Cannabis Ice Tea
Flickr-User: nabo

I was disappointed to read that my state lawmakers voted on Monday in favor of legislation to delay until October 2010 the implementation of the New Jersey Compassionate Medical Marijuana Act which was to go into effect later this week.

Since it will take almost half a year to establish regulations for licensed production and distribution of medical cannabis, this means that New Jersey's Department of Health won't be in full operation until some time in 2011.

Although I voted for Chris Christie, I disagree with him here; he requested the postponement so that lawmakers could consider amending the law by limiting the production of medical cannabis to a single supply source, Rutgers University, and by restricting the drug’s distribution to authorized hospitals.

This is certainly an abuse of process, that is, attempting to make a law unworkable by putting in unreasonable impediments. This is no different than if New Jersey tried to get around the recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to own firearms by setting the registration fee to a hundred thousand dollars (1).

Governor Christie Should Mind His Own Business

A single source for any product invites scarcity and unreliable production. Restricting distribution puts an unfair burden on those who do not live in major cities. Please, Governor Christie, mind your own business. Worry about taxes, predatory unions, jobs, and infrastructure repair.

It should be noted that medical marijuana is legal in many countries including Canada, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Israel, Italy, Finland, and Portugal. In the US, fourteen states have enacted laws that legalize medical marijuana. (2)

I have long opposed almost all government agencies including the FCC, the IRS, and the FDA. It was the lying pieces of crap at the US Food and Drug Administration that made this idiotic statement: "marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision".

What absolute nonsense.

This lie and the Commerce Clause was the basis for the Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that the U.S. Constitution allowed the government to ban the use of cannabis, including medical use [Gonzales v. Raich].

First as to safety: Although all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects, in the 5,000 years of human experience, with more than hundreds of millions of worldwide users, there is not one single record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality. And all this despite lack of medical supervision.

On the other hand, there are as many as five to ten thousand deaths each year due to aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. That's right, weed is tens of thousands of times safer than aspirin (3). Take that you morons at the FDA.

Second as to medical use: In any cursory review of medical literature, cannabis is shown to be effective in the treatment of nausea, vomiting, premenstrual syndrome, unintentional weight loss, insomnia, lack of appetite, spasticity, neurogenic pain, movement disorders, asthma, glaucoma, inflammatory bowel disease, migraines, fibromyalgia, certain symptoms of multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, and reduces motor and vocal tics of Tourette syndrome and related behavioral problems such as obsessive–compulsive disorders.

Pot is a Miracle Drug

Studies have shown cannabis or cannabinoids useful in treating alcohol abuse, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, collagen-induced arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, atherosclerosis, bipolar disorder, childhood mental disorders, colorectal cancer, depression, diabetic retinopathy, dystonia, epilepsy, digestive diseases, gliomas, hepatitis C, Huntington's disease, hypertension, urinary incontinence, leukemia, skin tumors, morning sickness, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Parkinson's disease, pruritus,posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sickle-cell disease, sleep apnea, tourette syndrome, and anorexia nervosa.

If it were legal, marijuana would replace thousands of other medicines currently in use. Ka-ching - the reason marijuana is illegal is that no drug company owns a patent or trademark on any marijuana product. If Bayer could not own their trademark or if Tylenol could not protect its brand name, these companies would be selling some other pain reliever they could patent and trademark and they would be pushing for the criminalization of aspirin and acetaminophen so as not to compete with their products. That's right, if drug companies could trademark their own brand of marijuana, a billion dollars would flow from pharmaceutical lobbyists and into the waiting hands of lawmakers who would quickly pass a law legalizing weed within a week.

I suggest that our government allow pharmaceutical companies to trademark their own brands of marijuana or buy known brands such as Strawberry Cough, Chemdog, Haze, etc. through a government auction much like airwave spectrum was sold.

Aside from the drug companies presently opposing marijuana because it is too effective against so many diseases, there is also the problem of too few states currently allowing medical marijuana. As soon as we have 26 states legalizing medical pot, I suspect certain court decisions will get reversed; for example, in 2007, Angel Raich (of the Gonzales v. Raich case noted above) renewed her litigation on due process grounds. The Ninth Circuit ruled against her noting, in part, that only a minority of states legalized medical marijuana.