Pubdate: Sun, 02 Feb 2014
Source: Daily Citizen, The (Dalton, GA)
Copyright: 2014 Daily Citizen
Contact:  http://daltondailycitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1929

MEDICAL MARIJUANA: GOOD IDEA, BAD EXECUTION

More than 30 years ago, Georgia lawmakers legalized the use of 
marijuana for medicinal purposes for those with glaucoma and cancer. 
But the board created to oversee that program has been inactive for 
some two decades and no patients have taken part in the program for 
even longer.

What happened?

Simply put, the program was too restrictive, too regulated and too 
poorly thought out. That is, if its purpose was actually to deliver 
relief to patients.

The program counted on getting access to medical marijuana from the 
federal government, which never delivered. The program set up all 
sorts of hurdles and tests for patients to qualify for treatment, 
rather than just allowing their physicians to determine whether 
marijuana might help them and prescribe it if they thought best.

Now, the General Assembly is considering reviving that program and 
expanding it. A bill by Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, would add severe 
seizures to the list of conditions allowed in the program and permit 
them to be treated with cannabis oil.

The bill suffers from all the problems of Georgia's existing medical 
marijuana program, including uncertainty about where the state will 
get the cannabis oil from.

Peake says it can get it from suppliers in states such as Colorado, 
which has legalized marijuana for recreational as well as medicinal 
purposes. But transferring cannabis oil across state lines remains a 
federal crime. Will suppliers in states where marijuana is legal risk 
federal prosecution?

Peake's bill is also overly bureaucratic, allowing the cannabis oil 
to only be prescribed and distributed at the state's medical 
colleges. The vast majority of doctors would remain unable to legally 
prescribe marijuana.

We expect that if Peake's bill passes, it will be no more effective 
at relieving the suffering of the patients it purports to help than 
the state's existing medical marijuana program.

Georgia lawmakers may truly want to help those suffering from severe 
seizures, but that is outweighed by their fear that someone somewhere 
might smoke a joint.

Certainly, some states have enacted medical marijuana laws so broad 
that they have effectively legalized all marijuana use. Georgia 
lawmakers want to avoid that.

But if other states' medical marijuana laws basically legalized the 
drug, that's what the authors of those laws probably intended. If 
Georgia has thoughtful, intelligent lawmakers, they should be able to 
craft a law that really can allow all patients who need medical 
marijuana to obtain it but doesn't allow too much abuse of that privilege.

Surely, lawmakers can find some middle ground between a medical 
marijuana program so narrow that it is doomed to failure and one so 
broad that it invites widespread abuse.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom