LOGIC ELIMINATES MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Two bills have been introduced in the Illinois Legislature intending
to make legal the medicinal use of smoked marijuana. The companion
bills, entitled the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot
Program Act, have been filed in both the Illinois House and Senate
and are supported by a surprisingly large percentage of the
Democratic caucuses in both chambers. Legislative members, however,
have been misinformed by supporters regarding both the impact the
bills will have upon Illinois and the long term motivations of the
bill's supporters. Lobbyists are making no attempt to conceal their
long range goal for Illinois: cannabis legalization.

The Illinois bill is similar to one that passed in California several
years ago. In Northern California, marijuana has become the most
lucrative agricultural commodity in the region (surpassing wine), and
is known in California as the "cash crop." California is fast
overtaking Mexico as the exporter of the marijuana being smuggled
into the Midwestern and Eastern United States. During the past year,
more cannabis loads were interdicted along Interstate 80 in Illinois
originating from California than from Mexico. Is Illinois poised to
become the next supplier of marijuana to the East Coast?

The law is nominally intended for terminally ill patients. In
California, 40 percent of medical marijuana patients are between 21
and 30 years of age, and not terminally ill. As the current
legislation is written, anyone complaining of chronic pain is
eligible to obtain a license.

Proponents of the bill claim that compounds in cannabis have
medicinal properties that ease the pain and suffering of certain
terminally ill patients. If so, then those chemical compounds should
be isolated and researched. In the United States, there is a process
for creating and vetting medicines that should not be averted with
this particular chemical compound. Several plant based substances
have been converted to medicines (aspirin and morphine, for example),
including Opium plants. In no medicinal prescription has smoking been
determined to be the best delivery system of the drug. The American
Medical Association also opposes smoking as a viable delivery system.

Dr. Rafael Meshulam from Hebrew University has been conducting brain
injury research for over 20 years. He has isolated compounds from the
cannabis sativa plant that experimentation has shown has some
promising medicinal qualities for trauma patients. He has patented
those medicines with injectable delivery systems, and a large Israeli
pharmaceutical company is working toward commercializing the products.

Featured in a National Geographic Explorer episode entitled
"Marijuana Nation," Dr. Meshulam questions the smoking of cannabis as
a crude medical delivery system. On the program, he wonders aloud how
a doctor prescribing smokable cannabis can be sure of what dosage any
particular patient is receiving. When doctors prescribe any other
drug, the dosage recommendation is extremely specific. There is a
substantial difference, for example, between giving a patient 30
milligrams or 10 grams of a particular drug. Marijuana, on the other
hand, can range by as much a 3 percent to over 30 percent THC
content. Is this a controlled medical drug?

Beyond the murky medicinal link, there are several other potential
community impacts that are contained in the bill. The bill allows
each license holder to grow up to seven plants. Given that each plant
yields an average of one-half pound of smokable marijuana, and each
half pound of marijuana equates to 454 cigarettes, how could each
patient consume 454 joints produced by each plant?

Coincidentally, each patient is also allowed a care giver who can
also grow 7 plants, making the yield for the patient actually 3,178 joints.

In the proposed legislation, there are no restrictions for who may be
licensed patients. Police officers, day care workers, bus drivers,
pilots, teachers, elected officials, surgeons, paramedics, fire
fighters, and air traffic controllers can all be medical marijuana
consumers under the law (they just cannot be impaired while flying a
plane or driving a bus). However, there is no objective definition of
"impairment."

The law also gives landlords and property owners no way to restrict
or prevent licensed patients from growing cannabis inside their
buildings. The odor, mold and chemical residue issues that police
find after raiding these indoor facilities make the buildings
uninhabitable and will be expensive for property owners to mitigate.
Residential properties are ill-suited to commercial agricultural
operations of any of any type. Fifty-percent of residential fires in
California now originate from grows gone bad.

This is not a road that Illinois wants to travel down. If there are
therapeutic benefits to compounds within the cannabis plant, let them
be extracted and delivered safely like every other medicine.