420 The federal government makes a fool of itself, several times over M. Harrison
April 20th is a holiday for pot users. As every American high school freshman knows, the numbers 4/20 have great significance - 420 is the police code for cannabis possession. As such, 420 has been adopted by cannabis users as the international quantitative logo of their favorite herb. So on April 20, 2006, the confirmed day on which everyone who likes to smoke will be smoking (and everyone else knows it), the FDA thought it appropriate to remind the country why it, and the government of which it represents, are hemorrhaging billions of dollars keeping people from the very thing they are all doing on April 20th.
The announcement was that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana. The New York Times, an an astute moment, observed that the announcement “directly contradicts a
1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency. That review found marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting."
The federal government closed its case with the observation that cannabis use, gasp, can have damaging effects.
Set aside for a moment the facts that contradict the FDA’s statement. Even if the government’s assertions were entirely accurate, they still place cannabis on a scientific equivalence to alcohol - can cause harm, has little medicinal value, is enjoyed by billions of people around the world, and has been so for centuries. So either the FDA is laying out arguments that could be used to return to Prohibition, or it didn’t really make a point at all. For us libertarians, they made no point at all.
Alcohol is an important analogy because its consumption is an example of the type of freedom Western cultures boast: a benign practice should be allowed by default, even if it has no intrinsic value in the
eyes of a government or a majority. Alcohol is legal so that people can have a good time - not because alcohol has sound scientific studies supporting its medical use.
Yet another problem with the announcement is that the government kindly bans research to actually discover the true nature of the herb. The Times provides one anedotal account: “Lyle E. Craker, a professor in the division of plant and soil sciences at the University of Massachusetts, said he submitted an application to the D.E.A. in 2001 to grow a small patch of marijuana to be used for research because government-approved marijuana, grown in Mississippi, was of poor quality. In 2004, the drug enforcement agency turned Dr. Craker down.“
Add it to the list: In a statement, on the national pot holiday, the government makes an erroneous statement that, even if true, wouldn’t justify the war against cannabis, all while preventing people from discovering the very thing it said was lacking.
The Food and Drug Administration's statement said state initiatives that legalize marijuana use were "inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the F.D.A. approval process." Like the rigorous FDA approval process that approved Vioxx, which was later found to give people an increased risk of heart attack? Seeing how cannabis has yet to kill one person or cause a heart attack, it seems it should already have passed the FDA’s “rigorous scientific scrutiny.”
This country is not founded on the tradition of subjugating medical opinion to state mandate, or proving the scientific value of recreational practices to the satisfaction of a government body. Unfortunately, few governments see much value in limiting their own power.
The above work is the opinion of the author,
and not necessarily that of the Prometheus Institute.
