The Medical Marijuana Debate Splits Federal Agencies

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration decided last week that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should be classified as a highly dangerous drug on par with heroin.

Here in Venice during the last major election, we voted overwhelmingly to legalize the "evil weed" for all, but that is not the question. The DEA decision was about one narrow issue: Does marijuana have any redeeming, legitimate medical use?

DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." 

Nobody is claiming that smoking anything is healthy, but one local medical marijuana patient I know proudly told me about his new vaporizer, “It doesn’t burn the medicine. It just heats it to the point where the plant releases its active ingredients.” It’s the same principle at work in baking pot brownies.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “The main active chemical in marijuana is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC for short."

Guess what? THC is legal and is used by patients in all 50 states. Prescription THC is called Marinol and sells for more than $500 a bottle at our local CVS pharmacy. As an FDA-approved medication it went through rigorous clinical trials and is approved for nausea relief in chemotherapy patients and appetite restoration in AIDS patients. In fact it’s been on the market so long that there is now a generic version, called Dronabinol.

So let me get this straight: One part of our government has already approved the active ingredient in marijuana for medical use, while another said there is no legitimate medical use for the drug.

Despite the fact that medical marijuana is now legal in 16 states, I guess the film Reefer Madness was right after all.