Pubdate: Wed, 07 May 2014
Source: Roanoke Times (VA)
Copyright: 2014 Roanoke Times
Contact:  http://www.roanoke.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368

A MEASURE OF KINDNESS

Rep. Morgan Griffith is a pretty straight-laced fellow, and that may 
well make him the right person to take up the cause for medical marijuana.

The 9th District Republican has filed a bill that would allow doctors 
to prescribe marijuana in 21 states, including Virginia, with laws 
permitting its use for medicinal purposes.

Those state laws are largely meaningless now because physicians who 
recommend marijuana to their patients could be charged under a 
federal law that still bans it.

It's a serious cause, and a personal one, for Griffith, whose support 
for using marijuana as a painkiller traces back to his experience 
with a cancer patient whose friends smuggled the drug to him while he 
was in the hospital to help stimulate his appetite.

It also fits easily into his conservative, libertarian philosophy.

"It is actually a very conservative bill," he told the Bristol Herald Courier.

"It says government should step back and let the doctors and health 
professionals use a substance in a manner that they would use any 
other substance for treatment of patients who need help." Virginia's 
law dates to 1979 and limits medical marijuana to the treatment of 
cancer and glaucoma.

There is some evidence that the drug may be beneficial for other 
diseases, including multiple sclerosis but, again, the federal law 
has been a barrier to scientific research on the issue.

Griffith's bill would have the added benefit of allowing such 
research to occur. He would move marijuana from the Schedule I list 
of drugs under the Controlled Substances Act, a designation that 
prohibits all medical uses, to the Schedule II list with painkillers 
such as hydrocodone.

Critics warn that the change might result in abuse of marijuana. But 
doctors who enable or encourage such abuse can be charged with serious crimes.

Indeed, many medications have negative side effects and can become 
addictive, but that is no reason to ban them all and force people to 
suffer needlessly.

While two states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, 
Griffith doesn't favor such action.

The fact that he and California Gov. Jerry Brown share reservations 
on that point suggests the idea isn't going to sweep the nation anytime soon.

But elected officials and citizens across a wide ideological spectrum 
should be able to agree that it would be callous to condemn men, 
women and children to a life of pain when relief is available.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom