Monday, June 6, 2005

The Not So "High" Court

Your doctor may prescribe for you all sorts of pharmaceuticals, many of which haven't been sufficiently tested and will later be recalled. Hey, it's legal! But if your doctor prescribes cannabis, you could be arrested!!

In a 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court decided that you can be arrested under federal law for inviting Mary Jane to visit your sick bed. According to a story from the Associated Press,
Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.
Look, I'm not a personal fan of marijuana. I've never tried it. I've never been present when other people use it. (I've also never been intoxicated -- I'm a nerd.) But it's been proven that cannabis can help to alleviate the pain of certain conditions and it does so with the least amount of side effects. That should be lauded, not deprecated.

When you consider the witches brew of drugs that the FDA allows on the market, it seems so nonsensical to ban the use of medical marijuana. It actually makes far more sense to ban the use of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine -- the main ingredients fueling our meth epidemic. But, according to the Supreme Court, those drugs remain kosher.

We live in a strange world.

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