BCT Editorial – 6/12/05

This page was last updated on June 12, 2005.

Waiting to inhale; Editorial; Beaver County Times; June 12, 2005.

I’m no expert on the medical use of marijuana, but I believe it makes sense to allow medical use of marijuana if prescribed by a doctor.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The Supreme Court would tell us that Monday’s decision on Gonzales vs. Raich is not about drugs.

“The decision on whether sick people can use marijuana, six of nine justices agreed, is really about interstate commerce - even if a person is growing marijuana for his or her own use.

“Beyond the Supreme Court, some support the decision because they see a need for federal oversight. Ten states - California, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington - allow the medical use of marijuana for their residents, based on a doctor’s prescription. The Supreme Court decision supposedly will not strike down the medical marijuana laws in these states.”

[RWC] It may be nitpicking, but I believe California’s law doesn’t require a doctor’s prescription, only a “recommendation.” I don’t know the requirements of the other states.

“Yet, people in these states who use pot to ease nausea and other ailments can now be arrested by federal agents.

“Justice John Paul Stevens, an 85-year-old cancer survivor, said the court wasn’t passing medical judgment on marijuana.

“But isn’t it?

“Dating to the 1930s and ‘Reefer Madness,’ marijuana remains the street drug with a particularly evil reputation as a gateway drug to ‘harder’ drugs. Any beneficial use the drug might hold has been largely pushed aside.

“It remains among the handful of drugs unacknowledged for any medical benefit - except in those 10 states. There, legislators have taken the steps to see that patients whose doctors believe marijuana can ease their symptoms have access to marijuana as they would other drugs.

“Derivatives of heroin, morphine and codeine can be dispensed for medical use without fear of violating interstate commerce laws. These substances are kept in medical lockboxes, with running inventories on what and how much is dispensed.

“The parameters for dispensing painkillers to patients can be so tight that family members begging for more drugs on behalf of patients with only a few days of life left in them can receive the ludicrous warning that their dying loved one could become addicted.

“Amphetamines and depressants are accepted as having bona fide medical uses, too, though they also can be addictive and produce undesirable side effects.

“Though proponents of medical marijuana argue the drug eases the queasiness of nausea and encourages appetites in some withering cancer patients, and some doctors have prescribed it, marijuana doesn’t seem as if it will ever gain the reputation of a drug that, in some cases, can do some good.

“So, our medical system dispenses the painkiller OxyContin, intended for cancer patients but addictively picked up at the street level, while it ignores another avenue of possible relief.

“The Bush administration has taken a hard line on state medical marijuana use. Now the highest court in the land has, too.

“And marijuana, which could help some of the sickest people in the country, remains an outlaw - even when some states have determined otherwise.

“Ironic, isn’t it, for a president and Supreme Court that have pushed for states’ rights over federal regulation?”

[RWC] Regarding the comment that the Supreme Court has “pushed for states’ rights over federal regulation,” apparently the editorial author hasn’t been paying attention. There are other examples, but did the author forget about the rulings against state sodomy laws and state death penalties for minors?

The majority on the Supreme Court was definitely wrong when it ruled against state marijuana laws on the basis of interstate commerce. As dissenter Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, by interpreting the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution so broadly, “If the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States. This makes a mockery of Madison’s assurance to the people of New York that the ‘powers delegated’ to the Federal Government are ‘few and defined,’ while those of the States are ‘numerous and indefinite.’”

Of the six majority justices, only Justice Scalia surprised me.