TIME FOR FDA TO SETTLE CANNABIS INCONSISTENCIES

Is medical marijuana legal or illegal in Kern County? If you don't
know, we don't blame you. While technically it's legal under state
law, in Kern County the issue is like an ongoing pingpong match, with
limited operations OK one year and banned the next.

In the latest turn of events, the Kern County Board of Supervisors
this week passed an ordinance that prohibits the distribution of
marijuana for medical purposes through a storefront or delivery
service. Cannabis advocates say this will relegate patients to making
purchases from back-alley dealers, invigorating the illicit drug
trade and setting up otherwise law-abiding patients for trouble.

This week's move follows a board-imposed moratorium on new marijuana
operations issued last year, which came after the repeal of a
previous ordinance that allowed dispensaries to operate under a
licensing system overseen by the Sheriff's Department. The city of
Bakersfield has barred marijuana operations through its zoning code,
but the measure goes unenforced.

In other communities across California, it's much the same: a melange
of ordinances and enforcement standards that vary, to different
extents, according to city and correspond (or don't correspond) with
state and federal laws.

It's time for this patchwork to be shredded and for one unifying set
of laws relative to the growth, distribution and regulation of
medical marijuana to be instituted. Medical marijuana clearly has
value as a pain reliever and mild sedative, and, like other drugs
fitting that description, it clearly has the potential for misuse,
abuse and misapplication.

To address those issues, the Food and Drug Administration should
reverse its outdated position that marijuana "has no accepted medical
use" and provide clear guidelines on the conditions under which it
can be prescribed. Evidence suggests marijuana aids patients suffered
from advanced cancer and certain other painful and debilitating
diseases. Should it also be prescribed more casually? That's less
justifiable. But the failure of the FDA, the U.S. surgeon general and
other agencies to act keeps the issue languishing in a cloud of
inconsistency and uncertainty.

The federal government must address other disconnected policies. On
the one hand, it considers marijuana a controlled substance that's
illegal to possess or distribute. But in 2009, the U.S. attorney
general issued guidelines discouraging the prosecution of patients
who use medical cannabis products according to state laws. Federal
law needs to be more clear-cut than that: It must develop a more
unified policy that recognizes exceptions for medical marijuana in
states that approve its medical use. This would go a long way in
helping to address the problems facing Kern County as well as the
states that have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes.

Part of the solution must be guidance on an appropriate way to
distribute medical marijuana. The drug should be accessible to
appropriately screened and diagnosed patients in ways that don't
involve delivery services and mechanisms that are easily abused by
the illicit drug trade.

Action needs to be taken soon. As we've seen, marijuana laws are
subject to change at the federal level, too, depending on who's in
power. Patients, physicians and law enforcement agencies, among
others, deserve to have reliably set laws on which to operate.