THE WAR ON DRUGS TAKES A TURN FOR THE SURREAL

The War on Drugs has taken a turn for the surreal. Two turns, actually.

For our first, we go to Midland County, where the prosecutor with
the assistance of the state attorney general's office has picked up
and run with a peculiar argument first advanced here in Isabella
County by Larry Burdick. Markets, they are arguing, are created by act
of government, not people.

Their argument is that the medical marijuana law, ratified by
two-thirds of voters two years ago, never intended to create marijuana
dispensaries. In other words, when the people of this state legalized
marijuana as a drug, we're supposed to believe that nobody expected
that they'd need to buy it. We're supposed to believe that everyone
expected that cancer patients and sufferers of other debilitating
diseases would go out and gather the requisite supplies and seeds and
grow it themselves.

I'm not sure what is more shocking, that such an argument would be
advanced by members of a political party that has made markets free
from government intrusion its central plank, or that it would be
advanced with a straight face.

We hear all the time about the menace of centralized economic
planning, that this kind of socialism undermines the very fabric of
America. Here you have it, not being promoted by unions or Democrats
or college professors with pointy heads, but by prosecutors arguing in
favor of it in the courtroom. Carpenter, according to press reports,
is using as his legal basis an opinion written by the same Bill
Schuette whose office has joined his case (in addition to a Midland
judge's opinion on the supremacy of federal law). In other words, the
prosecutors in this case are trying to write their own laws and have
them enacted not by the Legislature but in the courts.

The end result they're looking for, I presume, is this: Medical
marijuana is legal in this state, but obtaining it is so difficult
that for all intents and purposes it is illegal. It's a case of
government telling people, who've already made their opinion pretty
clear on this, what's really in their best interests; and it would be
downright comical if the prospects of prosecutorial nullification of a
popularly-supported law weren't kind of scary.

It goes without saying that government doesn't create markets, can't
create markets and shouldn't be in the business of declaring this
market good and this market bad. It also goes without saying that, in
this case, a market for this product already exists. The problem is
that if you're found in possession of it, you can get fined or go to
jail. The law that our three fine lawyers are fighting lifted people
with debilitating illness out of it.

Not to be outdone, the Legislature has gotten into the act. Or, rather
just Roger Kahn, the senator from Saginaw who represents Gratiot
County. Kahn is a doctor, you see, and whenever Republicans in the
Senate want to soft peddle horrible things on the medical front, they
go through him. For instance, when Democrats tried to repeal
Michigan's unique drug company immunity law, Kahn rose and delivered a
gruesome depiction of what happens when cancer patients vomit blood.

Earlier this week, Kahn introduced a bill that would require doctors
who prescribe marijuana to be able to establish that they have a
relationship with a patient. You might think that what goes on between
you and a doctor is confidential. Roger Kahn's bill says that if your
doctor concludes that you would benefit from medical marijuana that
this isn't the case. The state wants to know whether you're a regular
patient of that doctor, or whether you were maybe just out doctor
shopping for weed.

You don't want to minimize a potential problem of doctors too
liberally prescribing marijuana. This kind of legislation, however,
addresses that in a way that is deeply and personally invasive. We're
also not talking about morphine here, but marijuana. There are lots of
drugs that are much more powerful than that that are still easier to get.

If I were a Tea Party type who wanted to talk about the evils of
government control, I'd point to these two things and the War on Drugs
in general, because both of them are nonsensical, unproductive
attempts to smash a fly with a sledge hammer.

You might think that an exaggeration. Well, think of what each of
those things are at their core in the first, it's an attempt to
redefine what constitutes a market, the central pillar of our free
enterprise system; in the second, it's the idea that as long as we're
trying to stamp out marijuana usage, it's okay to pry into people's
medical records. This is all done for policy decisions made five
decades ago that have proven to be utter failures at every level. The
cost in terms of money since then is probably incalculable; the cost
in terms of government intrusion into our lives is evident above.