Medical Marijuana: Review and Analysis of Federal and State Policies (PDF; 920 KB)

Source: Congressional Research Service (via FAS/Secrecy News)

The issue before Congress is whether to continue the federal prosecution of medical marijuana patients and their providers, in accordance with the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), or whether to relax federal marijuana prohibition enough to permit the medicinal use of botanical cannabis products when recommended by a physician, especially where permitted under state law.

Bills that would make medical marijuana available under federal law for medical use in the states with medical marijuana programs and that would make it possible for defendants in federal court to reveal to juries that their marijuana activity was medically related and legal under state law have been introduced in recent Congresses and are likely to be reintroduced in the 111th Congress. Past proposals to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II of the CSA might also resurface in the current Congress.

The Obama Administration’s Attorney General has signaled an end to federal raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration of medical marijuana dispensaries that are operating in accordance with state laws, in fulfillment of a pledge to end such actions that was made by candidate Obama during the presidential campaign.

Thirteen states, mostly in the West, have enacted laws allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes, and many thousands of patients are seeking relief from a variety of serious illnesses by smoking marijuana or using other herbal cannabis preparations. Meanwhile, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration refuses to recognize these state laws and continues to investigate and arrest, under federal statute, medical marijuana providers and users in those states and elsewhere.

Claims and counterclaims about medical marijuana—much debated by journalists and academics, policymakers at all levels of government, and interested citizens—include the following: Marijuana is harmful and has no medical value; marijuana effectively treats the symptoms of certain diseases; smoking is an improper route of drug administration; marijuana should be rescheduled to permit medical use; state medical marijuana laws send the wrong message and lead to increased illicit drug use; the medical marijuana movement undermines the war on drugs; patients should not be arrested for using medical marijuana; the federal government should allow the states to experiment and should not interfere with state medical marijuana programs; medical marijuana laws harm the federal drug approval process; the medical cannabis movement is a cynical ploy to legalize marijuana and other drugs. With strong opinions being expressed on all sides of this complex issue, the debate over medical marijuana does not appear to be approaching resolution.

This report will be updated as legislative activity and other developments occur.

via Docuticker » Blog Archive » High Interest CRS Report — Medical Marijuana: Review and Analysis of Federal and State Policies.

This document is what your congresscritters requested in order to get the latest update on medical marijuana in America.

Chock full of information, this report was prepared for Congress and gives a pretty thorough history of medical marijuana in America and the controversies surrounding it.

[MrSpof does it again!  Do read this report, or at least skim it, download it, and save it for future reference.  It gives a lot of background on state medical marijuana programs and the history of marijuana law. -- "R"R]

The issue before Congress is whether to continue the federal prosecution of medical marijuana patients and their providers, in accordance with the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), or whether to relax federal marijuana prohibition enough to permit the medicinal use of botanical cannabis products when recommended by a physician, especially where permitted under state law.

The federal government’s own IND Compassionate Access Program, which has provided government-grown medical marijuana to a select group of patients since 1978, provides important evidence that marijuana has medicinal value and can be used safely. A scientist and organizer of the California medical marijuana initiative, along with two medical-doctor colleagues, has written:

Nothing reveals the contradictions in federal policy toward marijuana more clearly than the fact that there are still eight patients in the United States who receive a tin of marijuana ‘joints’ (cigarettes) every month from the federal government…. These eight people can legally possess and use marijuana, at government expense and with government permission. Yet hundreds of thousands of other patients can be fined and jailed under federal law for doing exactly the same thing.

via WikiLeaks – CRS: Medical Marijuana: Review and Analysis of Federal and State Policies, November 10, 2008

Wow. I highly recommend you check out the linked .pdf as this shows you the continually perpetuated flawed logic given to our representatives in Congress. On the plus side, as an activist this gives you all the ammunition you need to counter anything your Congressman writes you in response to reform requests.

WikiLeaks has a treasure trove of these internal Congressional reports here. Fire one up, kick back, and be amazed at what your government is thinking.

A devoted Stasher named Chris from Virginia wrote to his representative, Frank Wolf, regarding support of the Hinchey/Rohrbacher Amendment that would de-fund DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.  The salient point of Rep. Wolf’s reply?

“I respect your views but do not share your position on this issue.  I believe that legalization would reduce the stigma associated with drug usage and could aggravate drug abuse problems among our nation’s youth.”

Yes, because that stigma is working so well to stop kids from using drugs now, isn’t it?

Rep. Wolf, in my adult lifetime we have reduced by half the number of kids using cigarettes and tobacco.  We didn’t lock anyone up for cigarettes, we educated them about the real dangers.  We didn’t declare cigarettes illegal, we focused on carding kids, fining establishments that didn’t ID kids, locking up smokes in stores, banning advertising, and taxation.  If that can work for the most addictive drug on the street – nicotine – why can’t that work for cannabis?

As it is, with cannabis illegal, you’ve created a “forbidden fruit” effect.  Rather than stigmatizing pot use, you have glorified it by its outlaw status.  You’ve compounded that effect by producing over-the-top propaganda about cannabis that every teen knows is bullshit, like cannabis will make them shoot their friend, run over a girl on her bike, and let their kid sister drown.

In the states that have legalized cannabis for medical use, we’ve seen the teen use of cannabis decline, almost as if legal medical use has created another kind of stigma – that pot is boring medicine for sick old people.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Stashers: the “What about the children?” argument is all our opponents have left.  Once you have them there, you ask, “why then does the government ’send the wrong message’ about drinking, smoking, and gambling?”  This takes the prohibitionist to The Land of It’s Too Late to Ban Those, which is right down the Why Would We Add More Dangerous Substances? highway.  This is the prohibitionists’ Waterloo, because you just point out that, no, it’s not too late; we banned Alcohol in my granddad’s lifetime and lotteries weren’t legal in most of America until I graduated high school, and in both cases we found that if we banned those industries, the bootleggers and the numbers runners would take them over and cause crime and violence.  We don’t allow drinking, smoking, and gambling because it is “too late”, it is because we tried and realized prohibition does not work.

Usually they will then work on the danger angle, saying, “we already have enough problems with alcohol, why add another dangerous substance?”  I’m sure y’all can tear the “dangerous substance” part to bits, and I usually do, but another angle to add is to puncture the “why add” portion of it.  Add?  You act as if marijuana doesn’t exist and legalization will suddenly make it appear!  25 million people smoke pot every year; everyone who wants to smoke pot already is!  There is no “adding” marijuana, it is already here and has been for forty years!  The question is why you want to add the danger of criminal control and black market violence to marijuana, a substance which by itself was noted by the DEA’s own administrative law judge as being “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man” over twenty years ago!

Send your JPGs of scanned Congressional or White House replies to stash@norml.org, and I’ll be glad to rant over them.

NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano:

In August I commented on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s revealing interview with CNN, where she called on the public to actively voice their support for marijuana law reform.

“We have important work to do outside the Congress in order for us to have success inside the Congress.” Pelosi said. “[W]e need peoples’ help to be in touch with their members of Congress to say why this (marijuana law reform) should be the case.”

Ask and you shall receive.

In the past few months the public has taken their message to the hallowed halls of Washington, DC in unprecedented numbers:

Over 700 individuals have posted comments to The Hill.com’s influential Congress Blog calling on lawmakers to amend federal marijuana policy;

In December, a question calling for the legalization of marijuana bested over 7,300 public policy issues to claim the top spot in Change.gov’s inaugural ‘Open for Questions’ poll;

In a follow up poll conducted by Change.gov this month, marijuana law reformed was the eighth-most popular question voted on by the public, out of a staggering 76,000 issues.

This week, the question “legalize the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana” finished first (by nearly 5,000 votes) in Change.org’s inaugural “Ideas for Change’ online poll.

And finally, in yet a third poll hosted by the Obama Transition Team, the public’s call for “ending marijuana prohibition” is — you guessed it — polling ahead of all other issues. (To participate in this latest poll, please visit: http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov and click on “popular ideas.”)

In short Madam Speaker, the people have done their part — just as you requested. The question now is: When are your colleagues and the incoming administration going to do their part to end the federal government’s war on marijuana consumers?

The city of El Paso buckled to unusually explicit federal government pressure Tuesday and withdrew a call for a national debate on ending drug prohibition.

Last Tuesday, the El Paso city council voted 8-0 to express solidarity with its sister city in Mexico, Juarez, which has seen its murder rate double this year alone as the Mexican government has waged war on powerful drug cartels. To slow that violence, the resolution called for “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.”

That was enough to get Washington’s attention.

Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat who represents El Paso in Congress, lobbied each councilmember, making it clear that if the resolution calling for a debate passed, El Paso would risk losing money in the upcoming stimulus legislation. Five Texas House representatives made the same threat.

“Funding for local law enforcement efforts and other important programs to our community are likely being put in jeopardy,” lawmakers warned in a letter to the city, “especially during a time when state resources are scarce.”

Four members of the council switched their votes and supported the veto; three of them publicly cited the funding threat as the reason for backing down.

via El Paso, Texas, Calls On Congress To Debate Drug Legalization: Dems Refuse.

What is the feeling that goes through your mind when you read that our federal government is openly blackmailing local governments to shut up about even discussing legalization of marijuana?  In the piece, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who represents the Texas district that contains El Paso in Congress, said, “Please let the mayor’s veto stand and put this behind us. We’ve got huge issues that are facing us as a Congress,” as if the mere mention of trying something different in this escalating drug war is going to completely derail working on the economy, fighting terrorism, fixing health care, and creating new jobs, when in fact marijuana legalization would help solve all those issues!

It’s not like we’re asking you to impeach anybody; God knows we can never again put that on the table because it will supposedly grind the country to a screeching halt.  The resolution simply called on the city to call on Congress to take a look at potentially forming a commission to study the possibility that maybe perhaps arresting our way out of a drug problem isn’t working and we ought to examine other scenarios for drug control that might include an investigation of the feasibility of considering the regulation and sale of a non-toxic mood-altering herb.

NO!  It’s like our Congress are the Knights Who Say “Ni!” and “legalization” is the one word they cannot bear to hear.

So how do you feel?  Me, I’m ecstatic.  Thrilled, actually.  When one little town in Texas calls for a conversation on the drug war and Congress immediately pulls out all stops to shut it up, that tells me the Berlin Wall of prohibition is about to come tumbling down.  Americans aren’t too fond of “Just do what you’re told” as a policy justification.  Before, the prohibitionists would engage with their silly little slippery slope arguments and trumped up statistics; now they won’t even engage the dialogue because they know they’ve lost before they open their mouths.

Our Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, has another piece posted on the influential Capitol Hill blog, “The Hill”, read by the Beltway-insiders.  His posts on marijuana legalization are consistently the most-commented-on posts on that blog.  Surf on over and leave your own comment for our elected officials to read.

Is it at all surprising to see that the Obama team has decided to hide their collective heads in the sand when it comes to the issue of reevaluating America’s ineffective and antiquated marijuana policies? Not at all. But by doing so, the President-Elect and Congress are missing the bigger picture.

The overwhelming popularity of the marijuana reform issue — as manifested on Change.gov, Change.org (which is conducting its own online poll of the top issues facing America; the legalization of marijuana tops the list), and even here on the Hill (where my most recent blog posts have each garnered several hundreds of readers’ comments, almost all of them supportive) — illustrate two important points.

One: there is a significant, vocal, and identifiable segment of our society that wants to see an end to America’s archaic and overly punitive marijuana laws. Two: the American public is ready and willing to engage in a serious and objective political debate regarding the merits of legalizing the use of cannabis by adults.

via The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Marijuana Law Reform No Longer a Political Liability, It’s a Political Opportunity.

The popularity of the topic was also picked up on the FOX “News” Channel:

Click here to view the embedded video.

wbztv.com – Maine Wire

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) The Republican who’s running against Democratic Maine Rep. Mike Michaud says legalizing marijuana makes sense.

Republican John Frary a guest on a live call-in radio show on Maine’s public radio station when a caller named “Charlie” asked the congressional candidate if he favored “legalizing Maine’s #1 cash crop.”  Frary responded:

Download audio file (john-frary-legalize-it.mp3)

A representative for Democrat Mike Michaud disagrees and offers the “What about the children?” excuse.  Really.

Download audio file (mike-michaud-rep-what-about-the-children.mp3)

I’ve told drug reformers for years that when marijuana gets taxed and regulated, it will be Republicans leading the charge.  Something that makes money and punishes marijuana users (they see taxes as punishment) is a natural Republican goal.  Also, at least where I’m from, the West, lots of Republicans are very libertarian and believe government shouldn’t be involved in people’s personal business.

I will be very happy to see the Democrats prove me wrong.