Pubdate: Fri, 25 Jan 2013
Source: Detroit News (MI)
Copyright: 2013 The Detroit News
Contact:  http://www.detroitnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/126
Author: Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Note: Marie Myung-Ok Lee, a novelist who teaches at Columbia and
Brown, wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S WAR ON POT COSTS EVERY TAXPAYER

As a candidate in 2008, Sen. Barack Obama emphatically stated that
medical marijuana was an issue best left to the states. One of the
first promises he made as president was that he was "not going to be
using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws."
This was reiterated formally in the so-called Ogden memo of 2009, in
which the Department of Justice instructed U.S. attorneys that federal
enforcement should apply only to medical marijuana operations in clear
violation of state law.

Obama has since "clarified" those promises, but it still makes no
sense that Matthew R. Davies, a business school graduate who set out
in 2009 to create a medical marijuana dispensary in full compliance
with California law, is facing up to 15 years in prison - with a
mandatory five-year sentence.

This is just one more puzzling incident in the history of a president
who not only made these promises but has also admitted to heavy
recreational use of marijuana himself in his youth. A second-term
president with little to lose, why is Obama continuing his odd
campaign on a state-approved industry?

Lost in this fray is the fact that marijuana is medicine. My son is
autistic and has an autoimmune gastrointestinal problem for which, at
my suggestion, his doctor prescribed him Marinol, a synthetic THC
drug. When that proved ineffective, the doctor agreed to prescribe
medical cannabis, which is legal in Rhode Island.

At the time, our son was eating his clothes. Whether as an autistic
behavior or because of gastric pain, we weren't sure. But every day,
unless we had him shirtless, he would consume the entire front of his
cotton shirt, and sometimes his jacket, on the bus to and from school.

Medical marijuana cured him. But it wasn't as easy as running out and
buying him a joint. When we first considered cannabis, my husband and
I made a decision not to procure it illegally. That was complicated.
Although medical marijuana was legal, dispensaries were not, and we
needed information about what kind of marijuana might help our son.

There are hundreds of strains of cannabis, with varying clinical
properties - anxiety relief, sleep promotion, analgesia, anti-nausea -
and the ways they are processed also affect the way they work. I
realize that some people use dispensaries to purchase cannabis for
recreational use, but I can attest that the cannabis experts at the
out-of-state dispensaries we consulted were focused on the medical
properties of the marijuana they sold. They helped us find the
particular strain that cured our son's pica (the medical term for
eating nonfood items). I keep a corduroy jacket with a half-nibbled
sleeve as a reminder of that day.

For a medical marijuana patient, a well-run, reliable dispensary like
Matthew Davies' should be a basic patient right.

What is the lesson here? Smoke marijuana illegally, and you can become
president. Try to provide a safe, consistent product that keeps the
trade out of domestic and foreign drug cartels and brings in tax
revenue, and face 15 years prison time.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee, a novelist who teaches at Columbia and Brown,
wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. 
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