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Congress getting more sensible about medical marijuana

Sun., May 22, 2016

Outdated fears and the plodding progress of government change haven’t served veterans well, as they try to access the growing medical marijuana market.

A recent CBS News poll found that 90 percent of adults nationwide were supportive of legalizing medical marijuana. In a 1979 CBS poll, only 27 percent said yes. A recent Utah Policy poll found that 66 percent of adults in that conservative state backed medical marijuana.

Twenty-three states have legalized medical marijuana. A few, including Washington, have legalized recreational pot, too.

But the official position of the federal government is that pot should be categorized along with heroin as a Schedule I drug – the most dangerous kind. And because veterans’ health care coverage is provided by the feds, accessing medical marijuana is difficult.

Veterans Administration doctors are prohibited from discussing marijuana as a possible course of treatment. If veterans want to try pot to deal with post-traumatic stress or chronic pain, they must go outside the federal system for a consultation that isn’t covered by the VA.

However, on Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of an amendment to a spending bill on military projects that would allow VA doctors to assist patients who want to try medical marijuana in the states where it is legal.

Last year, the House turned down the bid in a 213-210 vote. This year it was 233-189 in favor. The full Senate has yet to vote, but a Senate committee approved a similar measure last month.

So attitudes are changing on medical marijuana, even in the paranoid halls of Congress.

Part of the turnaround can be attributed to a far greater drug concern: opioid addictions. Though VA doctors are free to prescribe painkillers, those legal meds are proving to be very dangerous.

As Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., points out, providing an alternative “is critical at a time when our veterans are dying with a suicide rate 50 percent higher than civilians and opiate overdoses at nearly double the national average.”

Blumenauer has led the charge on medical marijuana for veterans.

The effectiveness of marijuana in treating post-traumatic stress disorder is open to debate. Studies thus far have come to contradictory conclusions. But it makes no sense to bar VA physicians from having the discussion with patients.

A 2014 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that states that have legalized marijuana for managing chronic pain have fewer deaths from prescription painkiller overdoses.

If the feds were to reschedule marijuana as a lesser legal drug, that would solve this and other problems, such as prohibiting banks from accepting money from pot sales.

It is absurd for pot to be treated like heroin when it is less dangerous than legal drugs such as oxycodone.

But at least Thursday’s vote shows that Congress is headed in a more sensible direction. Most of their constituents are already there.

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