Pubdate: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL) Copyright: 2014 Orlando Sentinel Contact: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325 Author: Beth Kassab Page: B1 POLITICS COLORING MEDICAL MARIJUANA DEBATE IN FLORIDA One of the most dangerous things Florida could do right now is dismiss new reports out of Colorado as a 2014 remake of "Reefer Madness." There are more emergency-room visits by kids and adults sickened by marijuana-laced candy. There are cases of drugged driving. And there's the story of one man who bought pot-infused candy, started talking "like it's the end of the world" and then killed his wife. These examples aren't drummed up by the anti-pot lobby. These are real observations and cases. And Florida needs to start taking notes. Because we're quickly headed in that direction. Polls show wide support for Amendment 2, a question on the November ballot that would broadly legalize medical marijuana. A well-funded and well-organized campaign to support the amendment has been underway for months with gregarious trial attorney John Morgan at the helm. A campaign against Amendment 2 has barely gotten underway, with less than six months left until voters go to the polls. If I had to call it today, I'd say this thing passes by the necessary 60 percent of the vote. And that makes it all the more important that we pay attention to the mistakes being made elsewhere. And to the science. A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that even casual pot smoking is linked to big changes in the brain. Parts of the brain involved with emotion, motivation and some types of illness were dramatically impacted, according to USA Today. "This is a part of the brain you do not want to mess around with," Hans Breiter, a Northwestern University psychiatrist, told the newspaper. All of this is raising so many questions that even liberals like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and congresswoman from Weston, are raising concerns about Amendment 2. "Other states have shown that lax oversight and ease of access to prescriptions can lead to abuse, fraud, and accidents," she said in a statement. Her audacity in breaking party ranks hasn't gone unpunished. She was targeted by a pro-legalization group in a series of ads over the weekend that aired on MSNBC in South Florida. And Morgan, who has raised big money for her in the past, said on Monday that she should resign as party leader. "The new issues of the day for the Democratic Party are these: the right to gay marriage and right to use medical marijuana," he told me Monday. "For her to take a counter position in either one of those in my mind disqualifies her from being chairwoman of the party." But Wasserman Schultz isn't alone. Even Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times' left-leaning editorial pages, wrote about the pitfalls of legalization. Dowd said she traveled to Colorado and bought a pot-laced candy bar. She went back to her hotel room and ate some. Nothing happened so she ate some more. It was a long night. "I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours," she wrote. The next day she found out that the candy bar should have been divided into 16 servings, but that wasn't labeled on the package. If you're thinking that this has nothing to do with Florida because Colorado allows the sale of marijuana for recreational use, remember that Colorado started off with medical marijuana. And Florida's Amendment 2 is very broad. It would allow doctors to recommend marijuana for patients who have a "debilitating" disease. That's open to a lot of interpretation. We could be talking about a patient with terminal cancer who legitimately needs marijuana for relief. Or we could be talking about somebody with a headache who prefers weed to aspirin. Even Morgan concedes the potential for abuse. "There's no doubt there will be doctors who abuse this, just like the doctors who abuse Oxycontin and Xanax and everything else known to man," Morgan said. "That's happening now except it's happening with much more serious consequences with poisonous narcotics. What's the lesser of two evils?" Why should we accept any evils? - --- MAP posted-by: Matt