Pubdate: Wed, 08 Jun 2005
Source: Duluth News-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 2005 Duluth News-Tribune
Contact:  http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/553
Author: Kathleen Parker
Note: Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.
Cited: Gonzales v. Raich ( www.angeljustice.org/ )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Raich (Angel Raich)

LEGAL MEDICAL POT NOW UP TO CONGRESS

I've got that all-over tingly feeling not felt since Martha Stewart
was put away and America's mean streets made safe again.

I'm talking, of course, about Monday's Supreme Court ruling against
state-sanctioned medical marijuana use that will keep the terminally
ill and chronic pain sufferers from firing up a marijuana joint,
getting stoned and, in addition to risking acute munchies, enjoying a
temporary reprieve from hellish suffering.

Thank God we've got that particular homeland security problem under
control. Why, in the age of terrorism, one can never be too careful
with dying people who have nothing left to lose.

With rulings like these, alas, comedy is doomed.

The high court's 6-3 decision had little to do with whether suffering
people deserve relief, but whether the federal government has
authority over states that have authorized medical marijuana use. To
date, 11 states have such laws: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado,
Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

The court ruled that even though medical marijuana may be homegrown
and not for sale, it nevertheless falls under the federal Controlled
Substances Act.

While lawyers hash out the legal intricacies, normal people are left
wondering whether the Supreme Court has been partaking of the evil
weed. Exceptions would be dissenters Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas.

Who, after all, gets hurt when dying or sick people smoke pot? Quick
aside to the feds: When my spine is disintegrating from cancer and I'm
blind from glaucoma and I can't take a breath without agonizing pain,
I'm gonna toke up, OK? Just FYI.

It seems remote to ridiculous that federal agents now will start
arresting sick people for getting high, though stranger things can and
do happen. Who could have imagined the scene we witnessed when
then-Attorney General Janet Reno decided it was time for little Elian
Gonzalez to get on back to Cuba? (I supported Elian's return to his
father, by the way, but I must have been stoned to think we could
accomplish a family reunion without a SWAT team and automatic weapons.)

Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the court's decision, offered a
glimmer of hope when he noted that Congress could change the law to
allow for medicinal uses of marijuana. By any measure, such a legal
shift is long overdue and likely would be hugely popular.

In an unscientific poll posted Monday on MSNBC's Web site,
self-selecting respondents were asked: "Should the federal government
prosecute medical marijuana users, now that it has been given the OK
by the Supreme Court?"

By midday, more than 63,000 had responded, with 88 percent saying
"no." Ten percent said "yes," and 2 percent weren't sure. More than 60
U.S. and international health organizations, including the American
Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association, support
allowing sick people to use marijuana under a doctor's care, according
to the marijuana advocacy group NORML. (Go to norml.org for a list and
other information.) Others, including the American Cancer Society and
the American Medical Association, favor more research, according to
NORML.

As absurd as Monday's ruling seems, advocates for medical marijuana
are not optimistic that Congress will have the courage to pass more
reasonable marijuana laws. Which raises the question: Whatever
happened to compassionate conservatism? What's more conservative,
after all, than getting the federal government out of private,
victimless, state-sanctioned decisions? Congress has an opportunity to
demonstrate how compassionate conservatism works by passing a
bipartisan measure -- the "States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act"
(HR 2087) -- that recently was reintroduced. Defeated previously, the
act would change marijuana's classification so that doctors could
prescribe it under certain circumstances without altering current laws
related to recreational use.

Thanks to the triumph of common sense over Prohibition, I can drink to
that. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake