a lot of grumbling from Republicans about this case and Republican Congressmen have to be hearing this too. Probably a lot more than voted for the amendment last time actually support it but were worried about political fallout. This time maybe a lot of these guys will try to work a yes vote to their political advantage, capitalizing on the states rights angle.

[The_Reader_David]

Nope, Roe asserts a 'generalized right of privacy' 'reasoning' on the basis of some mystical mumbo-jumbo about 'penumbrae emanating from' amendments to the Constitition.

A way back to sensible jurisprudence, if not to limitations on abortion is to start pressing manifest conflict between the reasoning in the medical marijauna case and Roe.