Editorial:
Arguments
Best
Set
to
Rest
1/6/06
David Borden, Executive Director, [email protected], 1/6/06
For example, Sen. Dennis Algiere (R-Westerly), who had initially supported the bill but switched after the governor (of the same party) vetoed it, asked rhetorically in The Westerly Sun, "Where do people go to fill these prescriptions?" To illegal drug dealers, he pointed out. Dr. Robert Crausman of Rhode Island's medical board said he probably wouldn't recommend marijuana to patients because he wouldn't know where the supply came from and "I don't tell my patients on digoxin to take foxglove tea... Aspirin comes from bark. When was the last time you took bark for a headache?" Neither of these arguments is so disreputable as could be said of groups like the Drug Free America Foundation, which ran TV ads opposing the veto override charging that medical marijuana is a "fraud" -- but committing intellectual fraud themselves in claiming so. Algiere's and Crausman's words are not the words of ideologues or political charlatans, at least not on their face. Nevertheless, for different reasons I hope that both of these arguments get settled and set to rest soon, because for different reasons they ultimately don't work. I hope that Algiere's argument is settled by the ending of federal prohibition and the establishment of a non-black-market framework in which patients can access a quality-controlled supply of marijuana for medical use. (Also for non-medical marijuana use, I hope, but we'll probably have to wait a little longer for that.) In the meantime, Rhode Island can tolerate or even regulate compassion clubs of which the marijuana providers are known and respected individuals. Such clubs would be illegal under federal law and subject to some risk, but they would nevertheless provide a reasonably workable solution in the meanwhile. I hope that Crausman's argument is settled by an elevation of public consciousness. It's fine for an individual doctor to hold his negative opinion of non-pharmaceuticalized marijuana and to tell patients that he isn't comfortable prescribing it -- patients who still want to go the marijuana route after hearing that advice are free to go to a different doctor who sees things differently. What's not okay is for the government to forcibly intervene, to subject patients and their caregivers or providers to possible arrest, criminalization and all that goes with it. Let doctors say what they truly think about medical marijuana, to their patients and each other, that is all to the good. But get the law out of it; let those who feel they benefit from using marijuana medically do so in peace. Legitimate differences in opinion about medicine should not be a basis for criminal prohibitions that send people to prison. Police should not get in between me and my doctor and my medicine -- and neither should other doctors.
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