SENSE AND SINSEMILLA

Feds Should Back Off Medical Marijuana Battle

Marijuana is a drug. It's mood-altering and has beneficial medical
properties, including the soothing of nausea and symptoms of glaucoma. It
is addictive, but much less so, say drug-treatment experts, than alcohol,
cocaine, heroin, caffeine and nicotine.

To be sure, it can cause terrible problems for habitual users. But it's
hardly the "demon weed" that has been described in official U.S. drug
policies for decades. It's considered a Schedule I narcotic, because it
allegedly has both "no current accepted medical use" and " high potential
for abuse." Meanwhile, Schedule II drugs include cocaine and PCP because
they have medical uses.

But so does marijuana, though politicians refuse to listen to doctors who
say so. Attorney General John Ashcroft even claims that federal anti-drug
laws supercede state laws - including one in Colorado - allowing the
medical use of marijuana. The Justice Department has threatened to go after
doctors who follow those state laws, making the laws all but useless.

But now a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -
admittedly the nation's most liberal - has ruled that it's unconstitutional
to prosecute doctors who recommend marijuana in states where it's legal.

The ruling does not affect Colorado, which is in the 10th Circuit, but we
applaud it nevertheless. Contrary to bogey stories proffered by Ashcroft
and his ilk, allowing desperately ill patients to relieve their symptoms
with marijuana will not open the floodgates to "reefer madness." And we
highly doubt many doctors wink at the law just so they can enable stoners.

Marijuana has valid medical uses. It should be reduced, at least, to a
Schedule II drug. And the feds should stop hassling doctors for simply
trying to help suffering patients.