NPR piece on “pot-friendly California” quotes reefer-mad DEA agent

This latest examination by National Public Radio continues the theme of “medical marijuana is a hoax” that is perpetrated by so many in the mainstream media.

More than a dozen years ago, California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana for people with serious illnesses. Many used it to relieve pain or other symptoms — and that’s still true. But medical marijuana has now become a thriving business in California that serves a lot more than just sick people.

Serves a lot more than sick people?  I guess that depends on your definition of “sick”.

Doctors don’t actually write prescriptions for marijuana. They give written recommendations that are often based on less-than-rigorous exams…. It’s not what most California voters had in mind when they approved Proposition 215, the medical marijuana law. Back then, it was billed as compassionate relief for people with cancer, HIV-AIDS, or glaucoma.

I like that NPR now has the power to time-travel and read minds.  How the hell do you know what California voters were thinking of when they passed Prop 215?  The language of the initiative was pretty clear:

(California Secretary of State – Official Text) To ensure that seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes where that medical use is deemed appropriate and has been recommended by a physician who has determined that the person’s health would benefit from the use of marijuana in the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine, or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief. [emphasis mine]

It’s that “any other illness” language that differentiates California from the other medical marijuana states that have stricter lists of conditions which qualify for medical marijuana.  Are we to believe Californians saw that language on the ballot and didn’t consider that “any other illness” was a pretty broad term? It’s funny to me how these people don’t even bat an eye at ads for powerful hepatoxic pharmaceuticals to treat insomnia, appetite, nausea, anxiety, depression, minor aches and pains, and “restless legs syndrome”, but people using safe effective marijuana to treat those disorders are somehow not sick enough.

“I think 215 was a complete sham. I think this was a hoax,” says Ron Brooks, a federal drug agent in San Francisco.

“And I would encourage any citizen to do this. Stand near a dispensary and watch who goes in,” Brooks said.

“And tell me how many people look sick and dying. How many people look like they are suffering from catastrophic illness, and how many kids are standing around the corner where people buy marijuana inside the dispensary — and resell it to the kids outside for a profit,” he adds.

See, in DEA school, they train these agents to be able to identify someone with migraines, irritable bowels, epilepsy, arthritis, degenerative disc disorder, fibromyalgia, insomnia, anxiety, depression, asthma, or “restless legs syndrome” on sight alone.  No, not everyone who visits a dispensary is suffering from a catastrophic illness and are sick and dying.  Some just have “any other illness” and it is medical marijuana that allows them to live their life better.

What they don’t train them on at DEA school is rudimentary economics.  Explain to us how someone makes a profit selling to school kids when the medical marijuana in the dispensary is as expensive or more expensive than what they can buy from the dealer in their high school?  Even if this scenario were true (and it is not) you have to have two adults committing a crime – one adult showing ID to buy and one adult who’s registered at the dispensary to sell – in order for it to work, instead of the system in every high school in America where two kids buy and sell from each other without every checking an ID and no adult ever knows about it.

They also don’t teach much statistics at DEA school, or Agent Brooks would know that in every medical marijuana state for which there is data, teen use of marijuana has declined at a rate greater than national decline since implementation of medical marijuana in that state.

Also consider that dispensaries are at the center of diligent state and federal attention and the last thing these businessmen want to do is lose their livelihood over a sale to a minor or to an adult who’d divert medicine to a minor.

NPR is usually a good source of unbiased news but they whiffed on this one.  They also interviewed a film editor who claimed his examination wasn’t “medical” enough.  Yes, you can find people who have medical recommendations who will tell you that they aren’t that sick or don’t find the exam rigorous enough.  But they aren’t doctors.  Doctors are deciding whether these people should have medical marijuana and the law gives them great latitude in making that determination.  It doesn’t say they have to give them a full physical, colonoscopy, brain scan, and blood test and it doesn’t say they have to believe the person is catastrophically ill.

Since marijuana is “the safest therapeutically-active substance known to man” and is “safer than many of the foods we commonly eat”, they haven’t much reason to deny medical marijuana to anyone who claims to need it.  We let people buy toxic acetaminophen over the counter in any amount they choose, to use anytime they choose for any ailment they choose without ever seeing a doctor or undergoing an examination.  We let people buy toxic alcohol and use it any way they like and it’s most definitely not for medical purposes.  Maybe the people who voted for Prop 215 knew exactly what they were voting for – requiring doctor’s visits for something safer than aspirin, acetaminophen, and alcohol as a politically-possible method of legalizing it.