Medical use of marijuana is a states’
rights issue By Seth Zuckerman
Like the
Democrats in the U.S. Senate, marijuana advocates suffered a
setback at the polls last month. By a margin of 2 to 1, Nevada
voters trounced a much-publicized proposal to legalize cannabis for
personal use. B
ut the Bush administration would
be ill-served to mistake this landslide for an endorsement of its
zero-tolerance marijuana policy, any more than a net gain of two
seats in the Senate puts a nationwide stamp of approval on
conservative doctrine.
In fact, a chasm is
opening between the federal government and the states over the
medical use of cannabis. States have begun to make the distinction
between medical and recreational uses of the plant, even when
Washington can’t seem to tell the difference.
Eight states — all but one of them in the West
— have approved cannabis for medical purposes. Nine out of ten
Westerners live in states with medical marijuana legislation, and
all but Hawaii’s were passed by popular vote. But federal law
recognizes no such exception. Since John Ashcroft took over the
Department of Justice, Washington has been forcing the issue with
increasing vigor.
The conflict has come to a
head most dramatically in California, where federal drug teams have
cracked down on at least 12 clubs that distribute cannabis to
patients. In the last four months, U.S. agents have raided the
homes of state-sanctioned cannabis users in Washington and Oregon
as well.
It is no longer just woolly-headed
stoners who want to relax the absolute prohibition on pot.
According to a 2002 Time/CNN poll, 80 percent of Americans asked
approve of using marijuana for medical purposes. Editorial boards
in such conservative bastions as Orange County, Calif., have asked
federal drug officials to call off the dogs. And after a
high-profile federal bust on the California coast, a cannabis club
distributed its medical marijuana to patients in front of city
hall, at the invitation of Santa Cruz officials.
Medical-marijuana statutes have led officials to
set norms for the acceptable use of cannabis. Throughout much of
California, county sheriffs and district attorneys have spelled out
how much marijuana a patient may raise and possess. In states such
as Oregon, Nevada and Colorado, the state maintains a registry of
patients authorized to take cannabis, and medical users have even
gone to court to recover pot seized from them by local police.
Marijuana advocates display their own set of
confusions. They mistook the widespread support of medicinal use
for a bandwagon that would put cannabis on a par with alcohol. But
once pollsters got beyond the issue of medical use, they found
greater resistance. Only 34 percent of those questioned in this
year’s Time/CNN poll backed recreational use of marijuana — a
sentiment reflected in the Nevada measure’s defeat. Whether that’s
good public policy, it is the current state of public opinion.
The blindness of cannibis promoters is a mirror
image of the federal insistence that all use of marijuana must be
eradicated. Fortunately, Western customs of common sense and
practicality have cultivated a more nuanced approach to the drug,
reflected in our medical-marijuana laws.
If the
Bush administration continues to insist on a zero-tolerance policy,
it pits itself against the poster children of medical marijuana —
those cancer sufferers and AIDS patients who rely on marijuana to
curb their nausea and increase their appetite. An obvious way out
is to leave the matter to the states to sort out what is and is not
legitimate medical use; to decide when a recreational user is
trying to hide behind a medical exemption.
One
reason the Justice Department’s position seems so absurd is that it
pretends drug law is a matter of moral absolutes. But bans on
mind-altering substances aren’t written in stone; they’re more
accurately a matter of political choice and social convention. When
my parents were growing up, the FBI hounded bootleggers who
supplied liquor in defiance of Prohibition. Marijuana smokers had
nothing to fear. By the beginning of the Second World War, the
situation was reversed.
In prosecuting medical
cannabis users, the federal government is showing its disdain for
state choices. Like Attorney General Ashcroft’s attack on Oregon’s
assisted-suicide law, the federal crusade against medical marijuana
reflects the paternalistic, father-knows-best side of the current
administration. With sleeper terrorist cells abroad in the land,
surely the Justice Department has more important assignments for
its agents.
Seth Zuckerman is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He writes in
Vashon,Washington.
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