Medical Marijuana, Really?
There are honest debates on whether to legalize drugs, but calling it medical marijuana isn’t one of them. Setting aside the damaging effects of marijuana or arguing that it isn’t any worse than alcohol misses the point.
Marijuana is not medicine. It’s federally classified as a schedule-1 drug. This is the highest classification which means two things: It has no medicinal use and it has a high potential for abuse.
So, might the Feds have it wrong? Here are some organizations that think they got it right: The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, National Institutes of Health, Institute of Medicine, American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and very tellingly when it comes to the glaucoma pain argument - the American Glaucoma Society and American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Conflicting state and federal laws become an enforcement nightmare, but there are more reasons not to pretend that smoking marijuana is taking medicine and here’s a fact sheet that describes them.
In my view, if we want to legalize drugs, we should have a thoughtful debate rather than try to slide it through on a bogus medical argument.