« New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine says he would sign medical marijuana legislation | Main | Editorial: Allow marijuana for medical use in N.J. »
December 18, 2008
Patients Out of Time Press Release on new civil complaint against feds on medical cannabis
Posted by Gary Storck
Thursday, December 18, 2008
I'm honored to be on the advisory board of the great medical cannabis advocacy group, Patients Out of Time. Here is a new press release from them regarding a civil complaint Carl Olsen has filed against the federal government over the denial of medical cannabis access.
For Immediate Release:Ever wonder why the federal government still classifies marijuana as a substance with no accepted medical use in the United States?
Over the past 12 years, 13 States in the United States have enacted laws accepting the medical use of marijuana. Isn't that the same "accepted medical use" the federal drug law refers to?
Patients Out of Time Board of Advisors member Carl Olsen was curious enough to ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), but got no response. So, Carl filed a civil complaint in federal court against the U.S. Attorney General; Carl Olsen v. Michael Mukasey, No. 4:08-cv-370, United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.
It seems the voters in Oregon approved an assisted suicide law in 1997, the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, and the DEA tried to tell them it was illegal. The State of Oregon filed a civil complaint against the DEA, and it ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said the DEA was stepping on Oregon's turf and told the DEA to back off.
Carl thinks the same thing is true with state medical marijuana laws. When the federal law was written, it was certainly true that marijuana had no currently accepted medical use in the United States. However, Congress entrusted the DEA with the responsibility of making sure the federal drug law was updated annually to catch any change that might occur.
Well, that change has occurred and the DEA has failed to do anything about it. The DEA never planned on changing it anyway. Who's watching the DEA to make sure they do their job?
American citizens are considered the luckiest people in the world, not because of our wealth, but because we are actually supposed to have a say in what our government does. Carl is showing us that one citizen can question the federal bureaucracy.
Carl keeps detailed records of everything that is going on at his web site: http://www.iowamedicalmarijuana.org/ so he hopes you'll stop by and take a look.
(1) www.medicalcannabis.com
(2) www.iowamedicalmarijuana.org
Carl Olsen
Iowans for Medical Marijuana
(515) 288-5798Al Byrne,Co-founder
Patients Out of Time
(434) 263-4484Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, MSN, CARN, CLNC
President and Co-founder
Patients Out of Time
1472 Fish Pond Rd.
Howardsville, VA 24562
434-263-4484 434-263-6753 fax
www.medicalcannabis.com
Posted by Gary at December 18, 2008 09:48 AM
Comments
Great work, Carl! I really like the tenor and case made in your Civil Complaint filed in September. I only wish you could have updated your case with the fact that now 23.5% of the US population lives in a place where medical cannabis use is legal under state law. That's a huge bolster to the "currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" criterion. I think your argument that they have been derelict in updated the schedules is valid. However, remember when former DEA head John Lawn came up with an arbitrary standard for what he believed constituted "accepted medical use"? I don't know if they are in their power to make such criteria, but I suspect that might be thrown out at you at some point. Additionally, the Death with Dignity challenge only pertained to Schedule II and below compounds, which already are available for general prescription use in medicine.
Another criterion for schedule I--the "no accepted level of safety for use under medical supervision" --is one that is also quite challengeable. I would encourage you and others to check out my dissertation at http://sunilaggarwal.net (The Medical Geography of Cannabinoid Botanicals in Washington State: Access, Delivery, and Distress) wherein I present some research that effectively challenges that criterion.
All the best. Thanks for posting this Gary. I hope that this will get back to Carl.
Sunil
Posted by: Sunil Aggarwal ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.madisonnorml.org/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 18, 2008 02:14 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)