The ‘medical marijuana’ sham: If Massachusetts is going to legalize pot, then just do it outright
I have this fantasy where I meet with my physician. “Doctor, doctor, give me the news,” I say, “I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you.”
She brushes her hair back. “No pill’s gonna cure your ill,” she tells me, pulling out a pen. My eyes light up. I walk out with a prescription — actually, a registration card — for marijuana.
If Question 3 on the Massachusetts ballot passes as expected this November, that may soon be the scene in doctors’ offices across the state. While cannabis may not cure heartsickness, its adherents tout it as a remedy for a vast array of maladies, a modern-day version of those old-tyme tonics. Feeling poorly could prove to be a lot of fun.
The proposed law — “for the humanitarian medical use of marijuana” — is similar to measures that have passed in 17 states and Washington, D.C. It makes legal the consumption of weed by folks who suffer from a “debilitating medical condition.” Those conditions include truly awful afflictions, such as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, and Lou Gehrig’s disease, but also a big loophole: “other conditions as determined in writing by a qualifying patient’s physician.”
Last year I was in Los Angeles walking the Venice Beach boardwalk with my wife and daughter. Interspersed among the tattoo and T-shirt shops were the kush doctors (“kush”— originally a kind of marijuana and increasingly a synonym). Hawkers stood outside with placards detailing the wondrous benefits of weed, including “back pain” (who doesn’t have that?), “constipation” (oatmeal’s not enough), “headaches” (aspirin never seems to work), “impotence” (maybe it wasn’t just that six-pack of beer), “insomnia” (and I thought the pillow was just too hard), and “obesity” (that’s 26 percent of us, right?).