Should the U.S. Legalize Marijuana?

Recommend (0) Comments (3)

In recent years, marijuana activists have donned white coats and exclaimed a newfound concern for the seriously ill. A remarkable wedge issue, they have successfully used "smoked medical marijuana," as with California's Proposition 215, to be used for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief."

This has led to a multimillion-dollar, state-sanctioned drug-distribution industry, resulting in a substantial increase in medical fraud (the drug has been recommended for everything from hangnails to fatigue to reduced sex drive), "medical marijuana" use by minors and increased local crime.

A 2007 expose by "60 Minutes" revealed just how easy it is to obtain marijuana - "sick" or not. So it is also not surprising that the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association and the renowned Mayo Clinic have come out against smoked marijuana as a so-called medicine.

A landmark study almost 10 years ago, conducted by the Institute of Medicine, said, "Smoked marijuana should generally not be recommended for ... medical use." The IOM Report did say that marijuana might be used in limited circumstances, in the context of double blind clinical trials, but that the future of cannabis as medicine did not lie in its smoked form. Smoked marijuana (smoked anything) has never passed basic medical standards of safety and efficacy.

Legalizing smoked marijuana under the guise of medicine is irresponsible and contradictory to basic scientific standards for therapeutic drugs.
Of course some people who use the drug may find relief from their illnesses, but smoking a drug as volatile and unstable as marijuana is like chewing on willow bark to partake in the benefits of aspirin. Marinol, derived from the plant's most active ingredient, THC, already exists. Though it's not often prescribed, doctors have the right to do so if they feel it would best serve their patient (though non-cannabis-based drugs are almost always chosen as a first resort).

Other isolated components in marijuana -- delivered in aerosol sprays or patches -- are currently being studied, and research in this area is important.
Cannabis-based drugs could indeed open new pathways to fight obesity, nausea, multiple sclerosis and other illnesses, but just as someone should not inject heroin to gain the therapeutic effects of morphine, these drugs need to be used in the proper context and setting.

Even if smoking marijuana might make someone "feel better," that is not enough to call it a medicine. If that was the case, then tobacco cigarettes or vodka shots could be called medicine because they are often attributed to making one "feel better."

Medicine is determined by a rigorous scientific process, not political campaigns. We should keep it that way.