Why, it was just yesterday that I was telling you…

(DEA) Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?

…The American Medical Association recommends that marijuana remain a Schedule I controlled substance.

And now today when you go to that same link…

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?

And the AMA reference is gone.  Congrats to the folks at LEAP who spearheaded the campaign to harass the DEA about it.  (Though if you want to believe it was the fast response of the loyal frontline battle grunts in the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ known as “Stashers” that provided the “bump” that put the DEA over the edge, well, I’m not going to disabuse you of that notion.  Whatever keeps you writing to your government is fine with me.)

But the rest of the document needs some serious fixing, too…

…The Institute of Medicine conducted a comprehensive study in 1999 to assess the potential health benefits of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids. The study concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition. In addition, there are more effective medications currently available. For those reasons, the Institute of Medicine concluded that there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication.

See?  The AMA in 2009 recognizes “smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.” So the DEA removes that current reference and replaces it with a contrary reference from a decade ago.  (I often win arguments this way, like my trivia contest where I guessed there were nine planets, the 49′ers had the most Super Bowl trophies, and Bill Clinton was the president.)

But it is nice to know that the DEA recognizes that decade-old reference from the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 Study: Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the Science Base.  For it, too, recognizes the “Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation”.  It also rebukes the DEA’s statement that “smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition” when the study concludes, “for certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks [of smoked marijuana] are not of great concern.”

It’s nice that the DEA cites the 1999 IOM study, especially when they claim:

Q. Is marijuana a gateway drug?

* Yes. Among marijuana’s most harmful consequences is its role in leading to the use of other illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine.

…while the IOM study says, “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.”

…In other studies, smoked marijuana has been shown to cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems, increased heart rate, loss of motor skills, and increased heart rate.

And not only that, I also hear it can cause increased heart rate.  But not cancer; in fact, cannabis users show a reduced risk of head, neck, and lung cancers compared to non-using controls.  And not respiratory problems, at least not seriously debilitating problems like emphysema and COPD.  And not a loss of motor skills in any permanent or even long-lasting way.  Sure, you don’t smoke a blunt and then go see how well you’ll do on the driver’s test, but a couple of hours later and you’re no worse to drive than anybody else.  But I do hear that it can cause an increased heart rate… an increase about the same as walking up a flight of stairs.

…It’s also important to realize that the campaign to allow marijuana to be used as medicine is a tactical maneuver in an overall strategy to completely legalize all drugs. …. The New York Times interviewed Ethan Nadelman, [when asked] “Will it help lead toward marijuana legaization?” Mr. Nadelman said: “I hope so.”

I’m not sure what “legaization” is, but maybe there is a shortage of “L’s” at the DEA.  Anyway, let’s look at this tactical maneuver.  According to the DEA, Ethan Nadelmann and the rest of us “legaizers” are following this strategy:

1. Scenario: All (currently illicit) drugs are illegal.
2. Goal: Legalize all (currently illicit) drugs.
3. Tactic: Convince voters that they should make one (currently illicit) drug available to very sick or disabled people under very strict conditions.
4. Premise: Once voters are accustomed to sick people using one drug, they’ll decide that all people should be able to use all drugs.

How exactly does that work?  How is it that Joe Q. Public sees a cancer patient smoking a joint and decides, “You know, if they put up an initiative to put meth-flavored lollipops in the 7-Eleven, I’ll vote for it!”

The very notion that medical marijuana is a “Trojan horse” is both an insult to the public’s intelligence and an endorsement of the legalization we seek!  Are they really suggesting that the only way they can keep the public from rejecting prohibition as a policy is to make sure people in pain don’t smoke pot?  The fact that they think a public exposed to a non-punitive, regulatory solution to drug control will be inexorably drawn to more of those non-punitive regulatory solutions for more people and other drugs just shows you how bankrupt prohibitionist ideology is!  They can’t support it with reason, they can only support it through the barrel of a cop’s gun.

(Buffalo News) Bianca Hervey, a 20-year-old college student, was returning home to her apartment in Attica when a village police officer drove up behind her, put on his flashing lights and pulled her over.

Hervey’s driver’s license, Officer Christopher Graham told her, had been suspended for failing to pay traffic tickets. He arrested her.

Graham handcuffed her, put her in the back of the police cruiser and took her to police headquarters. Her car was impounded and towed away.

At the police station, Graham handcuffed Hervey to a bench and told her she would probably spend the night in jail, Hervey said.

But then Graham offered her a way out of her problems.

Become a confidential informant for the Wyoming County Drug Task Force, he told her, and he could make the charges disappear.

Police departments throughout the country use people arrested on drug charges to inform on others. In return, their charges are reduced or dismissed.

But Hervey said she doesn’t use drugs and, having just moved from Batavia to the tiny village of Attica, doesn’t know anyone in Attica who does.

That didn’t stop her recruitment as a confidential informant.

Neither Wyoming County Sheriff Ferris Heimann, nor District Attorney Gerald Stout has a problem with how Smith’s department handled the case.

Asked about recruiting someone who said she is not part of the drug trade, Stout responded to The News: “But she agreed to do it.”

Nothing more aptly demonstrates the idiocy of prohibition than a system of law enforcement and justice that uses young people as bait.  Surely nobody in the close-knit group of drug users in the tiny town of Attica, NY, is going to think twice about the new girl in town who is so desperate to buy a large amount of cocaine or pills or weed, but doesn’t seem to know which end of a joint to light.

This is even more shameful than the Rachel Hoffman case.  At least Rachel was someone who hung around with a cannabis and ecstasy-using crowd.  This Bianca Hervey sounds the majority of young people who, believe it or not, don’t do any drugs!  When police infiltrate criminal organizations, they’ve had months of training, so why do they think they can take a young lady who doesn’t pay traffic tickets and turn her into supercop?

I get the most incredible emails, and I mean “incredible” as in “it strains credibility” to believe this really happens in America.

My name is [Bob]. I’m 23 years old and I’m from … Mississippi. Until this year I had never been convicted of a crime. I had never even had a speeding ticket. I was on my way home from work and I was pulled over. I got caught with a stem on my floorboard. Which probably wouldn’t even register as .01 [grams] on a scale. The officer searched my vehicle 4 times before he even found it. I was arrested and taken to [jail.]  My vehicle was impounded.  I lost my job and eventually my home. I bonded out and received my court date later in the mail. When I went to court I received an 1100 dollar fine and my license was suspended for 6 months. The funny thing was a repeat offender 2 cases before me only received a 600 dollar fine for simple assault. He also received a set number of hours in an anger management class.  His charge was for beating his pregnant girlfriend. I have lost faith in America and our leaders.  Marijuana is a wonderful herb and I enjoy the way it makes me feel. Sometimes I suffer with horrible depression and marijuana makes me feel soooooo much better. I’m a musician as well and marijuana stimulates my mind in ways that I never could naturally. … Anyways I figured I would share this with you so you could see how bad we have it down here in Mississippi.

We all know Judge Jim Gray is a powerful advocate for ending marijuana prohibition.  We all know David Evans is a rabid prohibitionist.  Let’s just skip to the fun parts and give you the bullet points from David Evans’ reefer madness:

(CBS News) David Evans: We cannot legalize marijuana because…

• Marijuana is far more powerful today than it was years ago… [Yes, because prohibition forces illegal producers to make the most potent product.]
• …it serves as an entry point for the use of other illegal drugs. This is known as the “gateway effect.”… [There is no "gateway effect", Institute of Medicine debunked that a decade ago and every serious study since has agreed.]
• Higher potency marijuana may be contributing to a substantial increase in the number of American teenagers in treatment for marijuana dependence…. [No, that's because of drug courts that sentence marijuana users to rehab.]
• Drug legalization advocates claim that marijuana is less dangerous than drugs like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. However, studies … show that marijuana is not harmless but that it is toxic and addictive.  [Marijuana is notably non-toxic to healthy cells and organs and is not even as addictive as coffee.]
• The legalizers claim that as legalized drugs become less expensive, people will no longer need to commit crimes in order to pay for their drug use. The problem with this claim is that some drugs are already inexpensive. Marijuana, the most abused and addictive drug for young people, is very inexpensive….  [Really, you consider $10-$15/gram inexpensive for a young person?]
• Even supporters of drug legalization admit that “low prices would encourage use.” A good example of this is [crack] cocaine. … Higher levels of drug use cause increased crime, especially property crime to pay for the drugs.  [Wasn't this a discussion about marijuana?  So, then, you're saying the people who'd rob someone for money for that $400 ounce now will rob more people for that $40 ounce in the future?]
• Drug users, many of whom are unable to hold jobs, commit robberies and other crimes not only to obtain drugs, but also to purchase food, shelter, clothing and other goods and services. Even if drugs were legalized, addicts will still need to pay the rent and may resort to crime to do so.  [Uh, if marijuana is legal, marijuana users can keep their jobs or find new ones without being discriminated against for the metabolites in their urine.]
• …most violent drug related crime is committed because people are under the influence of drugs. The use of drugs changes behavior and causes criminal activity because people will do things they wouldn’t do if they were rational and free of the drug’s influence…. Cocaine-related paranoia is an example.  [Again with the cocaine!  Please, what crimes are being committed by people under the influence of marijuana, except for noodling too long on a guitar solo or not sharing the bag of Doritos?]
• If legalizing drugs will increase drug use, then drugged driving will also likely increase. Many studies show a clear correlation between drug use and motor vehicle accidents, trauma, and dangerous driving….  [If legalizing marijuana causes more people to choose it instead of alcohol, we'll have less dangerous driving!]
• Pot use among Dutch kids was very low before they “decriminalized” pot. It was about 5%. It is now approaching US levels but is still lower than the US. It has risen substantially due to the more relaxed attitude….  [Pot use among adults and teens in the Netherlands is half what it is in the US.]
• Your comment that increased pot use will not lead to more addiction is preposterous…. This argument does not work when we consider that drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are dangerous and highly addictive.  [Cocaine and heroin are dangerous and highly addictive.  Can we please stick to talking about pot?]
• [Prohibition] keeps potential drug users from using drugs by virtue of the fear of arrest and the embarrassment of being caught.  [Right, all 22 million of us who will smoke this year are terrified, but it's not stopping us from using cannabis.]
• [Prohibition] helps drug users/addicts into treatment through the use of laws and drug courts that offer treatment as an alternative to incarceration.  [Helps drug rehabs, you mean, by providing them unaddicted people forced into rehab by courts.  Over one third of those attending marijuana rehab haven't even used cannabis in the past thirty days!]

Some other points to notice from Mr. Evans’ rants:

• He insists on calling us “legalizers”.  I call Evans a “prohibitionist” because he supports continuing the status quo of prohibition.  But to say that we support “legalization” of drugs is not semantically correct.  A “legalized” drug, as Judge Gray points out, would be something like aspirin, a substance that has no restrictions on marketing, age of use, sales, manufacture, and purchase.  We don’t call for that, we call for sensible regulations on marijuana not unlike alcohol and tobacco.  It would be more accurate to call us “regulators”.
• He must always bring drugs into the discussion – cocaine, heroin, and meth – because a discussion of the dangers of marijuana use alone doesn’t scare people anymore.
• He continues to harp on the negative consequences of drug use while ignoring the demonstrable consequences of drug money, which include corruption, violence, and terrorism.

There will be a part two to this debate on CBS News website tomorrow.

Thanks to a tip from our friends at LEAP, I reported on Tuesday about Iowa Senator Charles Grassley offering an amendment to Senator Jim Webb’s prison reform bill that forbids the commission from recommending the legalization of marijuana or even studying what effect legalization might have on society.  Well, thanks once again to the Tom Angell, blogging for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, we now have audio of Senator Grassley defending this censorship of science, even as he talks about putting “all options on the table.”  (Catch the audio on tonight’s Stash.)

QUESTION: I hear there was an amendment to a bill tomorrow that would legally prevent some of the government’s top advisers from — according to some of the memos we’ve seen — even discussing the idea of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs.

Can you talk a little bit about that? I understand that you pulled that amendment, but, nonetheless, I wanted to ask you what your intent is with that.

GRASSLEY: Well, my intent on that amendment isn’t any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a — is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn’t have time to review some of these laws.

And — and — and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to — to recommend or study the legalization of drugs.

Their — their program would be what we tell it it is. …

Senator Webb wants to understand why we have 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s imprisoned.  Sen. Webb understands that the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ has a lot to do with it.  Sen. Webb understands that discussion of marijuana legalization must be on the table. I’m not sure which concept is more misunderstood by Senator Grassley: science, democracy, free speech, or justice.  Wait, maybe it’s compassion:

QUESTION: Would your amendment have even stopped the discussion of legalized marijuana for medical purposes?

GRASSLEY: I think that would not — let’s see. Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes.

10/30/2009 by Chris Goldstein

On October 19th the Ocean County College in Tom’s River, NJ hosted a debate on medical marijuana. A professor of Social Science, Brad Young, moderated.  The opposition was Terrence Farley, a former county prosecutor and the now head of the NJ Narcotics Task Force Commanders Assn. Farley is a vehement prohibitionist and we’ve sparred over this topic on television programs before.

I represented the Coalition for Medical Marijuana – New Jersey www.cmmnj.org

Neither of us saw the questions prior to the debate and this question was particularly interesting.  As an added bonus you get to see me address some of the reefer madness we encounter locally.

Essentially, “Should medical marijuana be covered by health insurance.”

Looking to see what started my rebuttal? – watch the Previous Debate Segment.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So I pose the question to you all: Should medical cannabis be covered by health insurance?

More about medical marijuana in New Jersey at www.cmmnj.org

(ONDCP) Marijuana legalization, for any purpose, remains a non-starter in the Obama Administration. It is not something that the President and I discuss; it isn’t even on the agenda. Attorney General Holder issued very clear guidelines to U.S. Attorneys about the appropriate use of Federal resources. He did not open the door to legalization.

Regarding state ballot initiatives concerning “medical” marijuana. I believe that medical questions are best decided not by popular vote, but by science. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which studies and approves all medicines in the United States, has made very clear that the raw marijuana plant is not medicine, and any state considering medical marijuana should look very carefully at what has happened in California.

Legalization is being sold as being a cure to ending violence in Mexico, as a cure to state budget problems, as a cure to health problems. The American public should be skeptical of anyone
selling one solution as a cure for every single problem. Legalized, regulated drugs are not a panacea—pharmaceutical drugs in this country are tightly regulated and government controlled.
yet we know they cause untold damage to those who abuse them.

To test the idea of legalizing and taxing marijuana, we only need to look at already legal drugs — alcohol and tobacco. We know that the taxes collected on these substances pale in comparison to the social and health care costs related to their widespread use.

You know, for someone who says he doesn’t discuss marijuana legalization, it seems he sure has a lot of things to say about marijuana legalization.

Just one of the victims of an FDA "studied and approved" drug.

We’re all for the FDA studying the medical efficacy of marijuana, but every time we try to make that happen, NIDA and the DEA block those efforts.  “Marijuana’s not medical,” they say.  We say,”Hey, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who say they’re getting medical relief.  Can we at least study that?”  They say, “No.”  “Why not?” we ask?  “Because marijuana’s not medical.” “But we’ve got all these studies…” “Nah nah nah nah, we can’t hear you, marijuana’s not medical, nah nah nah!”  Besides, the FDA studied and approved thalidomide, Phen-Fen, and Vioxx, so excuse us if we don’t put a ton of credibility into that agency telling us how horrible marijuana is.

Should the people in a democracy be allowed to vote on what substances they are allowed to use as medicine?  Why not?  The acts in the early 20th century that were passed to regulate the “snake oil salesmen” occurred in a time when we didn’t have widespread communications like now.  If someone tried to sell an ineffective or dangerous tonic these days, he’d be out of business faster than you can say “Twitter”.  It’s not like we see a widespread call for votes on medical cocaine or medical methamphetamine… oh, wait, I forgot, those drugs are medical and any doctor in the US can prescribe them, but not a non-toxic herb.  Besides, if a company like “Extenze” can sell a pill claiming to make my penis bigger, so long as they put “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease,” I can’t for the life of me figure out why we need FDA approval for a plant.

Furthermore, most people don’t realize that a large proportion of the drugs the FDA does study aren’t approved for the way they are being prescribed:

Off-label use is the practice of prescribing pharmaceuticals for an unapproved indication.  Off-label use of medications is very common. Up to one-fifth of all drugs are prescribed off-label and amongst psychiatric drugs, off-label use rises to 31% (Radley, et al. 2006). New drugs are often not tested for safety and efficacy specifically in children. Therefore, it is believed that 50-75% of all medications prescribed by pediatricians in the U.S. are for off-label applications.

Once again, the specter of the “People’s Gaypublic of Drugifornia*” is brought out to scare people, as if dispensaries in California have led to widespread looting, riots in the streets, cats and dogs living together, and disasters of Biblical proportion.  Yes, let’s look at California, where the state is raking in money on dispensary sales taxes and at least 300,000 people who used to support black market drug dealers no longer are.  Let’s look at Oakland, where a nine-block area of town went from being a run-down dilapidated crime-ridden slum to a tourist-friendly rejuvenated business district called “Oaksterdam”, and the city is raking in $18 per $1000 in sales there, compared to $1.20 per $1000 for all other businesses.  I was just in California at a Smokeout where at least 30,000 people were gathered, some (most?) smoking pot, and I didn’t see one fight or step in one puddle of puke.

Using California to scare people about what happens when a state legalizes marijuana for sick people is sort of like warning people not to buy a Macintosh because Commodore PETs are slow.  Why doesn’t Kerlikowske warn people to look very carefully at what has happened in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada, Rhode Island, Michigan, Vermont, and Maine?  Doesn’t he think those states looked very carefully at California?  Or for that matter, Minnesota and New Hampshire, which passed medical marijuana this year, only to lose to a governor’s veto?

Finally, how long are they going to push the logically-flawed talking point that alcohol and tobacco abuse cost far more to society than the taxes they bring in, so we shouldn’t tax and regulate marijuana?  It’s like saying boxing and playing football hurt your body more than the value of the exercise helps, so you shouldn’t take up swimming to lose weight.  News flash, Gil: alcohol and tobacco kill half a million Americans a year and lead to chronic care diseases that cost a ton of money, but marijuana does not.  And guess what else?  Marijuana is already in widespread use and you’re collecting ZERO in taxes for it now!

Isn’t it telling when you read these ONDCP missives that they don’t ever seem to mention what the serious harm is from marijuana smoking that will cost society so much?  That they never seem to have any statistics, estimates, or even guesses at how much marijuana smoking costs society right now?  Here, Gil, I’ll get you started:

CostOfPotToSociety = (11,000,000 * OnceAYearCost) + (10,000,000 * OnceAMonthCost) + (4,000,000 * OnceAWeekCost)

Now we have no idea what a pot smoker costs society, but let’s say the OnceAMonthers cost 12 times what a OnceAYearer costs, and a OnceAWeeker costs 52 times that.  Call a OnceAYearer “X” and our equation would be:

CostOfPotToSociety = 11,000,000X + (10,000,000X * 12) + (4,000,000X * 52) = 339,000,000X

This obviously a flawed equation in more ways than I can count (for example, a daily pot smoker might cost much more to society than 52 times a once a year smoker), but at least it gives us something tangible to discuss. Right now, pot costs us $339,000,000X and we’re getting back $0 in taxes.  Seems to me if you figure out X, you just tax pot at X and you’ve covered your costs. Should more people smoke pot when it is legal and some who don’t smoke pot start, costs increase, but so do tax revenues.

Then, of course, you have to calculate the benefits of not busting pot smokers, which are numbers we can evaluate now.  We spend about $7,000,000,000 a year arresting people for marijuana.  So if X < $20.65 — that is, if one person smoking a joint once a year costs society less than twenty bucks, legalization itself will break even or exceed the current costs of tokers based on the criminal justice savings alone.

Next, let’s figure out what alcohol costs society and calculate the savings we’d achieve if even 5% of alcohol drinkers switched to marijuana.

Next, let’s figure out how much more productivity and less health care costs we achieve if even 5% of pharmaceutical users can cut their need for opiates and benzodiazepenes by a third to a half.

Finally, we haven’t even begun to discuss how legalized marijuana also means legalized hemp, and the jobs, businesses, taxes, environmental savings, and nutritional health that will add to the equation.

*Thanks for the hip reference, 30 Rock!

(San Jose Mercury News) OKLAHOMA CITY—In a case highlighted by advocates seeking to reform Oklahoma’s drug laws, the state on Wednesday sought to revoke the parole of a man sentenced to decades in prison for growing marijuana that he says was used to treat his arthritis pain.

William Joseph Foster, 51, initially was sentenced in Tulsa County to 93 years in prison after authorities uncovered a pot growing operation in the basement of his Tulsa home in 1995. A state appeals court later reduced that term to 20 years in prison, and he was released on parole in 2001.

During Wednesday’s parole revocation hearing, the Department of Corrections argued before an administrative law judge that Foster violated the terms of his parole while living in California by using and growing marijuana in that state and failing to follow his parole officer’s directions.

Foster maintains he was released from supervision by a parole officer in California overseeing his case, and he claims he refused to sign the paperwork on the advice of an attorney because it would have extended his parole by four years.

“We’re spending all this time, effort and money on one man when our prisons are already full,” said Norma Sapp, director of the Oklahoma chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “I bet we could send six kids to college on what we’ve spent to keep Will in prison.”

Let’s see if I can follow the logic here:

• Oklahoma catches Will Foster growing medical marijuana for his arthritis and sentences him to 93 years, so they can keep fellow Oklahomans safe from, uh, er, a guy smoking a joint to ease his pain.
• Oklahoma catches hell for sentencing a gardener to essentially a life sentence (meanwhile, rape a 4-year-old girl and you’re only behind bars for a year in Oklahoma) so they reduce the term to 20 years (or, twice as long as the average rapist or robber serves in Oklahoma), so we can at least protect Oklahomans from two decades of a guy smoking a joint to ease his pain.
• Oklahoma paroles the guy and allows him to leave the state and serve his parole in California, where he can legally smoke a joint to ease his pain.
• California looks at the guy and says, “This is no criminal,” and ends his parole, allowing the guy to live his life and legally smoke a joint to ease his pain.
• Oklahoma gets very upset at California, because if he’d stayed in Oklahoma, he’d still be on parole and be unable to smoke a joint to ease his pain.
• Oklahoma fights to extradite him, put him in a cell, and are now working to revoke his parole so he can serve the rest of his 20-year-sentence, so they can protect Oklahomans from a guy smoking a joint to ease his pain 1,500 miles away in a place where medical marijuana is legal.

Marijuana: the drug so deadly powerful that its private legal medical use can endanger people from two time zones away.

(Minneapolis Star-Tribune) Bong water can count as a controlled substance, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a decision that raises the threat of longer sentences for drug smokers who fail to dump the water out of their pipes.

In a 4-3 decision Thursday, the state’s highest court said a person can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime for 25 grams or more of bong water that tests positive for a controlled substance.

The statute defines a drug “mixture” as “a preparation, compound, mixture, or substance containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity.” When the language of a statute is unambiguous, the high court said, precedents prohibit courts from disregarding the letter of the law under the pretext of pursuing the letter of the law.

“Regardless of purity” means that even a fleck of an ash that registers a molecule of THC floating in your bong water makes all that water weight a controlled substance.  25 grams of water equals 25 milliliters, which equals a little over five teaspoons of water.  Five teaspoons of water in your bong makes you a first degree criminal.  An ounce and a half of bong water makes you a felon.

It’s fun to watch prohibitionist ideologues thrash about as the polls show ever-increasing support for cannabis re-legalization.  This recent memo by the Obama Administration declaring a hands-off policy for state-compliant medical marijuana operations has whipped up Clinton Admin Drug Policy Spokesman Bob Weiner.

“Be careful about the new lax enforcement policy for medical marijuana,” former White House Drug Policy Spokesman Bob Weiner is telling the Department of Justice and the Obama Administration. “Prescription marijuana use may explode for healthy people.”

Unfortunately, as many as 90% of purchases at clinical distribution centers are “false defenses”, some law enforcement agents report – “which means individuals are not really sick but simply want the pot,” Weiner asserts.

Again with the supercops who can discern someone’s relative health on sight alone.

“Medical marijuana is not as effective as other healing mechanisms for many illnesses such as glaucoma, pain, or nausea that users try it for because of false hype leading to false hope. Just as laetrile was legalized in the 1970’s in 27 states to cure cancer but was found to be useless apricot pits, leading Senator Kennedy in a Senate hearing to decry the ‘false hope’ delaying true treatment, ‘medical’ marijuana today could be a placebo delaying far better treatments,” according to Weiner.

Unfortunately, there was no hope for that run-on sentence which perished in a tragic head-on collision with a false analogy.  The difference between laetrile and medical marijuana is that 850,000 people a year don’t get their lives permanently affected by an arrest for laetrile.  Medical marijuana is far more popular and effective as judged by the millions who use it, some of whom are only alive today, like Cathy Jordan, because of medical marijuana.  Laetrile was indeed a false hope, thus few people seek it out anymore, even though it is an unscheduled substance.  Marijuana is the third most popular substance behind alcohol and tobacco because lots of people continue to seek it out even after a century of prohibition.

“Many medical marijuana advocates press its use for pain killing and appetite enhancement,” Weiner asserted, “but you might feel just as good after a shot of gin. Science, not politics, must drive what is determined to be safe and effective medicine in America. The medical marijuana advocates never mention the potentially better applications of THC in marijuana from suppositories, jells, aerosols, or the already approved pill Marinol — they just want the high from the smoked version.

You might feel good after a shot of gin.  But you’d find yourself feeling worse later and find the alcohol exacerbating your problems, unlike cannabis.  And Bob Weiner has obviously never tried Marinol, which got me higher than any marijuana I’ve ever tried, or heard us drone on for years now about vaporization, tinctures, and edibles.

“There is a real danger that if marijuana is made essentially a prescription drug, its abuse and usage explosion could parallel other prescription drugs over the last decade, such as OxyContin, which have tripled nationally and quintupled in many locations because of the ease of availability.”

A real danger, perhaps, if marijuana were as addictive and deadly as OxyContin.  Using Weiner logic, I could say there is a real danger that if badminton is made into a televised sport, its ratings could match the NFL.

“No one wants to deny a dying cancer patient a hit of grass, if that’s what he or she wants.”

Well, unless he or she fools the supercop into thinking he or she looks too young and healthy.  Why is it OK for the dying cancer patient to enjoy “the high from the smoked version” but not the “healthy people”?  Is the notion here that pot’s going to scramble your brains, corrupt your morals, and destroy your body, but, eh, fuck it, you’ll be dead soon anyway, so what? At least the cancer patient got a little slice of joy amidst all his or her suffering.  But you healthy person… no joy for you!

I really think that is part of the prohibitionist’s mindset.  Alcohol is OK because even though it gives you joy, it kicks your ass with a hangover the next day and it slowly kills you if you keep it up.  Cigarettes are OK because even though they give you joy (or at least relieve a craving) you’re punished by standing outside in the cold and it slowly kills you if you keep it up.  But cannabis gives you joy, and then the next day, week, month, year, and decade, you feel fine and still get joy from it.  There’s little downside to pot use, except for the illegality.  There’s no payback of misery in exchange for your joy.