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MEDICINAL POT SHOULD BE LEGAL ACROSS COUNTRY

Last week, The New York Times published an editorial calling for the federal legalization of marijuana but suggested it should be left to individual states about whether it should be legal within their individual boundaries.

The Times made a number of logical arguments, including comparing the criminalization of marijuana with the outlawing of alcohol in the Prohibition era.  The Times said marijuana should be legal for recreational and medical use.  It noted that arrests for marijuana far outstrip the number of arrests for more serious and more dangerous substances, including heroin and cocaine, and the enforcement tends to waste law enforcement resources that could be spent better on more serious crimes.

But the newspaper said if marijuana was decriminalized, it only should be legal for those 21 and older.

The Times' editorial board must have been smoking something.

If they had pondered the idea seriously, they would have advocated a federal law that made marijuana use legal only for medicinal reasons.

And they should have advocated enforcement for other users but by happenstance only, such as if someone is stopped for a traffic violation and is found with non-medical marijuana.

My view of this is based purely on economic reasons.  To be sure, a lot of law enforcement resources seem to be wasted on busting marijuana growers and possessors when the emphasis should be on purveyors of harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine, as well as widespread illicit trafficking in powerful prescription pain-killing drugs.

My view also is based on personal discussions with people who use marijuana for medicinal purposes -- people who never believed they would use marijuana but who've found it truly has helped their health conditions.

I don't have their health problems, so I'm not going to judge them, and medicinal use is legal in Michigan anyway.

But a few times in my life, I've also experienced almost unbearable pain -- pain so foreign to me I cannot comprehend how people with such chronic pain can continue to live.

Indeed, a common medical practice for those who are terminally ill is to administer increasing doses of morphine to make their passing more bearable.  I would not deny anyone the right to use marijuana, or any other drug, if it eases maddening pain.

So I think medicinal marijuana should be allowed on a regulated basis - -- though probably a bit more regulated than now is allowed in Michigan.

But allowing widespread legal use of marijuana for "recreational" purposes is a bad idea, and not because of the bizarre contention that it "automatically" leads to use of harder drugs and contributes to a variety of other social ills.  In fact, recent studies show that teen use of marijuana has ebbed.

But the federal government should not be encouraging use of marijuana because the most common way to use marijuana is to smoke it.  And although some studies show that smoking marijuana is not as dangerous as smoking tobacco, it does pose increased risks of cancer and heart disease.

Americans do not need another legal method to increase their risks of cancer or heart disease.

Don't take my word for this.  All sorts of reputable health and cancer organizations have detailed some of the risks involved in smoking marijuana.  Even NORML, the national organization favoring legalization of marijuana, provides a very evenhanded assessment of the risks of smoking marijuana on its Web site.  In fact, it suggests that those who use marijuana do so only through vaporization of the substance, rather than smoking, as a way to reduce health risks.

However, if you have chronic pain, or already are dying of cancer or heart disease, I think it should be up to you and your doctor to decide if marijuana can make life more bearable.  There are a handful of doctors in the area who already prescribe marijuana, but they don't necessarily want the publicity for fear of some backlash.

From my perspective, these doctors might be more honorable than those who prescribe legal but addictive prescription drugs from their moneymaking pill mills.  Too many of those prescription pills, by the way, end up being resold on the street to addicts for big bucks.  They are legal, in a way, but far more dangerous than illegal marijuana.

Besides, legalizing medical marijuana on a national scale might increase the quality of the substance.  No longer will those with medical reasons to use marijuana have to fear its source or purity.

And it might generate a number of businesses.

Consider that in the United States, a couple of public companies already have formed to grow and sell marijuana and related products after Colorado and Washington legalized it for recreational use.

You can buy shares of a company called Medical Marijuana Inc.  for around 20 cents a share.  About 4 million shares a day are traded in this tiny company.

But guess what? Canada is way ahead of the United States.

It is one of the few countries where medical marijuana is legal nationwide.  Licensed operators produce it, and more than 850 companies have been formed to mass-produce it, hoping to tap a market expected to be worth more than $1.2 billion within 10 years.

Many of the private investment dollars in those Canadian companies are coming from the United States.

It's high time the federal government saw the economic and common sense in broadening the medicinal use of marijuana, considering 21 states already allow some form of that.