Decriminalization: A Step in the Right Direction

Decriminalization: A Step in the Right Direction

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. -- Carl Sagan

If the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on. -- Terence McKenna

It doesn’t take an expert to see that things are very wrong with the current legal status of cannabis. Our government says there is no accepted medical use for it, yet it holds a patent (#6630507) for medicinal use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants, and it distributes canisters of rolled joints to a few select patients in the Compassionate Use Program. Sativex, a whole plant extract that is administered sublingually, is being approved in other countries as a prescription drug, but not in the United States. Our government says it needs proof that marijuana is in fact therapeutic, though it makes this impossible to prove, with its monopoly on substandard plant material from the one FDA-approved farm in Mississippi, and the maze of federal approval required for research to proceed. FDA requires NIDA to sign off on cannabis studies, a hoop that no other drug researchers need jump through.