Monday, June 06, 2005

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People - Yahoo! News

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People - Yahoo! News

I find a few things interesting in this. First the Supreme Court has been siding more and more on the side of states' rights, yet it seems when drug laws are involved all of a sudden we stop that trend. Second the expert who said

"Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective," John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said Monday.

Given the laws against marijuana, research will never be done. So how do we do research (in the USA, other countries have) when no one can get marijuana to do research with, let alone without getting human test subjects thrown into jail.

Personally I am not a user, and at this point I have no disease that would be helped by medical marijuana. However it seems odd that we are closing ourselves off to a potential source of helping people. This seems to be a very chicken & the egg situation - medical marijuana will not be legal until research shows it is useful BUT research will not happen until at least provisions for research is made.

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