Looks like the Supremes are going to have another chance to piss all over their valued assertion of "States Rights" (the last stream of urine flowing, of course, on Bush v. Gore). Will the desire of the actual citizens of states be able to be trump the feds insane desire to keep medical marijuana out of the hands of those who need it?
Local sheriff's deputies and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents disagreed when they converged on Diane Monson's house in Oroville, Calif., two years ago.
The county cops accepted Monson's explanation for growing six marijuana plants: She had a doctor's permission to smoke it for back pain, so the pot was legal under the state's 1996 "medical marijuana" law.
I suspect that if the supremes allow the state laws to stand, that soon all 50 states will have some form of regulated, legal and taxable medical marijuana laws. With the onset of prescription abuse for substances like Oxycontin (just ask Rushbaugh), it seems that making marijuana legal and a taxable prescription drug would not be such a stretch for the court to make. Not to mention all the money saved busting folks for possession, or even the lives saved.
posted by Jo Fish on 11.29.04 at 12:21 PM
Comments:
Jo, we can't ever allow marijuana to be used as a medicine because people who need could just grow what they need in their house instead of buying it from Glaxo-Smith-Kline via Wal-Mart. Hell the sick low-lifes would probably regrow from seeds not purchased from Monsanto.
One of the defendents in the case had been using Vioxx before her doctor told her to switch to reefer. The claim that marijuana isn't as safe as a prescription drug tends to take a dive when you mention some of the "miracle drugs" that Pharma has pushed on people.
This isn't about illness, states-rights, or anything else they're willing to talk about, it's about corporate profits.
I liked how Justice Breyer stated that they should have their case before the board of the FDA instead of the SCOTUS. The rebuttal was that the Feds were using the federal interstate commerce act to bust them with, and hence there was no interstate commerce to be had, since they were growing their own.
The remark was also made that in 1988 a study by the FDA (or some variant) said pot was valuable as a medicinal pain resource, and it was subsequently shoved to a Class 3 narcotic (no medicinal value) by the Congress in short order.
In the end, it's all about the money - always has been.
posted by: Barndog on 11.30.04 at 06:55 AM [permalink]
