If he keeps this up, the Drug Warriors are going to have John Tierney’s head on a most wanted sign:
When the Supreme Court ruled in June that states could not legalize marijuana for medical uses, Justice Stephen Breyer voted with the majority. But during oral arguments, he suggested an alternative way for patients to get it: let the federal Food and Drug Administration decide if marijuana should be a prescription drug.
“Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum,” he said. In theory, that sounds reasonable. But what if the officials doing the regulation are afflicted with a bad case of Reefer Madness?
If you doubt this possibility, you should have been at a hearing that began this week at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s headquarters. Lyle Craker, a professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Massachusetts, asked an administrative judge to overrule the agency so he could grow marijuana for F.D.A.-approved research projects by other scientists.
Dr. Craker is a well-regarded agronomist who’s being supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and both of his senators, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry. But for four years he’s been stymied by the D.E.A., which first stalled and then finally denied his request for a permit…
D.E.A. officials have already shown they’re quite capable of persecuting someone who uses marijuana to deal with AIDS, and they may well be even more eager to go after someone who encourages research into their least favorite drug. When it comes to marijuana research, the federal policy is “Just Say Know-Nothing.”
Read the whole thing.