Some lawmakers in Tennessee are hoping to introduce and pass medical marijuana legislation this year. To increase their chances for success, they are putting a lot of effort into educating law enforcement officials in the hopes of at least weakening their opposition to medical cannabis.
A symposium held last week was attended by representatives of the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police, Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “We wouldn’t have had this meeting had we not needed their support and desired their support,” Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma), lead sponsor of the future medical marijuana legislation, said. “I hope we get their support for their sake, as well as ours, because I was once where they are. I know, if they will read the research and they will study, they will have a different view.”
For their part, law enforcement officials claim that they are worried about the federal illegality of cannabis, no matter what the state says is legal. But the real question here, at least for me, is this: What qualifies a law enforcement official to decide what medicine someone can or cannot take?
Make no mistake – in the end, this is what is happening. Sick people in Tennessee need the permission of the police to choose cannabis as a medicine. Whatever the reasoning for that and no matter what circumstances led to that, is that something we want to continue?
Why should a cop you’ve never met decide what medicine you take? For those of you who have friends and family in law enforcement, do you find yourself asking them medical questions often? Do you seek out their advice on how best to treat your ailments?
Of course you don’t, and in those scenarios we are just talking about asking questions. Patients in Tennessee – like those in many other states before them – must get the permission of law enforcement before they can legally decide to choose marijuana as medicine. And if not permission, they must at least convince the police not to actively oppose legislation that would allow them that choice.
Even those who respect law enforcement officers to the utmost have to admit that medical decisions should not be their problem. Don’t police have enough to worry about without having to decide if people they will never meet smoke a joint to ease their pain or help them sleep?
Police should be worried about criminals, and those who do not infringe on the rights of anyone else are not criminals.
“What qualifies a law enforcement official to decide what medicine someone can or cannot take?”
Since 1937, each of the malformed federal definitions of marijuana have allowed law enforcement officials to unjustly thrust enforcement officers into the position of denying to people their cannabis medicine.
Comprehensively reconstructing the current malformed federal definition of marijuana to have the necessary and proper format to carefully deschedule the plant Cannabis sativa L., will diminish law enforcement’s ability to deny to people their cannabis medicine. The reconstructed definition could look like this:
Sec. 802.
(16) The term “marijuana” means all parts of the smoke produced by the combustion of the plant Cannabis sativa L., which is, as are the viable seeds of such plant, prohibited to be grown by or sold by any publicly traded corporation or subsidiary company, and such smoke is prohibited to be inhaled by any child or by any person bearing any firearm, as is their intake of any part or any product of such plant containing more than 0.3% THC by weight unless prescribed to such child by an authorized medical practitioner.
Subsequently removing marijuana from Schedule 1 will restore more options to adults for their intake of cannabis medicine, by descheduling or rescheduling cannabis smoke.
Let’s each contact our own members of Congress about voting to reconstruct the current malformed federal definition of marijuana.
Police profit massively from the fraudulently enacted, marijuana prohibition. – It gives them millions of dollars in asset forfeitures, millions more in the bribe of “drug war” grants, easy overtime, easy arrests, easy convictions and easy promotions.
That’s why, in regard to marijuana, the police are the enemy of freedom and reason. – They should not be given ANY input on marijuana policy. They are the foxes in the hen house. The fraudulently enacted prohibition has totally corrupted the police to the point where they simply cannot be trusted.