In 2004, Montana voters passed a medical marijuana initiative with a vote of 62%, the greatest margin ever at the time. The law allows people with a doctor’s recommendation to possess and grow marijuana, and optionally to designate a caregiver responsible for growing and providing marijuana to the patient.
In 2009-2010, the number of registered patients skyrocketed. Controversially, many new patients are young people diagnosed as suffering from “chronic pain.” Adding to the public’s and public officials’ concern is the rise of the unregulated marijuana store, or “dispensary”, responsible for selling “medicine” to the ballooning ranks of registered patients. Cities and towns are struggling to develop local zoning to keep up with the evolving economic activity. City councils and planning boards are wondering: should this commerce be zoned along with pharmacies? Doctors’ offices? Bars? Casinos? Adult book stores?
The consternation and confusion are understandable. After all, there is no objective definition of “medical use”.
Virtually everyone agrees that a cancer or AIDS patient in the last months of life should have access to pretty much anything to ease their suffering. From that end of the spectrum, the gray areas begin. A 63-year-old librarian with a degenerative disc disease? A 55-year-old mine worker with nerve damage from an old work accident? A 42-year-old truck driver with arthritis? An otherwise healthy 26-year-old ex-snowboarder with a blown-out knee?
Marijuana certainly has medical benefits for many people. But the question of “is this person’s use medical enough?” cannot be answered objectively. This inherent ambiguity will plague policymakers as long as we are forced to evaluate policies within the context of “medical marijuana.”
The solution? A regulated market for all adults.
Eliminating the requirement that one must have a documented medical condition is the only rational path out of the medical marijuana conundrum. It solves many problems at once and acknowledges the scientific truth that cannabis is safer than prescription and over the counter drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.
- In the first place, the best way to protect people for whom marijuana provides medical benefits is to remove the barriers currently posed by the medical marijuana registration and renewal system. As medicines go, marijuana is effective at treating the symptoms of a variety of maladies, and is perhaps the safest medicinal herb known in human history; lethal overdose is not possible with marijuana and mental addiction potential is very low.
- Second, we have already developed a working system of responsible regulation and tax collection for marijuana in our beer and brewery laws. It involves allowing individuals to create limited quantities at home, or purchase from licensed retailers who are responsible for verifying the age of the buyer and acquire wholesale product from licensed producers. It’s not a perfect system, but it works. In fact, teenagers consistently say that (regulated) beer is harder to buy than (black market) marijuana.
- Third, we’re experiencing an economic downturn of historic proportions. Projections of Montana’s budget shortfall is in the tens of millions of dollars. Whether you’re a marijuana consumer or you choose to abstain, these “canna-businesses” represent a real and growing sector of our state economy, and most are actually eager to be taxed. We estimate that a $50 per ounce tax on legal marijuana sales would raise $24 million per year, based on the federal government’s estimate of 86,000 cannabis consumers in Montana.
- Finally, Montana is a bastion of individual liberty. Allowing citizens to decide which plants they grow in their garden for personal consumption is consistent with those principles. There is simply nothing wrong with responsible adult cannabis consumption, and public policies to the contrary represent a significant waste of our scarce and precious criminal justice resources. Over 800,000 people face marijuana charges every year in the U.S., with almost 90% of those charges for possession alone. And what “crime” is committed when a lawyer comes home from the office and smokes a joint to relax? What “crime” is committed when a construction worker gets home and eats a cannabis cookie to ease the pains of a long day of hard work? With the same criminal justice resources, what other crimes could be solved if cannabis were not a criminal matter?
Our medical marijuana system has been and is a blessing to many people with debilitating medical conditions. Now, though, the phenomenon of the growing marijuana industry has blossomed beyond public expectations.
Rather than develop reactionary new restrictions and continue the impossible-to-resolve debate about what constitutes “legitimate medical use”, we should instead embrace this confluence of individual liberty and economic stimulus and regulate marijuana for all adults.
Very well put. I think another really difficult question politicians and those who support medical Marijuana but don’t support re-legalization is:
Why is there a perception that healthy people are affected differently and unable to fend of the detrimental
consequences of Marijuana use, where as person with a lowered immune system or a terminal illness seems to experience non of these effects?
If Montana Norml or anyone for that matter were to ask that question to their elected leaders or policy makers, there would be dead silence followed by politcal spin.
“…no objective definition of ‘medical use’”??? Isn’t that what doctors are for?
Please consider there are 36 states which deny patients access to medical cannabis, and your argument is typical of those responsible for much of the opposition to compassion for these patients.
as a 100% legitimate chronic pain patient let me assure you – “medical use” CAN be very precisely and objectively defined: it’s use that is directly recommended by a board-certified, state-licensed physician.
Of course legalization is the best alternative for all the reasons you mention.
But I hope we don’t get weak in the knees over a few bumps in the road on medical marijuana. A few years ago there was a massive Oxycontin crime wave in my state. But chronic pain patients can still use opiates, albeit with increasing DEA harassment.
The comments about “young” and “healthy-looking” people are always send a chill down my spine. I’ve been having chronic back pain since I was 13 years old due to a congenital bone defect. I sure hope I’m “healthy-looking”, I go to great lengths to keep extra weight off and maintain cardiovascular fitness. Not doing so would aggravate the disabling pain I already suffer from.
I’d say whether you’re an MJ reformer or a DEA propaganda writer, please keep ALL medicine between the doctor and the patient where it belongs. The last thing we sick people need is to be scapegoated any further by the rest of society. Thank you.
The most logical article I’ve yet read on the subject. My father, who’s a family practice MD for 45 years, used to tell me when I was young it made no sense to him that Marijuana, much less most illegal drugs, were ever made illegal in the first place. Drugs, like any other substance which we might use and abuse is a medical issue for someone that uses it. Criminalizing the use never made any sense to him at all. At least not at the level of imprisoning people. Especially since his point was the cost of criminal enforcement and incarceration was ten times the cost of drug rehab. We could literally save hundreds of millions of dollars by NOT making it a crime, then increase government revenues by taxing Marijuana sales and ALL drugs and then provide FREE drug clinics for anyone that needs to get clean from a problem and we’d have less addicts, no drug crime, and have hundreds of millions more dollars than what we have now.