MARIJUANA AS MEDICINE

Once again, government servants have told Americans that marijuana
ranks right up there with heroin. The Drug Enforcement Agency ruled
July 8 that marijuana has "no accepted medical use" and will continue
as a schedule 1 drug - the most forbidden category.

The DEA is a law enforcement bureaucracy. The medical opinions of law
enforcement bureaucrats should be of little interest. We do not ask
cops to make laws; we pay cops to enforce the laws established by
constitutions or enacted by the people or the decisions of their
representatives.

Furthermore, what drug a person takes for an illness should be
between that person and his or her physician. Drug laws - like laws
that regulate rape, murder, arson, property crimes and almost all
criminal matters - should be the purview of states. That's a right
wing, conservative Republican view of the world that is shared by the
left-leaning Obama administration regarding the regulation of medical
marijuana. Nothing in the Constitution grants authority to the
federal government, let alone a lone bureaucracy such as the DEA, to
regulate drugs. Efforts by the federal government to regulate alcohol
failed miserably, just as the efforts to regulate drugs have
empowered black-market criminals. The war on drugs is a deadly and
expensive political indulgence of the past that our country no longer
can afford.

The agency's statement came in response to a 2002 petition by
supporters of medical marijuana who want the drug reclassified. The
ruling means, in the view of the federal bureaucrats, that even a
terminal cancer patient cannot use marijuana to control severe pain
even if it is the best course of treatment as recommended by the
patient's physician. The DEA would prefer the patient go on other
drugs - something created and sold by pharmaceuticals. Most
prescription-strength pain relievers, unlike marijuana, are liver
toxins that have the ability to kill upon overdose. Most, unlike
marijuana, are so physically addictive that withdrawal can be deadly.
Over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, such as aspirin, kill more than
7,000 Americans each year who either overdose intentionally or by
accident. Tobacco has killed an average of 430,700 Americans each
year, based on research from the Centers for Disease Control. Alcohol
has killed more than 110,000 Americans each year. Adverse reactions
to prescription drugs have killed more than 32,000 Americans each year.

Marijuana, a drug that should not be used for recreation, has been
the direct cause of this many deaths each year: Zero. We are able to
buy aspirin - a pharmaceutical that can kill. But the government says
no to marijuana - a drug that quite likely has the safest track
record of any drug in history - even if a physician says it is what
we need. This is the type of insanity that led President Ronald
Reagan to say: "The nine most terrifying words in the English
language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

The ongoing schedule 1 classification of marijuana - as a drug akin
to heroin - is an obvious indulgence of bureaucratic exaggeration. It
seems clear DEA officials want to demonize marijuana because it
guarantees the DEA's ongoing funding and growth. This ruling does
nothing to harm the reputation of medical marijuana, and everything
to diminish the reputation of the DEA. We must demand government
employees stop lying to the Americans they are paid to serve with
integrity and truth.

- - Colorado Springs Gazette