Marijuana Blog

This November voters in Massachusetts will decide on Question 3, a ballot measure that would legalize medical marijuana for qualified patients.

Opponents talk a lot about teen use and increased trafficking if medical marijuana passes, but their arguments 1) miss the point of regulation and control and 2) don’t even address whether medical marijuana can help people; they avoid that subject because most agree that marijuana has medicinal properties.

A pediatrician in MA wrote an email to The Boston Globe recently that sums up the issue quite well. “We know tobacco causes lung disease, worsens heart ailments, and is the leading cause of death from disease in the United States,” he writes. “We regulate it, we tax it and we allow for individual choice and its consequences.

“We know that liquor causes cirrhosis. We regulate it, we tax it, and we allow for individual choice and its consequences.

“We are involved in the legalization of gambling in Massachusetts even today. The Commonwealth benefits from it financially knowing full well what public health consequences may result.

“I won’t even talk about guns.

“In so far as medical marijuana is concerned, if revenue is an issue, here is a solution.

“If crime is an issue, here is a solution. If clinical trials are an issue, have the FDA reclassify THC. There are already more significantly more expensive, toxic and addictive pharmaceuticals approved. If quality control is an issue, this is the way to protect our population.”

The money made from marijuana prohibition for a certain few blinds many to the fact that we control other substances in a legal market and yet we don’t apply the same logic to marijuana, the safest of them all.

More and more people are waking up. It’s just a matter of time before the walls of prohibition come tumbling down.

Source: http://www.boston.com