The Supreme Court says that laws against medical marijuana can and should be enforced. I suppose this may be an example of non-activist judges at work. Those laws are idiotic and illogical but they are on the books, and perhaps it is not the job of any judicial authority to parse them in a manner that weakens them. Justice Stevens, in his opinion, made clear that he was not cheering the federal ban on marijuana; just that it was up to Congress, not the courts, to repeal those laws.
Which means Americans oughta start pressuring Congress to do so — and in a hurry, since people who might be helped by the drug are suffering, and the enforcement of those laws is a splendid waste of resources and manpower. The decision related to a couple of cases, one being that of an Oakland woman named Angel Raich. Ms. Raich, it is reported, suffers from a wide array of ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. She has been able to alleviate some paralysis by smoking marijuana but we sure can't allow that to continue. Let's pull some law enforcement folks away from watching for terrorists and send them to arrest this woman, who is clearly a threat to us all.
I don't know why there isn't some national doctrine or A.M.A. precept that says that anything that can be done to alleviate pain and suffering can be at least tried. The bureaucracy involved here helps no one, to say nothing of the inconsistency. "Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion," says John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy. "To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective." Yeah, right. That's why all drugs are thoroughly tested before the public is allowed access to them — like, say, Vioxx or whatever other widely-used pain reliever will next be judged unsafe after hundreds of thousands of people have used it for years. But we can't let Angel Raich have something that she's found works for her.
Would someone ask Mr. Walters if excessive consumption of alcohol is safe or effective? I've had more friends killed in one way or other by Jim Beam than by pot…and yes, I know this is an old argument. But for 40 years, I've been asking why using marijuana should be put in a different category from drinking vodka, and I've never seen an answer more useful than Jack Webb's in a 1967 episode of Dragnet. He said something about how booze does a lot of damage but it's here and it's not going away, so why do we need to add marijuana to the list? (Actually, the most honest answer I've seen was a guy on the old Joe Pyne Show, also in the sixties, who once said that alcohol was the establishment drug and marijuana was the anti-establishment drug, and the establishment has a selfish duty to deny "the enemy" everything.)
It was interesting to see that today's Supreme Court decision had Rehnquist, O'Connor and Thomas in dissent. There's a strange mix. I've always thought Thomas was a judicial mediocrity but he does seem to believe in states' rights…so give him points for consistency.