Michelle Malkin: Put aside the pot jokes and look again at Colorado legalization

Hotair ^ | 03/26/2014 | Ed Morrissey

[SeekAndFind]

Our great friend and Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin, offers a powerful testimony today in her column on marijuana legalization — and a surprisingly personal perspective. Sure, we all have fun with jokes at Colorado’s experiment with recreational approval, but the access it creates does more than just serve as easy access to intoxication. Michelle found herself in one of the pot shops that have opened to serve demand that comes from more than just fun and games, hoping to find help for her mother-in-law:

It’s 9 a.m. on a weekday, and I’m at the Marisol Therapeutics pot shop. This is serious business. Security is tight. ID checks are frequent. Merchandise is strictly regulated, labeled, wrapped and controlled. The store is clean, bright and safe. The staffers are courteous and professional. Customers of all ages are here.

There’s a middle-aged woman at the counter nearby who could be your school librarian. On the opposite end of the dispensary, a slender young soldier in a wheelchair with close-cropped hair, dressed in his fatigues, consults with a clerk. There’s a gregarious cowboy and an inquisitive pair of baby boomers looking at edibles. A dude in a hoodie walks in with his backpack.

And then there’s my husband and me. …

For the past three months, my mother-in-law, Carole, whom I love with all my heart, has battled metastatic melanoma. After a harrowing week of hospitalization and radiation, she’s at home now. A miraculous new combination of oral cancer drugs seems to have helped enormously with pain and possibly contained the disease’s spread. But Carole’s loss of appetite and nausea persist.

A month ago, with encouragement from all of her doctors here in Colorado, she applied for a state-issued medical marijuana card. It still hasn’t come through. As a clerk at Marisol Therapeutics told us, there’s a huge backlog.

In states where only medicinal use is permitted, Carole would still be out of luck. However, in Colorado, access for recreational use also allows people to get around the permitting process temporarily, although the prices go up for non-medicinal use:

But thanks to Amendment 64, the marijuana drug legalization act approved by voters in 2012, we were able to legally and safely circumvent the bureaucratic holdup. “A lot of people are in your same situation,” the pot shop staffer told us. “We see it all the time, and we’re glad we can help.”

Be sure to read it all. Michelle makes a good point about the entrepreneurial aspects of Colorado’s legalization, as well as the improved ability for citizens to exercise their own choice on both recreational intoxicants and medical treatments. The marijuana is grown on site and/or locally, so it involves no issues that would normally invoke federal jurisdiction.

That leaves the question, though, of whether marijuana actually does provide an effective therapeutic treatment. Unfortunately, this is another area in which the federal government obstructs rather than clarifies, as the Washington Post reported last week:

While 20 states and the District have made medical marijuana legal — in Colorado and Washington state the drug is also legal for recreational use — it remains among the most tightly controlled substances under federal law. For scientists, that means extra steps to obtain, transport and secure the drug — delays they say can slow down their research by months or even years.

The barriers exist despite the fact that the number of people using marijuana legally for medical reasons is estimated at more than 1 million.

Stalled for decades because of the stigma associated with the drug, lack of funding and legal issues, research into marijuana’s potential for treating diseases is drawing renewed interest. Recent studies and anecdotal stories have provided hope that marijuana, or some components of the plant, may have diverse applications, such as treating cancer, HIV and Alzheimer’s disease.

But scientists say they are frustrated that the federal government has not made any efforts to speed the process of research. Over the years, the Drug Enforcement Administration has turned down several petitions to reclassify cannabis, reiterating its position that marijuana has no accepted medical use and remains a dangerous drug. The DEA has said that there is a lack of safety data and that the drug has a high potential for abuse.

It’s a typical bureaucratic catch-22. The government has declared marijuana to be among the most dangerous of controlled substances so few can access it for studies to determine its value, and the federal government uses the lack of established evidence of its value to justify its classification. Meanwhile, several states have had years of experience in medicinal legalization with apparently few ill effects, which is at least indirect evidence that the DEA has misclassified marijuana, but no one wants to take the politically risky step of reducing control over weed. Meanwhile, people like Carole have to live in states like Colorado in order to make their own decisions over access and effectiveness.

I’m not a fan of marijuana, and I do worry about the moral signal that legalizing recreational use sends, but at least so far it hasn’t had any worse impact than alcohol. We should at least study the impact of marijuana so that we can have an informed debate.

[a fool in paradise]

So much for the rhetoric of “tax the hell out of it”.

[cripplecreek]

Decriminalize and keep the tax out of it.

[tacticalogic]

I’m not a fan of marijuana, and I do worry about the moral signal that legalizing recreational use sends, but at least so far it hasn’t had any worse impact than alcohol. We should at least study the impact of marijuana so that we can have an informed debate.

I worry more about the political signal that saying we can't let this be a State's Rights issue because we can't trust the States to make the right decision sends.

[grobdriver]

so far it hasn’t had any worse impact than alcohol

And we sure want more people out there driving DUI.

[Ken H]

National marijuana prohibition is dead and it isn’t coming back. The states are dealing with it now, as they should have been all along per the Tenth Amendment.

[Paladin2]

"marijuana’s potential for treating diseases"

Treatment? Like an antibiotic? Feh.

[gdani]

I worry more about the political signal that saying we can't let this be a State's Rights issue because we can't trust the States to make the right decision sends.

People tend to crow the most about states' rights when it involves an issue they support.

But when it's something they are against - marijuana, assisted suicide, gay marriage, etc - they become the Fed Govt's biggest cheerleaders.

[cloudmountain]

POT--ain't it great?
It's really a commie foreign enemy plot to turn American youth into mush brains...not unlike their pot-head/mush-brain parents. NOTHING WRONG with pot. It's NOT a "gateway" drug.

It's NOT!!!!

It's NOT!!!!

It's NOT!!!!

It's NOT!!!!

It's NOT!!!!

It's NOT!!!!

It's really NOT!!!! Wah!!

Lol :o)!!

[DesertRhino]

I know it’s quaint, but there was a time in this country that taxes existed to raise funds, not to accomplish social engineering goals. Its no better when we do it for our goals.

[greene66]

Disappointing, as Malkin has been one of the few pundit/columnists left that I stuck with, as so many of the so-called conservative writers went off the rails in so many ways (hello, Ann Coulter!). I don’t agree with Malkin here. Ah, well. To hell with ‘em all. I’ve pretty much stopped reading each and every one of them, just like I stopped watching FoxNews.

[cherry]

when and if they ever start testing "drunk" drivers for other drugs, I think we'll all be shocked at how many also have weed and other drugs in their system...

so which drug do you pin the intoxication and incompetance on?....alcohol always gets the wrap because its politically correct to attack alcohol while other stuff like weed and cocaine just get that little wink wink...afterall, all the beautiful people use the coke.....

[9422WMR]

Legalize pot and increase the vocabulary of the teenagers. Words such as; like, um ya know, like, wow, dude, awesome, like yea, cool, DUDE, ya know, uh yea, bummer and other words of brilliance will become the most commonly used vernacular of the useless idiot generation. Aspirations of nothingness come to mind for their future./Sad

[ExTxMarine]

And we sure want more people out there driving DUI.

So, you must believe in gun control laws for EVERYONE, just because one person kills a group of kids, right?

My point: just because some people use and abuse alcohol and THEN go out and break laws, does not mean that we should ban alcohol; you ban the bad behavior (i.e., DUI laws, etc...). In America, we should punish people for doing a bad thing (i.e., DUI, murder, etc...). We should NOT punish people because someone else did something stupid, or even because they might, possibly, could have the opportunity to do a bad thing.

[ican'tbelieveit]

not sure what you are saying, CO is taxing the hell out of it.

[tacticalogic]

But when it's something they are against - marijuana, assisted suicide, gay marriage, etc - they become the Fed Govt's biggest cheerleaders.

If it needs to be under federal authority then we need to get an amendment. If they think we can abuse the Commerce Clause without unintended consequences they're pissing into the wind.

[gr8eman]

Go downtown and buy a dimebag furkreissakes

[a fool in paradise]

It’s the same malarkey used when they say “the money will be directed towards education”.

Pass it on it’s own merit.

Dangling a carrot of wealth for the state while reducing other taxes is bogus, specially when they are setting up ways to circumvent the tax (and subsidize people’s pot use).

Nobody ever buys my glasses or contacts (if I buy an insurance plan, it pretty much works out to pre-tax income being set aside and “maxes out” at about the rate I put in).

But free pot and sex pills on the public’s dime. Okay.

[nathanbedford]

We should at least study the impact of marijuana so that we can have an informed debate.

I think the proper question is not whether marijuana is harmful, it is, or whether it leads to undesirable collateral problems, it does, the question is, are the disadvantages of legalizing marijuana greater or less than the disadvantages of continuing to, at least notionally, make it illegal?

In my view the corruption and general disregard for the rule of law is so harmful to a society which is already disintegrating partly because of a general disregard for the rule of law that I believe the harm of keeping it technically illegal far exceeds the societal harm of legalizing it. I believe that we are reaping all the disadvantages of illegality,such as driving under the influence, and none of the advantages of making marijuana legal, such as disincentivizing criminal activity.

At the same time we are not reaping the advantages of making marijuana illegal, such as reducing consumption rates.

The war on drugs is lost, and the war on corruption is about to be lost as well.

[greene66]

Yep. America-2014 for you. A nation of dopeheads and degenerates.