THE FEDS SHOULD FACE UP TO, AND REGULATE, MEDICAL MARIJUANA

When confronting a screaming line drive, slow-footed first basemen
have long benefited from an oddity in baseball's rules that enables
them to avoid being charged with an error for failing to make a
catch, as long as they don't touch the ball.

While dozens of states and cities grapple to find a responsible
approach to regulate medical marijuana, federal regulators are
behaving like America's torpid first basemen.

By keeping the drug within a prohibited classification of the
Controlled Substances Act, federal authorities cannot regulate its
safety, efficacy or dosage, tasks typically within the Federal Drug
Administration's domain. Municipalities will be blamed for safety
problems, but Washington's fingerprints won't be on any of them.

In San Jose, where the number of cannabis clubs has ballooned from a
dozen to nearly 100 in recent months, the debate has sharpened.

The City Council faces a dilemma: Ban marijuana collectives and face
a barrage of lawsuits for denying access to treatment for the ill, or
embark on a broad scheme of drug regulation, a task for which
municipal officials have no qualifications or experience.

Several cities have chosen regulation, but with wide variations in
approach. They share a common outcome, however: grief.

Neighbors grumble about secondary drug deals in parking lots.
Patients decry municipal taxes on their medicine.

Newspapers increasingly report violent armed robberies of cash-laden
dispensaries and grow houses. Medical experts worry about the dosage,
potency and purity of the drug, citing the 2,300 Californians
annually admitted to emergency rooms for cannabis-associated acute psychosis.

Responsible advocates groan at studies suggesting that fewer than 10
percent of registered cannabis-receiving patients actually have a
diagnosis of the type of illness routinely cited to justify
compassionate use laws, such as HIV, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis,
neuropathy or cancer. Police complain that the conflicting jumble of
state and federal rules leaves them without a clear means to
distinguish legitimate medical collectives from Stoners-R-Us.

As we consider regulatory options, we should not overlook the
obvious. First, the FDA already regulates the safety and efficacy of
thousands of drugs in the U.S., but not marijuana. Second, businesses
experienced in responsibly distributing therapeutic drugs already
exist; they're called pharmacies.

What pushes marijuana out of pharmacies, and into dispensaries?
Federal drug laws, which, since the 1930s, have classified cannabis
as a "Schedule I" substance, a category more restrictive than that
used for far more dangerous drugs such as cocaine and
methamphetamine. Pharmacies can't touch the drug, and the FDA can't
mitigate its harms.

Experts like UCLA professor Mark A.R. Kleiman have long urged
distributing marijuana through pharmacies both to make the drug less
accessible to recreational users and to sanction research to better
understand marijuana's benefits and risks.

What risks? In recent years, marijuana growers have increasingly
tinkered with the ratios of two key chemical substances in the plant,
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), to boost
the drug's euphoric potency. This has sparked medical concerns about
increased adverse reactions.

Under the current regulations, federally sanctioned research labs
cannot test this THC-boosted marijuana, nor can they compare its
efficacy with that of other potentially safer cannabis extracts, like
Sativex. We're also hampered from learning about the effects of
long-term use and exploring marijuana's reported associations with
everything from bronchitis to cognitive impairment to schizophrenia.

To be sure, federal reform faces political headwinds. Critics on both
sides will dispense heavy doses of self-righteous rhetoric; the
marijuana industry will defend unfettered access, while drug warriors
will monger fears of legalization.

Risk and criticism always accompany reform. But no first baseman has
ever won a Gold Glove for ducking from line drives.