Medical Marijuana: Taking the High Road
Legal loopholes pose a practical and moral dilemma.
by Quinn Bork

I'm a bit confused. Maybe it’s all the pot I've been smoking lately, I just don't know. Maybe it’s the fact that ridiculously potent marijuana is so available in this fine state that makes it so easy to join millions of other stoned Californians in mass confusion. Like so many of my partners in crime, I'm no criminal. I just want a way to slide under the DEA's radar and continue my normal existence without constant fear of prosecution. I seem to have found such a way. It’s called medical marijuana, and I'm about ready to jump on the bandwagon. But am I an activist easing the progress to complete legalization, or am I helping to seal my own doom by joining an illegitimate cause?

Foremost, I'm all for people's right to choose their own medicine. Although smoking anything is detrimental to your health, the effects of cannabis have many arguable benefits when it comes to symptom relief. Sure, it’s not the miracle cure for cancer, but it does provide relief, without the insane side effects that can go along with many of its prescription counterparts. For instance, taking Tylenol for a headache is okay, but your liver hates it. Taking Ambien to help you sleep will knock you on your ass, sure. But you also might end up driving your car to work naked while munching down on a drumstick from the turkey you baked in the middle of the night, all with little or no recollection of doing any of it. Does your back hurt today? Maybe some prescription muscle relaxants would do the trick, until you’re loopy and addicted and have bleeding ulcers in your stomach.

So many other people saw the harmlessness of medical marijuana that through the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, California became the first state to legalize it. This legislation was worded in broad language so that not only those suffering with major illness like cancer, anorexia and AIDS are shielded from legal prosecution, but it also provides protection for those suffering from “any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.” The fact that medical marijuana laws are written so loosely has been the cause of my apprehension so far about obtaining my own medical card.

For one thing, medical marijuana is only recognized at the state level, not federal. That means that no regular doctor in their right mind would want to take the legal responsibility of recommending pot to their patients. Insurance companies are no help, both because they can't honor laws that don't run state to state – and lets face it – because they are simply incapable of doing the right thing anyway. Even if they recognized the medicinal benefits of marijuana, there is no way they would dole out money to help patients acquire it. To make the situation even worse for patients, pharmaceutical companies have been pouring millions of dollars into the anti-marijuana campaign because they can't really patent and market marijuana like the chemical drugs they create.

Secondly, the law has no regulation or set standard for the cultivation and distribution of medical cannabis, leaving the establishment of guidelines to local governments, which vary greatly. For instance, San Diego County allows up to six mature plants or 12 immature plants and up to a half pound of dried buds at a time. Sonoma County, however, permits its patients up to 99 plants and possession of three pounds of dried buds, or even more for “exceptional” patients. In some places, dispensaries have sprouted up like weeds, (like in Los Angeles, with over 400), whereas some cities will not let clinics or dispensaries in whatsoever.

This leaves the patient completely on their own when it comes to obtaining their right to use marijuana. They have to find their own back-alley marijuana clinic to pay a no-name doctor an average of 100 to 200 dollars to assess them. These doctors get rich from doing nothing but writing recommendations, all the while knowing no real history on the patients they are “treating.” When all’s said and done, the prescription is only good for a year before invalid. Patients are generally safe from harassment from state officials, but because this law isn't recognized federally, their house or grow room is still not impermeable to being raided.

I have been in a moral dilemma about this whole situation. I know that I could just give one of these doctors some of my money and some lame medical reasoning for my needing marijuana, but I would be abusing some obvious loopholes in our system. Sure, I could claim that marijuana helps me sleep when I'm suffering fits of restless leg syndrome. Sure, I could vouch that my back gets sore from working too hard and I've found that marijuana really relaxes my tight muscles. The real reason I choose to smoke pot, though, isn't for medical purposes. I use it as a vice. Most people have some form of vice to help them cope with life, and I feel that marijuana is a pretty harmless one when you compare it to some of the others, like alcohol, tobacco and man-made drugs. Of course, I could have better diversions, and I do. I garden, I eat, I exercise, I read, I go for long drives. Pot is just fun. It has a way of making otherwise boring situations more enjoyable, without turning me into the incoherent retard I've been at times after choosing the alcohol route.

Our state spends billions of dollars annually trying to regulate marijuana, all money that could be much better spent. If California just taxed marijuana like alcohol and tobacco, it would generate over a billion dollars a year in tax revenues, compared to the 18 million dollars it collects currently each year from medical marijuana. Cannabis already dwarfs any of the other crops grown in California, and if legalized it would boost our struggling agricultural economy. The price would go down and the supply grows, lessening incentive for illegal guerrilla operations and high cost elaborate grow rooms. Using designated farmland would help to ease the current environmental strain caused by hidden crops in the forest. An added bonus is that the unused part of the plants could be collected as paper pulp, which we currently import mostly from other countries.

All in all, people have been using marijuana for thousands of years and for thousands of reasons. People are going to continue to smoke and grow pot no matter what the law says. Hopefully the lawmakers will see what a scam medical marijuana has become, but at the same time what a scam it is that marijuana is illegal in the first place. For now I think I might take my chances and enjoy my part of the medical marijuana revolution. At least while it lasts.