Medical Marijuana

CNN hosted an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday which featured democratically elected questions courtesy of the popular website Digg.com. Unsurprisingly, one of the top questions was about marijuana policy reform. Here is her response (it’s the 3rd question):



Obviously, Pelosi is very supportive of medical marijuana and despite her pessimism about achieving full-scale legalization, she didn’t actually say she opposed it. Ideologically, I’d have to say this was pretty good coming from the Speaker of the House. But, as Paul Armentano points out, Pelosi’s advice to supporters of medical marijuana just doesn’t add up. She laments Congress’ intransigence on the issue and encourages constituents to contact their representatives, as though this is all just a matter of showing politicians where the people stand.

Alas, we kinda tried that already. Public support for medical marijuana has been overwhelming for a long time. Reformers are 9-1 when it comes to passing state-level medical marijuana laws at the ballot box. State legislatures in Hawaii, New Mexico and Rhode Island have passed laws to protect patients, drawing praise from constituents. The only memorable instance of a politician being damaged for his position on medical marijuana involved Bob Barr, who lost his House seat following attacks for opposing medical marijuana. He’s come around since then.

What, other than legalizing medical marijuana in a dozen states, could the people possibly do to show the politicians in Washington, D.C. that we’re serious about this? You want us to go legalize medical marijuana everywhere else in America? We’ll do it. You want more research proving that it works? Let us know when you’re done reading what we’ve already given you, and we’ll gladly send the rest. Worried about the message to young people? Teenage use is down in states with medical marijuana laws.

You see, our feet are tired. Our throats are hoarse. Our keyboards are cracking, our sharpies are dry and we’re almost out of posterboard. With all of that in mind, Nancy Pelosi, since you do agree with us and you’re the Speaker of House now, we were hoping there might be something else you could do.

Bruce Mirken at the MPP Blog points out this observation from the LA Times:

Most of the negative consequences can be attributed to the gap between state and federal marijuana laws. The fact that even sellers considered legitimate by the state can be prosecuted and ruined by federal agents encourages black-market dealers, who endanger their communities by ignoring fire codes, selling to healthy minors and fighting turf wars with other dealers.
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Overall, Proposition 215 has done more good than harm. In addition to marijuana's medical benefits, its legitimate sale brings in $100 million a year in tax revenues, and even though it can be abused by users, it isn't demonstrably more dangerous to society than tobacco and alcohol. The state's new guidelines will help reduce the measure's harmful side effects, but the only long-term solution is for the feds to stop the medical marijuana raids and leave California law enforcement to California officers.

The longer Californians live under Prop. 215, the clearer that central point becomes. Federal interference is the obvious remaining source of chaos in California’s medical marijuana economy. Once that obstacle is removed, everything else will fall into place. By developing formal guidelines for legally providing medical marijuana, Attorney General Brown has taken an important step towards further legitimizing medical marijuana distribution.

Of course, the flipside is that the new regulations will give local police more leverage to go after dispensaries that don’t follow the guidelines. Providers will be required to operate on a "not-for-profit" basis, which means "reinvesting excess revenue (after salary and overhead) in patients services for members, advocacy for patients, or other typical nonprofit activity."

It will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds and I imagine there will be problems, but I’m not sure the San Francisco Chronicle quite understands what this is all about:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has ordered a crackdown on medical pot clubs that are selling the drug for big profits.

The move puts the state a bit more in line with the feds in dealing with the explosion of questionable marijuana dispensaries since the passage of Proposition 215 more than a decade ago.

The single most important thing to understand about the new regulations is that they forbid police from disrupting legitimate medical marijuana activity as authorized under Prop. 215. To say that this somehow brings the state "a bit more in line with the feds" is dubious since federal law prohibits any medical marijuana distribution whatsoever. Since the DEA has often claimed that their enforcement is focused on operations that violate California law, the new regulations could effectively render DEA’s involvement obsolete, while protecting any provider with enough common sense to follow the guidelines.

So while the new rules are likely to create problems for some participants in the medical marijuana economy, the overarching concept behind all of this is that California’s medical marijuana laws should be enforced by California’s police, not the DEA. It is a necessary step towards further legitimizing medical access in the years to come.

Ten years after the passage of Proposition 215, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has finally clarified that law-enforcement must respect the state’s medical marijuana law:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued long-awaited guidelines on medical marijuana today with support from advocates and law enforcement alike. The guidelines direct law enforcement on how to approach encounters with medical marijuana patients and establish a road map for local police policies. However, more significantly, the guidelines provide recommendations for operating medical marijuana dispensaries in accordance with state law.
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The guidelines firmly establish that as long as patients and caregivers are abiding by local and state laws, they "should be released" from police custody and "the marijuana should not be seized." In the event that medical marijuana is wrongfully seized from a patient or caregiver, and the court orders its return, the guidelines state that police "must return the property." Affirming that California's medical marijuana law is not preempted by federal law, the Attorney General further directs "state and local law enforcement officers [to] not arrest individuals or seize marijuana under federal law" when an individual's conduct is legal under state law. [Americans for Safe Access]

While Prop. 215 has gone a long way towards protecting the medical marijuana community from harassment by state law-enforcement, there have been continuing regional problems such as unjustified confiscation of medicine. The new guidelines should remind police that their duty is to uphold the law, not circumvent it.

This is big news:

Sacramento, CA -- A medical marijuana employment rights bill, which would protect hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients in California from employment discrimination, passed the State Senate today. AB2279 had already passed the State Assembly in May, which means the bill now heads to the Governor's desk. Advocates expect the bill to reach Schwarzenegger's desk in the next few weeks.

AB2279, introduced in February by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and co-authored by Assemblymembers Patty Berg (D-Eureka), Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego), reverses a January California Supreme Court decision in the case Ross v. RagingWire. Support for the bill has been widespread, coming from labor, business, and health groups at the local and national level. [Americans for Safe Access]

Ten years after the passage of Proposition 215, medical marijuana hasn’t lost any support in California. Even the state legislature is standing up for patients' rights, as well it should. How embarrassing this must be for those who claimed that medical marijuana was a threat to public safety. Californians are pleased with their medical marijuana law, despite unwelcome inference by the federal government. It is just beyond dispute at this point that allowing patients with a doctor's recommendation to obtain medical marijuana doesn't cause any significant social problems. We can see with our own eyes that the sky has not fallen.

Now it is up to Governor Schwarzenegger to do the right thing and sign this commonsense bill into law. He's already bowed disgracefully to federal pressure by vetoing a sensible and completely harmless bill to legalize hemp cultivation, so there's good reason to question his judgment. On the other hand, this bill is about the basic employment rights of people treating medical conditions according to the advice of their doctors. A veto would not be well-received by the people of California. Let's hope the Governator knows what's good for himself and his constituents.

This is an easy one. Don't let anyone try to make it complicated.

He just can't help himself. It's hilarious, of course, but it's disturbing to consider that Colbert's facetious rants really aren't any more absurd than the typical government propaganda that emerges from the Drug Czar's office. Colbert is joking, but even if he weren't, we could at least stop paying for cable. This garbage, on the other hand is paid for with our tax dollars whether we like it or not. And it isn’t nearly as funny, either.

Marijuana's incredible medical potential becomes increasingly clear with every new study:

Raymond DuBois and colleagues at the University of Texas in Houston discovered that a key receptor for cannabinoids, which are found in marijuana, is turned off in most types of human colon cancer.

Without this receptor, a protein called survivin, which stops cells from dying, increases unchecked and causes tumour growth.

To better understand the role that the receptor, called CB1, plays in cancer progression, the researchers manipulated its expression in mice that had been genetically engineered to spontaneously develop colon tumours.

"When we knocked out the receptor, the number of tumors went up dramatically," says DuBois. Alternatively, when mice with normal CB1 receptors were treated with a cannabinoid compound, their tumours shrank. [New Scientist]

The body of evidence showing that THC may effectively treat tumors is already extensive, so there's nothing particularly surprising about this latest research. Rather, it provides yet another opportunity to point out just how much damage our government has done in the course of its relentless and fraudulent campaign to convince everyone that the marijuana plant is incredibly dangerous rather than incredibly helpful.

Imagine what we might have achieved if our nation's efforts over the past thirty years had been focused on identifying the plant's benefits rather than exaggerating its harms and vilifying its users.

Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns visited Arcata, CA last week to see "America’s grow house capitol" firsthand. After meeting with local authorities and accompanying police on a few marijuana raids, he said this:

…regarding enforcement, Burns seemed to offer a mixed message. While unyielding in asserting that federal law holds marijuana illegal under all circumstances and trumps all state and local medical cannabis laws, Burns nonetheless advised Arcatans to “defer 100 percent good judgment of the people who have been elected and appointed” while motioning to those present in the APD conference room. But most of them are working on guidelines under which medical marijuana may be safely cultivated and dispensed. [Arcata Eye]

I just cannot possibly point out often enough that the conflict between state and federal drug laws doesn't marginalize the value of state-level reforms. The deputy drug czar doesn’t arrive in California with a convoy of DEA super-narcs to slash and burn everything in sight. He can't do that and he knows it, as his remark clearly illustrates.

The federal war on medical marijuana is a political strategy designed to create the appearance of chaos in order to deter other states from implementing medical marijuana laws. Medical marijuana is more available than ever before, notwithstanding sporadic DEA activity in California. Yet we still hear folks suggesting that "the DEA will just swoop in and ruin everything" if we pass new marijuana reforms at the state-level. To be clear, the DEA has ruined many lives, but it has not ruined California's medical marijuana law. That should be obvious to all of us.

The DEA cannot overcome the will of voters and I'm tired of seeing the press and even some reformers helping them pretend they can.

For most drug policy reformers, the answer is probably an exasperated "duh," but a fascinating piece at Huffington Post from NORML's Paul Armentano raises some very plausible doubts about the popular theory that the pharmaceutical industry is pushing pot prohibition to kill competition.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing before forming an opinion, but here are the basic points as I understand them:

1. Pharmaceutical companies are vigorously pursuing patents on various marijuana components and derivatives for a great variety of potential medical applications. Given the rigorous and heavily politicized FDA approval process they'll ultimately need to pass, there's no sense in indulging anti-marijuana hysteria within the government bureaucracy.

2. These products will ultimately be marketed to a populace that has been spoon-fed mindless anti-pot propaganda for decades. Since the origins of the coming generation of marijuana-based medicines will be widely known, their manufacturers have an interest in marijuana being trusted, rather than feared, within the marketplace.

3. Pharmaceutical companies understand that marijuana can never live up to its reputation as a panacea that can replace modern medicine. This is true because most people don't smoke it, and most people don’t want their medicines grown on a tree. Conditions in places where medical marijuana is currently widely available demonstrate this.

4. Government bureaucrats, police and prison lobbies, and voters who've succumbed to drug war propaganda are the real forces behind marijuana prohibition.

Paul also observes the important role marijuana reform efforts have played in fostering a climate in which marijuana-based medicines have become recognized as viable. Only by breaking down bit by bit the barrier of hysteria surrounding marijuana have we been able to set a tone in which medical marijuana research can be discussed rationally in the public domain. There are exceptions, of course, but now that the science and the will of the voters can speak for themselves, corporate profiteers associate marijuana with dollar signs, not reefer madness.

It has also been proposed by some in the reform movement that pharmaceuticalized marijuana may lead to a crack down on the medical use of herbal marijuana, as corporate profiteers pressure police to purge their most obvious competitor. I reject that notion for a couple reasons: 1) the marketing of new marijuana-based medicines will have a trickle-down effect of politically legitimizing pre-existing medical marijuana activity. 2) We can't afford to bust 'em now, we won't be able to afford to bust 'em then. 3) The risk of jury nullification when bringing medical marijuana cases to trial is substantial and will remain so.

Finally, though Paul doesn't address this, many people have cited instances of pharmaceutical companies supporting organizations like Partnership For a Drug Free America as evidence of their complicity in the war on marijuana. I've attempted to research this in the past and couldn't find anything worth our time. The story died on my desk. To the extent that pharmaceutical companies fund so-called "anti-drug" advocacy, I now believe it has nothing to do with marijuana, but rather with a desire to proactively cover their asses for the destructive effects of the legal drugs they themselves manufacture and market.

So, I believe Paul's analysis should probably replace much of the conventional wisdom that currently exists on this issue. Unless other evidence emerges, or other experts of Paul Armentano's caliber (few exist), emerge to convincingly challenge his assertions, the burden of proof placed on those blaming Big Pharma for marijuana prohibition has been raised several notches today. If this helps us to refocus our advocacy towards other more demonstrable, palatable, and persuasive arguments for reform, that would be a good thing.

NORML's Paul Armentano has a disturbing account of the history of government research regarding the benefits of THC as a potential cancer treatment:

Not familiar with this scientific research? Your government is.

In fact, the first experiment documenting pot's potent anti-cancer effects
took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest federal
bureaucrats. The results of that study, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974,
Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana's primary
psychoactive component, THC, "slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast
cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their
lives by as much as 36 percent."

Despite these favorable preliminary findings (eventually published the
following year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute), U.S.
government officials refused to authorize any follow-up research until
conducting a similar - though secret - clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That
study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2
million, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over
long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated
controls.

However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers
shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of its
findings were leaked to the medical journal AIDS Treatment News, which in
turn forwarded the story to the national media. [timesheraldonline.com]

They haven't studied the issue since. And because the U.S. government holds a monopoly on "legal" marijuana that could be used for research purposes, they've been able to prevent independent researchers from further investigating marijuana's promising anti-cancer properties. Armentano notes that research overseas continues to produce very encouraging results.

Unfortunately, our government's blockade against marijuana/cancer research is so mindless and vindictive that it's almost impossible to convince anyone that they do things like this. It's a terrible and frequent conundrum for reformers that if we accurately describe the behavior of our opposition, we end up sounding crazy.

As I'm constantly pointing out, political strategists always have the hardest time coming to terms with widespread public support for reforming marijuana policies. Maybe their hearts are in the wrong place, or they only read each other's books, or, more likely, they're all stuck in 1988 and they think if someone yells "Drugs! Crime!" loud enough, all the voters are gonna jump out of their socks and vote for whoever promises the most ass kickings.

That's why today's frantic press release from the RNC lambasting Obama over medical marijuana is as predictable as it is foolish. Just look at the remarks from Obama that RNC highlights in an attempt to make people afraid of him:

Obama Pledged To Stop DEA Raids On Oregon Medical Marijuana:

Obama Pledged To Stop The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Raids On Oregon Medical Marijuana Growers. Willamette Week: “Would you stop the Drug Enforcement Administration’s raids on Oregon medical marijuana grows?” Obama: “I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism. The way I want to approach the issue of medical marijuana is to base it on science. And if there is sound science that supports the use of medical marijuana and if it is controlled and prescribed in a way that other medicine is prescribed, then it’s something we should consider.” (James Pitkin, “Six Minutes With Barack,” Willamette Week, 5/14/08)

That's what we're supposed to be worried about? Americans overwhelmingly support medical marijuana and will greet all of this with a gigantic yawn, if not a backlash against McCain. But that won't stop the RNC from trying:

WASHINGTON – RNC Communications Director Danny Diaz released the following statement today:

“Barack Obama’s pledge to stop Executive agencies from implementing laws passed by Congress raises serious doubts about his understanding of what the job of the President of the United States actually is. His refusal to enforce the law reveals that Barack Obama doesn’t have the experience necessary to do the job of President, or that he fundamentally lacks the judgment to carry out the most basic functions of the Executive Branch. What other laws would Barack Obama direct federal agents not to enforce?”

So conducting violent raids on medical dispensaries, while ignoring the will of voters, the advice of doctors, and the medical needs of sick Americans is one of "the most basic functions of the Executive Branch"?

I wish the RNC the best of luck calling attention to Barack Obama's statements on medical marijuana. I really do, and I will gleefully post every press release they dare to send out about it because their candidate's views on this issue are deeply unpopular with Americans.

Few things I've written have generated more web traffic than this post revealing how John McCain literally turned his back towards a wheelchair bound medical marijuana patient who asked him for help. So if the clever strategists in the republican party want to play hardball over medical marijuana, they'd better put their helmets on.

[Thanks, Bruce Mirken]

 

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)