Of course it is, to answer this rhetorical question posed by a January 18 headline in the Wall Street Journal. New Jersey is the most recent to recognize that fact, becoming the 14th state to legalize use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. The New Jersey law, signed this week by outgoing Governor Jon Corzine, limits use to patients with specific illnesses such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and specifically forbids grow-it-yourself projects.
What’s needed now are serious studies of how good a medicine it really is, and these aren’t happening very fast. As outlined in a New York Times article this week, getting permission to study the weed is no easy task.
Despite the Obama administration’s tacit support of more liberal state medical marijuana laws, the federal government still discourages research into the medicinal uses of smoked marijuana. That may be one reason that — even though some patients swear by it — there is no good scientific evidence that legalizing marijuana’s use provides any benefits over current therapies.
Lyle E. Craker, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Massachusetts, has been trying to get permission from federal authorities for nearly nine years to grow a supply of the plant that he could study and provide to researchers for clinical trials.
But the Drug Enforcement Administration — more concerned about abuse than potential benefits — has refused, even after the agency’s own administrative law judge ruled in 2007 that Dr. Craker’s application should be approved, and even after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in March ended the Bush administration’s policy of raiding dispensers of medical marijuana that comply with state laws.
“All I want to be able to do is grow it so that it can be tested,” Dr. Craker said in comments echoed by other researchers.
Marijuana is the only major drug for which the federal government controls the only legal research supply and for which the government requires a special scientific review.
“The more it becomes clear to people that the federal government is blocking these studies, the more people are willing to defect by using politics instead of science to legalize medicinal uses at the state level,” said Rick Doblin, executive director of a nonprofit group dedicated to researching psychedelics for medical uses.
In California, where a mish-mash of laws and enforcement policies can bewilder all but the expert — (and there are many experts) — the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that lawmakers acted improperly in amending the voter-approved legalization of medicinal marijuana to limit the amount critically ill patients might have:
The high court ruled lawmakers improperly “amended” the voter-approved law that decriminalized possession of marijuana for “seriously ill Californians” with a doctor’s prescription by limiting patients to eight ounces (227 grams) of dried marijuana and six mature or 12 immature plants.
The Compassionate Use Act, passed by California voters in 1996, set no limits on how much marijuana patients could possess or grow, stating only that it be for personal use.
In 1997, the state’s Supreme Court defined a lawful amount as enough to be “reasonably related to the patient’s current medical needs.”
The state’s quantity limits were passed in 2003 as part of a voluntary identification card program designed to protect against both drug trafficking and wrongful arrest by allowing police to quickly verify a patient’s prescription.
The court on Thursday let stand the voluntary card program but found that the limits it imposes should not “burden” a person’s ability to argue under the Compassionate Use Act that the marijuana possessed or grown was for personal use.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a statement the decision “confirms our position that the state’s possession limits are legal” as applied to medical marijuana cardholders.
While conceding that marijuana may have some just-for-fun attraction too, I can’t vouch for the recreational weed. Thankfully, since I am addicted to anything that comes down the pike and question the view that marijuana is non-addictive, it hadn’t made its way to small-town Virginia when I was experimenting with other mood-altering substances. But I do know its medicinal value. My beloved now-deceased sister could have had much suffering relieved with legal pot. Countless friends I loved and worked with during the height of the AIDS pandemic would have suffered less with legal, easily-accessible marijuana.
We are past time to establish, through definitive studies, the medicinal benefits of this natural bounty, and make it legally available to those in desperate need.