"Medical marijuana policy in the United States is putting Americans at risk. The federal government keeps people who live in states that don’t have medical marijuana programs from accessing a product that could benefit their health. And even as it prevents some people from having it, it erects barriers against research into the safety and efficacy of a product used by tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people who do live in states that have legalized it.
Although there are a number of policy changes, large and small, that Congress and the administration could make to overcome the deficiencies of this system, thus far they have chosen not to do so. Yet, as numerous organizations like the Marijuana Policy Project and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws have documented, a substantial majority of Americans in every state that has been polled supports changes (in some form) to the nation’s medical marijuana laws. Gallup and CBS News polls have pegged national support for reform at between 70 and 85 percent.
While elected officials cling to the status quo, failing to recognize and address the inherent hypocrisies in the nation’s laws, patients like Jennifer Collins and her family, and business owners like Rabbi Kahn and his family, are enduring unnecessary hardships. Far from being outliers, they are typical of the many people victimized by an unjust, arbitrary, and downright harmful system that hinders access to a clinically proven medical benefit.
It is time for government to transform medical marijuana policy into a system that is rational, functional, consistent, and informed by science—not politics."
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