The state conducted a hearing in Everett this week to answer questions relating to the state’s new law legalizing recreational marijuana and the yet-to-be-determined rules that govern the industry. Some in attendance asked how the state could have one system for medical marijuana and another system — with separate rules — for recreational marijuana.
The answer: Despite some abuse of the medical marijuana law — specifically in the over-saturated Seattle market where some “dispensaries” sell marijuana without requiring medical documentation, and/or a small number of naturopaths who issue cards without properly diagnosing or documenting the medical problem — yes, despite all this — medical marijuana is real medicine and needs to be treated as such, rather than swept under a big Liquor Control Board tent.
People are worried the recreational pot will be taxed more than medical marijuana. That’s a real issue to deal with, but it’s not an argument to lump the medical dispensaries and stores together.
Anyone who doesn’t “believe” in medical marijuana simply hasn’t known someone who has been helped by it yet. It’s difficult for many to reconcile that the plant that people take for fun can also be medicine. But marijuana has been used as medicine for thousands of years; in terms of history, it was only recently demonized. Meanwhile, many in society and in the medical world, have moved past the “reefer madness” nonsense, while the United States government clings to it like a security blanket of bad science.
Which is all a long way of saying: Thank you to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, for publishing his essay, “Why I changed my mind on weed” on Thursday. Gupta not only changes his mind, he repents: “We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.” He admits he didn’t look at the research available, or believed the vast number of legitimate patients who said it helped them. Instead, he writes, “I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high.” (Good grief, just who are all these high-visibility malingers?) Meanwhile, he notes, every 19 minutes, someone in the United States dies from a prescription overdose.
Everyone who doesn’t understand medical marijuana should read Gupta’s essay. Or go straight to the research. He points out that in the U.S., research is dominated by studies trying to show how marijuana might be bad, whereas other countries are investigating the plant’s cancer-fighting properties, for example.
It’s important the Liquor Control Board keeps in mind that legal recreational marijuana doesn’t make medical marijuana any less of a medicine.
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