Obama Administration Won’t Prosecute Medical Marijuana Users Or Their Suppliers
This is long past due.
I’ve said for years that denying a cancer patient the simple solution of smoking or eating marijuana to increase appetite or ease nausea was blindly stupid to the point of cruelty. I’ve also said that the federal government should allow the individual states to choose their own policies in this matter and butt out if the states decided to sanction the stuff.
It looks like some steps are being taken in that direction:
WASHINGTON — Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.
Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.
The guidelines being issued by the department do, however, make it clear that federal agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes.
Fourteen states have some degree of legalization of medical marijuana:
Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
We waste billions of dollars every year on a pointless and utterly failed “war on drugs”. The federal government has actively prosecuted people who were in compliance with individual state laws. I think this is one small victory for the right of states to decide laws of their own without the feds over-riding them at their will. They’ve used interstate commerce laws as a justification for their enforcement and have accomplished nothing but put people in jail and wreck their lives for a relatively benign offense.
Not only that, medical issues aside, the fact that marijuana is illegal in the first place is, in my opinion, ridiculous. In twenty years as a street police officer I never saw anyone smoke a joint and beat his wife. On the other hand I’ve seen countless incidents of alcohol fueled violence including everything from bar fights to homicide. If bars offered weed instead of booze the only danger anyone would be in would be getting trampled in the stampede to the door when the pizza delivery guy arrived.
Anyway, like I said, this is a small step in the right direction. Will it be abused by some people? Sure. Will it ease the minds of those who have a legitimate need for it as an alternative to more severe forms of medications? Absolutely.
This is way, way past due.
