Finally, Recognition of Medical Value of Cannabis

Recently, with little fanfare, Gov. John Kitzhaber signed House Bill 3460 into law, creating a regulated supply system for medical marijuana. Finally, patients will have legal and safe businesses from which to procure their medicine.

The Oregon Health Authority will establish the regulatory framework for a working system. Marijuana dispensaries will operate only in commercially zoned areas, and will be at least 1,000 yards from schools.

Were it not for the tireless efforts of state Sen. Floyd Prozanski and state Rep. Peter Buckley shepherding the bill through both chambers of the Legislature, this bill would never have gotten to our governor’s desk.

In the House, the bill was passed almost entirely along party lines, with no Republicans voting for it and two Democrats joining the Republicans. In the Senate, four Republicans crossed the aisle to vote yes and two Democrats voted no.

Although Kitzhaber has my thanks for signing HB 3460, I’m still troubled by his reluctance towards cannabis. In his signing letter Kitzhaber wrote, “I understand the concerns the opponents of HB 3460 have expressed, and share those concerns to a certain extent.”

As a medical doctor, and as governor, Kitzhaber needs to be better educated on the science and medicine of cannabis as it exists today. The late Francis Young, an administrative law judge for the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, called cannabis “one of the safest therapeutic substances known to man.”

We’ve traveled a long way since 1974, when the Nixon administration buried the results of a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health showing that marijuana had positive results in fighting cancer. That study lay dormant for 25 years until its results were echoed in a study led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense University in Spain.

As both an activist and a medical cannabis consumer, it appalls me that so few are outraged by such horrendous deceit by our government — a deceit foisted upon the nation not with good intent, but propelled by individual prejudice and cultural bigotry.

This decades-long struggle to return legitimacy to the cannabis plant has been painted by opponents as being led by stoners looking to “get high.” But the opponents to prohibition are a vast and growing group, including many medical professionals who are finally grasping that at worst, marijuana proponents were guilty of occasional hyperbole.

The media medical star Dr. Sanjay Gupta declared in a recent CNN special that he was abandoning his opposition to cannabis after conducting his own research:

“I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis. … I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. … They didn’t have the science to support that claim,” Gupta said. “We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.”

As Gupta states, the government has been lying for a very long time: “The movement to correct the egregious errors of cannabis prohibition and its displacement in the Controlled Substance Act is an act of — if I may be so bold — (as yet unrecognized) patriotism.”

Oregon’s new law establishing a medical marijuana dispensary system is a sign of how far our state has come, as is the addition of post-traumatic stress disorder as an allowable condition under the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program. Thank you, Oregon. Now, can we please move on to dismantling the federal prohibition juggernaut?

Jim Greig of Eugene is a member of the board of directors of the Voter Power Foundation and an organizer for Americans for Safe Access.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Registered Guard 9/7/2013

Reprinted with permission from Americans for Safe Access‘ Press Room.