Government Hypocrisy

While some states have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, its use, possession, and cultivation remain illegal under federal law. This has created a legal grey area, in which law-abiding citizens are subject to harassment and arrest by federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), for following their doctor’s orders or for legally supplying marijuana to legal patients.

The United States government denies that marijuana has any medical use. It is currently listed under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) administered by the DEA. Schedule I narcotics are defined as controlled substances that have no present or foreseeable medical use, and which carry a high potential for abuse. Under the CSA, marijuana is categorized as more harmful than methamphetamine.

Despite their longtime denial of the efficacy of marijuana as a medical treatment, the American government does have some interesting connections to the substance. The National Institute of Drug Abuse and Food and Drug Administration’s Compassionate Investigational New Drug program (IND), which accepted new patients from 1978-1992, provided medical marijuana to up to 30 active patients at a time. The program was closed to new entrants in 1992 due to an influx of requests from HIV patients, but as of 2006 seven surviving IND patients still received as much as 9 ounces per month of marijuana from the government.

Further, though the government does not recognize marijuana as a legitimate medical treatment, the United States of America, as represented by the Department of Health, holds Department of Commerce Patent #6630507 (issued October 2003), which outlines a number of medical uses for the drug. This makes clear the fact that the US government is, and has been, aware of marijuana’s medical applications for years. It also forces us to wonder, why would the US government keep its citizens from an effective medication, yet obtain a patent meant to profit off the sale of the drug?

In January 1997, in the wake of referendum passed in California and Arizona permitting the use of marijuana as a medical treatment, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to conduct a review of the scientific evidence promoting marijuana as an effective treatment. The result was the scientifically research-based 1999 IOM report “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base”, which found promise in marijuana as a treatment for pain and other conditions. To this day, 12 years later, the federal government and the FDA have not acknowledged or responded to the findings in a scientific report that they themselves chartered.

It is time for the government to end its hypocrisy on the topic of medical marijuana. How can a government deny the efficacy of medical marijuana in the face of scientifically-sound evidence that they themselves chartered? How can they claim that medical marijuana is a falsity, yet obtain a patent (which outlines various medical uses for it) in an attempt to profit off the drug? Why are federal agencies harassing law-abiding citizens for using marijuana, when they too recognize the medical value in it? The US government must face up to these issues; the American people deserve answers, and if the government is aware of marijuana as an effective medical treatment, they have no choice but to legalize it for medical purposes.