MEDICAL MARIJUANA KABUKI

I'm sorry, but I really don't buy the notion that legitimate medical
purposes are served by permitting the production and sale of
"medicine" by ---- wink, wink ---- "cooperatives" that conveniently
have access to doctors who prescribe their product in minutes to
"patients" suffering from soft-tissue ailments that any practitioner
can tell you are nearly impossible to accurately detect ---- ask any
workman's comp attorney.

There are several severe ailments claimed to be made more tolerable by
the use of medical marijuana: cancer, HIV/AIDs, multiple sclerosis and
glaucoma. But the list isn't confined to those devastating and
debilitating diseases.

To get a prescription for medical marijuana, all you need is 75 bucks
and a diagnosis of anxiety, aging (who isn't?), arthritis, chronic
pain, movement disorder, or a gastrointestinal disorder. "Bring a
friend" and they'll knock off 15 bucks. When was the last time you saw
an offer like that when you picked up your blood pressure meds at your
local pharmacy?

California's voters have bought the premise that marijuana helps the
sick and empathetically approved the cultivation and sale of cannabis
for medical use by licensed cooperatives subject to local ordinances.

Meanwhile, your federal government refuses to recognize the medical
use of cannabis in its leafy, "smoke-able" form. (Let's be clear about
one thing: I am in no way advocating the legalization of marijuana for
anything other than medical use. I firmly believe it is a gateway drug
and have seen its negative effects on others enough to know its
recreational use is not something that should be taken lightly.)

Local jurisdictions are caught in the crossfire of allowing businesses
that the federal government may find illegal or being in violation of
a state law that clearly allows the businesses to operate.

If medical marijuana is, indeed, a legitimate pharmaceutical, then it
should be treated as such, and all its forms should be tested and
regulated by the FDA. So that rather than being distributed by loosely
regulated 21st-century head shops, it can be distributed by pharmacies
in a controlled environment.

The political posturing that keeps this from happening is all the more
ridiculous when you realize that the generations that now make up the
leadership of this country are the "experimented with" (even if they
didn't inhale) generation, if not the downright "used it while going
to college, if not beyond, and am not ashamed to admit it" generation.

It's time for our federal representatives to do what's right and put
an end to this absurd kabuki dance of civic leaders, marijuana
advocates and lawyers. Put cannabis in the pharmacies where it
belongs, shut down the cooperatives, and let the local city councils
go back to dealing with something other than where to put the pot store.