Texas should ease up on medical potheads
Allowing use of marijuana for medicinal needs should come without condition

By Laura Head
Skiff Managing Editor

The Criminal Jurisprudence Committee of the Texas House of Representatives heard a bill Tuesday that would lessen penalties for the medical use of marijuana.

This makes me sick to my stomach. My head hurts a little, and oh yeah, I have a bruise right here on my elbow. How do I sign up for that?

The bill, authored by Rep. Terry Keel, R-Travis County, creates an affirmative defense in court for patients who have marijuana with their doctor’s permission.

Marijuana Policy Project President Chuck Thomas said that under current law, even patients who can prove they have cancer, that marijuana reduces their nausea and vomiting and that they are using it with their doctor’s approval cannot be acquitted for possession of marijuana.

Since 1996, eight other states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — have enacted laws to protect marijuana-using patients from arrest if they have their doctor’s approval. That just about settles my post-graduation plans. I’m moving to Seattle, where they not only have a house from MTV’s “The Real World,” but they also have monorails and medical marijuana.

But the Texas bill is a bit more conservative: Even if people who possess marijuana use it for medical reasons, they will still be arrested. The change is in their defense.

“They would then at least have a fighting chance in court to explain their medical need,” Thomas said.

Keel, a former sheriff and assistant district attorney for Travis County, writes in the bill: “It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the person possessed (marijuana) as a patient of a licensed physician and pursuant to the recommendation of that physician for the amelioration of a bona fide medical condition.”

So now what?

Let’s say this bill passes, and all of the sudden pain is a legal defense to smoking some pot to ease the pain of cancer.

Where do we draw the line of what constitutes pain?

A man dying of AIDS surely feels pain, as does a woman dying from emphysema. But these deadly diseases bring with them the unfortunate “Well-they-could-have-avoided it” stigma, whereas cancer, it seems, is one of those “Awww, shucks” diseases.

No one deserves the pain their cancer gives them, so give them some marijuana to help with the pain. But this raises the question: Does anyone deserve to have AIDS? Does anyone deserve any disease?

Of course not. This bill is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough.

It is therefore only fair to legalize marijuana use for any and all pain. To allow it for the use in only terminal cases is unfair and discriminatory. After all, there are a lot of things that cause pain.

AIDS hurts. Whiplash hurts. Love hurts. By no means is there a comparison between the pain experienced by a dying AIDS patient and that felt by a heartbroken teen-ager, but both are degrees of hurt.

Though heartache is certainly not a “bona fide medical condition,” who are we to say which pain constitutes form of relief, and which pain does not?

Come on, Texas, be a leader for once. Drug use isn’t just for hippies and addicts. It can do good things for a lot of people, and it’s high time we realize that.

Managing Editor Laura Head is a senior news-editorial journalism major from Shreveport, La.
She can be reached at (l.a.head@student.tcu.edu).

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