Pompo

The Debate Over Medical Marijuana Should Have Ended a Decade Ago
3/18/09|StoptheDrugWar.org| by Scott Morgan



NORML's Paul Armentano has a piece at reason marking the 10th anniversary of the government-funded Institute of Medicine report, which proved beyond any doubt that marijuana is medicine. The debate should have ended right then, but our opponents adopted a desperate strategy of claiming that the report said something other than what it clearly said.

Fortunately, the American people took matters into their own hands we've made tremendous progress over the past decade towards increasing patient access and changing the tone of the debate. Our opponents have almost entirely conceded marijuana's medicinal value and now resort to the pathetic fallback position of saying that smoking is bad and patients should take THC pills instead.

We've been proven right morally, scientifically and even politically. But it's still amazing to think that only a few short years ago our opponents were still claiming that marijuana wasn't medicine. Now that everyone knows those people were dead wrong, it's worth considering how phenomenally irresponsible it really was to withhold the truth about a medicine that could have helped people.

Paul makes an important point that after years of legal medical access in several states, anyone can plainly see that opponents of medical marijuana weren't just wrong about science. They were wrong about every single bad thing they said would happen if medical marijuana became legal. Many of those people are still considered experts on drug policy. They shouldn’t be.

SleepyJohn

Many of Us are still considered experts on drug policy, They shouldn't be. Who knows what's really on their minds? They don't how could we? I don't see any debate, that is new, for a long time. The facts are in, the law is wrong, it can't be too long.