Pubdate: Thu, 04 Jun 2015
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2015 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198

THE GRASS GROWS

Congress to the Justice Department: Don't Mess With Texas' Cannabidiol Oil.

Marijuana may not be deadly, but for decades politicians have avoided 
it like the plague.

After all, the mere whisper that a candidate isn't "tough on crime" 
was often enough to sink the next election. But the political 
landscape has changed, and with sine die in the rearview mirror, 
Texans may not realize that they just witnessed a minor revolution in 
the Legislature. On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott made state history by 
signing the first-ever bill to relax penalties for a 
marijuana-related substance ("Abbott signs bill allowing medical use 
of marijuana oil," Page B3, Tuesday). But don't expect the whole 
state to turn Willie Nelson. The bill only legalizes cannabidiol oil, 
which helps treat patients who suffer from serious seizures.

The oil doesn't get users high and can only be prescribed by a doctor 
after other treatments have failed.

We have a long way to go before Texas approaches anything near 
Colorado-style legal marijuana.

Nevertheless, this bill should be considered a healthy baby step 
toward fixing drug laws that do more to hurt people than prevent social ills.

Furthermore, elected officials did successfully pass bills out of 
committees that would have set Texas further down that path. They 
didn't make it to the governor's desk - few bills do - but 
legislators were able to cast their votes for medical, decriminalized 
or even legal marijuana without it being considered political 
suicide. Politicians are discovering voters all over the political 
spectrum who oppose the war on drugs.

 From fiscal conservatives who think that drug laws waste taxpayer 
dollars, to libertarians who think government should stay out of the 
way, to the socially conscientious who worry that drug prohibition 
does more harm than good, there's plenty of reasons to change the 
status quo. Texas state Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, even argued 
that marijuana should be legal because it is one of God's many creations.

But while the door may have closed on changes to Texas' drug laws 
until the next biennial legislative session, Congress has started to 
set its own crosshairs on federal drug enforcement.

Dubbed a "marijuana vote-a-rama" by The Hill, a top political news 
website, U.S. representatives Wednesday successfully passed several 
marijuana-related amendments to the funding bill for the Department 
of Justice. These amendments limit the department's ability to 
enforce federal marijuana prohibition in states that have their own 
local laws for medical marijuana, cannabidiol oil and industrial 
hemp. However, lawmakers narrowly failed to pass a protection for all 
marijuana uses.

States are supposed to be the laboratories of democracy, and federal 
legislators should be encouraging local governments to experiment 
with different policy solutions to the question of marijuana use. 
There's more than one way to help people to live healthy, even 
drug-free, lifestyles. Yet for the past 40 years the United States 
has relied almost exclusively on the criminal justice system as our 
answer to drugs.

In that time we've only learned that heavy threats have a way of 
burning through taxpayer dollars without actually reducing marijuana 
use. Whether you're an California smoker or proud Texan teetotaler, 
nobody is getting what they want. It is time to end the war on drugs 
and try something new.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom