How is medical marijuana working out in the states that have legalized it?

Question

I'm doing a speech for school about medical marijuana. I know it's legal in several states. What I don't know is how well these programs are working out. I'm hoping to find the most successful examples of medical marijuana use. My goal is to find the best way to implement such a program in my state, Arkansas, where it is illegal to use marijuana for any reason. I'd like to hear about problems that have come up and what was done to correct them. I am a member of a group of 5 people doing the speech, which is pro legalization of medical marijuana. My portion is 'visualization', where I must speak for about 5 minutes about what it would be like if medical marijuana use were legalized in Arkansas.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

The state that is probably the most advanced in this area is California. There are several cities and other localities in California that have more or less officially sanctioned medical marijuana and allow "compassion clubs" to operate. These are dispensaries that sell or give marijuana to people who have the proper permits.

There have been some reported problems with these clubs. One is that they are sometimes not well-received by the local officials who are using any kind of excuse they can think of to shut them down. In many cases, they get the DEA to raid the places. In other places, such as the Oaksterdam area of Oakland, the facilities receive the support of the local community and were a large part of the reason that a former "war zone" area of Oakland has experienced a rebirth. See http://www.oaksterdamnews.com/ for more info on that.

Local officials in some places have lodged complaints against the places such as that they are selling to people who aren't apparently sick. The state law, of course, does not require that people be visibly sick and no one can be diagnosed with anything simply by seeing them on the street.

There have also been complaints that the compassion clubs occasionally get robbed. This is the same as complaining about convenience stores because they get robbed -- it is not really the fault of the person getting robbed and the solution is not to punish the victims of robbery.

Another complaint is that they bring undesireable elements to the area or that they patrons take their purchased marijuana and sell it on the street. While these kinds of things may occur in some places that are not well-run, they are by no means universal. It depends largely on the management and local regulation of the individual clubs. In the places where they are properly regulated and have the support of the local officials, these problems are not significant.

A better question is why marijuana use should be punished at all -- regardless of whether it is for medical purposes or "personal use" (non-medical). Every major study of the subject in the past 100 years has concluded that the marijuana laws were the product of racism, ignorance, and nonsense, and that they should have been repealed long ago because they do more harm than good.

You can find the full text of these studies at http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/…

You can find a good short history of how marijuana became illegal at http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/…

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Asker's Comment:

thanks. that's exactly what i've been looking for.

Answer 2

It is illegal under federal laws. Federal laws supersede state and local laws in such matters.
In San Francisco the federal authorities have done raids on the med. marijuana clubs.

Have you looked at Montel Williams site? He has MS and is vocal about the use of marijuana to help its symptoms.
http://www.montelms.org/TakingAction

Have you looked at the Herbal PDR for known uses of marijuana? It helps with nausea from
chemotherapy and spasms and pain in MS.

If it were legal, a doctor could write a prescription for it. Who would grow it? That's still illegal. Transporting it is still illegal under federal law.

Answer 3

Not very well because the Federal Govt. still holds marijuana as being an illegal drug and refuses to recognize state laws legalizing it for medical purposes..
Shame on the Federal Govt.