MEDICAL USE OF MARIJUANA

Humane, Sensible

Legalizing the medical use of marijuana is not really a liberal issue
or a conservative issue. It's an issue about injecting some compassion
- - and rationality - into the nation's emotionally and politically
charged war on drugs.

The fact that two state legislators, one from the left and one the
right, have joined forces to support legalizing medical marijuana in
New Jersey underscores that fact.

Both have been touched by personal experiences involving friends or
relatives who died painfully from cancer. And both rightly believe
that the government should not come between a doctor and a patient,
nor make criminals out of terminally ill people seeking relief.

Marijuana has a legitimate medical use in easing pain and,
particularly, in easing the nausea and loss of appetite that comes
from cancer treatments.

Assemblymen Michael Patrick Carroll, R-Morris, and Reed Gusciora,
D-Princeton, plan to introduce a bill this fall that would set up a
registry of patients whose doctors recommend marijuana to ease the
symptoms of certain specific medical conditions - such as cancer and
multiple sclerosis. Those people would not be prosecuted for using
marijuana for that condition.

New Jersey would be wise to join the nine other states that have
passed similar laws.

Of course, these state laws can only shield patients from state
prosecution. The medical use of marijuana is still illegal under
federal law. But the vast majority of arrests come under state law.

Moreover, states are sending out the message to the federal government
that the war on drugs can not be blind to the legitimate use of drugs
in easing suffering. The federal law should be changed as well - and
if enough states pass their own laws, perhaps federal lawmakers will
gather the courage to take up the issue.

"There is no such thing as an evil plant," Carroll
said.

Of course there isn't. Consider the poppy - which can be used to make
codeine and morphine, both used for medicinal purposes, but can also
be used to make heroin.

Our war on drugs has, at times, blinded us to the fact that drugs can
be used as well as abused. And that it is not only wrongheaded but
cruel to deny people in pain the drugs that might help because we fear
abuse. Those kinds of efforts become downright irrational in the cases
of terminally ill patients.

We urge local legislators to support the Carroll/Gusciora bill. It's a
sensible, compassionate measure. And it sets up a mechanism that
ensures that marijuana willbe used only by those with specific medical
conditions with a doctor's recommendation.

"Physicians should be allowed to prescribe drugs as they see fit,"
Carroll said. "The less time we spend telling people what to do, the
better."

Spoken like a true conservative.