PUT MARIJUANA BEHIND THE COUNTER

Fourteen States Says It's Medicine; the Feds Should Let It Be Sold in
Pharmacies

Say this for Oregon's discussions about the merits of medical
marijuana: It brings forth color from every corner of the state.

Cops aggravated they have to deal with it. Potheads just looking for a
winning route to legalization. Even, at a Mail Tribune/JPR forum this
fall, a man who identified himself as "the pope of dope."

Oh yes, and the patients.

Remember them? They were supposed to be the focus of Oregon's medical
marijuana movement. And now that the state's voters have defeated an
ill-conceived attempt to expand the law, that's where the attention
ought to turn again.

As anyone who honestly wants to use the drug to treat an illness will
tell you, the biggest problem with Oregon's law is that it allows use
without providing patients with a simple way to get the medicine.

Where do they turn once they have a doctor's blessing to smoke it?
They could attempt to grow their own, a time-consuming and iffy
process. Or they could turn to a shadowy system that allows others to
grow plants for them. Some of these growers are legitimate, but just
try to guess which.

This, of course, is the point in the law Oregon's Measure 74 attempted
to address this year by creating dispensaries where Oregonians could
buy the drug. But that idea had big issues of its own, including the
establishment of both another potentially shadowy system and a
bureaucracy to deal with it.

What patients really need is a more direct approach. They ought to be
able to buy marijuana in a pharmacy, just as with other drugs.

Standing between that logic and reality is the federal government,
which still classifies marijuana, along with LSD and heroin, as one of
the most potentially dangerous drugs available today. Drugs on the
government's Schedule 1 list have a high potential for abuse and no
accepted medical use in the U.S., the government says. Marijuana's
inclusion is keeping it out of pharmacies.

It's time for that to change. Fourteen states already condone medical
use of the drug, and others are considering it. Although medical
opinion is mixed and research is lacking, many doctors believe it
helps relieve pain and nausea, among other ailments.

Smoking anything does a body harm, but we don't know that marijuana is
worse - or even as bad as - other substances seriously ill people use
to relieve their symptoms. And if the nation's going to call marijuana
a Schedule 1 drug because smoking is bad and marijuana is likely to be
abused, shouldn't nicotine go on the list as well?

The worst thing about marijuana's listing as Schedule 1 is that it
leaves states like Oregon to attempt all sorts of work-arounds that
cost money and imperil people who attempt to use the drug. Oregon
first approved use of medical marijuana in 1998, and a dozen years
later it is still attempting to tweak the rules so patients can get
it.

The federal rules drive up prices, push law-abiding people toward
illegal acts and help the black market flourish.

We suspect marijuana's long-term future lies in legalization. But
given the outcome of measures in Oregon and California this month,
that doesn't seem likely soon.

What could and should change now is for the federal government to
acknowledge that despite the 40-year-old Controlled Substances Act,
marijuana is a drug this nation uses as medicine.

Allowing it to be sold in a pharmacy would make that use safer and
help police to distinguish between the real patients and the pretenders.

Why would anyone want to stop that?