Next month voters in North Dakota will decide whether or not people with certain ailments will legally be able to use marijuana as medicine. Measure 5 will be on the statewide ballot and if passed will allow qualifying patients to possess up to 3 ounces of medical cannabis to treat about a dozen medical conditions, including cancer, AIDS, hepatitis C, ALS, glaucoma and epilepsy. It would also allow for a dispensary system where patients can buy their medicine.
Of course, even with medical marijuana, there are opponents. Measure 5 is opposed by the North Dakota Medical Association based on a lack of research into cannabis by the FDA; the same government agency that has approved drugs that kill over 100,000 people a year in the U.S.
The North Dakota House Majority Leader also opposes medical marijuana. “This is really bad for the state of North Dakota and its residents,” Al Carlson (R) said.
Really bad? Letting sick adults legally consume something that has never killed anyone is really bad? The battle over medical cannabis in North Dakota highlights the absurdity of the entire debate.
There are still some people who think they have the right to tell people they don’t even know what they can and cannot take to treat their ailments. To make matters even worse, many of those people hold powerful positions in government and for some reason we have given them the power to make these decisions for us.
Most polls show support for medical marijuana at well over 80%. If that’s not enough to show you how little politicians actually listen to us, I don’t know what will be. So in many states voters have to actually go and vote for the right to decide what medicine they take, and even then only people with certain ailments get back the right to make those decisions.
The fact that this is still a debate is ludicrous. On one side we have adults who want to take medicine in their own homes and on the other side we have (mostly) old white guys with no medical experience whatsoever who have decided that their medical opinions should have the force of law behind them.
Politicians want guarantees about cannabis that they expect from no other substance when we have plenty of proof that cannabis is one of the safest substances known to humankind. As a consequence, voters in North Dakota will have go to the polls on November 8th to hopefully give some people legal access to medical marijuana.
