End the Federal Government’s War Against Medical Marijuana
July 25th, 2007 by Nick Rivera
I recently took the time to write a letter to my US Congressman and Senators asking them to support the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Medical Marijuana amendment that is expected to come up for a vote tomorrow. For those of you who would like to see the federal government stop prosecuting medical marijuana patients, Downsize DC has started a letter writing campaign.
Here is the letter I wrote:
The Honorable [name withheld for purposes of anonymity]
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter.
I am writing to you to voice my support for the Hinchey-Rohrbacher amendment in hopes that you will thoughtfully consider my argument in favor of this piece of legislation and also support it.
This amendment, as I understand it, would prohibit funds for the Department of Justice from being used to prevent patients in states that have medical marijuana laws from following those laws.
This piece of legislation is not about whether marijuana should be first line treatment for people suffering from terminal illnesses. Nor is it about congress endorsing marijuana use. It’s about injecting a level of sanity and compassion into our federal drug laws that have sadly been lacking for more than three decades.
It’s also about federalism, a principle upon which our country was founded on. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government granted the power to prohibit the use or possession of marijuana or any other intoxicant. Congress essentially acknowledged this argument during the 1910’s when it passed alcohol prohibition only AFTER members of the US House and Senate and a majority of the state legislatures passed a Constitutional amendment making it legal for the federal government to prohibit the “manufacture, sale, or possession” of alcohol. To this date, no similar Constitutional amendment has been passed with regards to marijuana.
Over the last twelve years, ten states have adopted laws which allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. They legalized the use of marijuana to relieve the intense pain that accompanies debilitating diseases, including AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and glaucoma. With the exceptions of Hawaii and Vermont, all of those laws were adopted by referendum, passed by the people.
Our federal drug laws are draconian in the manner in which they punish non-violent people, and their effectiveness has proven to be questionable at best. We’re told that in a democracy, if you don’t agree with a law, you have the option of changing the law through the democratic means rather than simply breaking the law. Yet Americans in several states have turned to the democratic process and voted in favor of giving people the right to use medical marijuana, only to watch the federal government negate their vote and send the DEA to arrest and prosecute peaceful medical marijuana users in states in which medical marijuana use is legal.
I feel that this is wrong and that a more sensible drug policy is needed–one that upholds the Constitution and our most basic of civil liberties.
Please vote in favor of the Hinchey-Rohrbacher amendment, or at the very least, do your part to see to it that congress has an open and honest debate over this piece of legislation.
Sincerely,
Nick Rivera
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Drugs. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
