As newly amended, the AMA’s official position (see specifically pages 12, 13, and 14) regarding the medical use of cannabis no longer “recommends that marijuana be retained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.” Rather, the Association now resolves “that marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.”

The AMA also today demolished long-held pot prohibitionist claim — frequently publicized by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and others — that “no sound scientific studies have supported medical use of smoked marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data support the safety or efficacy of smoked marijuana for general medical use.”

My suggestion for a state run drug system was that it would try to produce and sell the drugs as efficiently as a normal business, so as to kill off the current black market, and then wait for normal corruption to slowly work its magic. (BTW, I'm fully aware that this is a politically impossible suggestion, but I like using it as way to see how people think, or to get them thinking.)

You won't. Different states would do things differently (this is correctly a state, not a federal, issue). There would not only be “drug tourism” but organized crime as well as ordinary people involved with smuggling marijuana into states with restrictions or prohibitions. (Even a state-monopoly-system of legalized marijuana, like state-monopoly liquor sale controls, presents smuggling risks.) I believe marijuana should be legalized, but am not naive about this or other problems that would develop.

This goes well beyond the Drug War, ending civil asset forfeiture and putting non-dangerous people in dangerous, expensive institutions (you know, like health care reform will someday affect hospitals). It conceivably includes standards of evidence and evidence-taking, and DNA in capital cases, for example.

“Medical marijuana” is just a front for legalization and decriminalization (as are other fronts like advocacy of drug-free hemp production, for example), and proponents should be honest about what they want, and why. If they want legalization or decriminalization, they should say so, and present arguments other than those reeking (pun intended) of self-indulgence as well as self-absorption. (Stress real reforms.)

While Iowans beg the Iowa Board of Pharmacy Exaniners 4 times in 4 months,Grassley Granstands on Iowans in wheelchairs, cans and cancer.

Medical Marijuana Hearing Wraps Up In Iowa-

http://www.ketv.com/news/21522854/detail.html

…Either that, or have congress take it over completely, since nothing can mess up a free market like the government running it.

In any case, MSF is exactly right in his comments. It looks as though Grassley is in effect pushing for is less information and greater ignorance via this muzzling. While that isn't exactly a surprising dynamic for the GOP, it is little obvious.

“At the very same time Maine voted to repeal same sex marriage, they approved a bill that expands the state’s existing medical marijuana law”

*****
The author is impying the incongruity of one being upheld and the other being defeated. Under what premise I wonder? Could it be that the author consideres homosexual conduct and being stoned 'the same type of thing?”.

This is how the more conservative voter sees it too. Even still the pot law made it based on its own unique attributes that have nothing to do with homosexuals being upheld as “normal”. Apparently the voter can tell the difference between smoking pot and having gay sex, but its interesting that some see it as the same type of moral derailing that they would lump the two into the same subgroup of laws voted on yesterday.

Just some fun things to mull over..the subconscious finds a way to express itself. Freud would call that sentence “a slip”..

Needless to say, I hope Grassley's amendment succeeds, becomes even stronger, and goes on the books. I am not confident, but I can hope, right?