This is NOT a comment on the use of marijuana for medical reasons. Is it useful? Is it safe enough under normal FDA guidelines for drug treatments? I don't follow the issues, so I can't speak to them.
This is about the Supreme Court's ruling that Federal laws regarding marijuana trump California's law permitting its growth and consumption by individuals for medical reasons.
To me, the basis of the ruling is a big stretch.
From CNN:
A federal appeals court concluded use of medical marijuana was non-commercial, and therefore not subject to congressional oversight of "economic enterprise."
Okay, sounds reasonable enough to me. The Justice Deparment took it to the Supreme Court to fight the ruling. They argued:
homegrown marijuana represented interstate commerce, because the garden patch weed would affect "overall production" of the weed, much of it imported across American borders by well-financed, often violent drug gangs.
I have two big problems with this:
1 - As noted by California, nothing was bought or sold, so how was this interstate commerce?
2 - The existence of the violent drug gangs and cartels requires the War on Drugs in order for them to exist.
So, the fight against the drug cartels and gangs which depend on the War of Drugs to make the drugs valuable enough for the syndicates to get involved would be wrecked by a woman in California raising 6 pot plants in her backyard under a physician's advice for personal use in treating her chronic pain? THAT was the justification given by the court for ruling for the Justice Department.
To me it sounds just plain silly...
