Huge news broke today in the world of marijuana policy reform. Governors Christine Gregoire (D-WA) and Lincoln Chafee (I-RI) announced in a joint conference call that they had petitioned the federal government to reschedule marijuana. We can expect that this will produce headlines across the country. We can also expect that the coverage will tout this as a far more significant – and positive, from the perspective of patients – event than it actually is.

Before harping on the negative, let’s appreciate the positive aspect of the announcement. What we have here is two governors filing a petition with the federal government, backed by extensive documentation, saying that marijuana has an accepted medical use in our society. We have known this for years, but it is nice that it is becoming the general consensus. Unfortunately, that’s about all we have on the positive side of the ledger. After that, it is mostly bad news wrapped in good news clothing.

The misleading coverage started the moment the news broke, when The New York Times published its exclusive on the announcement. Describing how the governors wanted marijuana moved from Schedule I to Schedule II, the Times wrote, “Such a classification would allow pharmacies to dispense marijuana.” While technically true, in the sense that pharmacies cannot dispense Schedule I drugs, the reader is led to believe that marijuana would be available in pharmacies as soon as it is rescheduled. This is far from certain and could be a long way off on the horizon.

Given the long-held position of the federal government that it is the FDA that determines whether a substance is a medicine, it is likely that marijuana will not be available in pharmacies until it has made its way through the FDA approval process.* This is a process that could take up to a decade under the best of circumstances. But marijuana research does not exist in this country under the best of circumstance. In fact, as I wrote about recently in a Washington Post piece about stalled research on the use of marijuana for PTSD, it is almost impossible to conduct research on marijuana in this country. Moving marijuana to Schedule II will not change the rules under which marijuana research is (or is not) conducted.

Even if we were to ignore this not-so-minor problem about research and FDA approval, the governors clearly left the impression that they were pursuing rescheduling over embracing, implementing and defending existing medical marijuana laws in their own states. Yet they know that the rescheduling process will take years, perhaps more than a decade. In the meantime, patients in their states will suffer. The best Gov. Gregoire could say about this unfortunate delay during the press conference was that she was going to “encourage the federal government to not take nine years” to consider the petition. Woo. Hoo.

Finally, there is the additional matter of the specific request for Schedule II, a category of drugs defined under law as having a “high potential for abuse” that “may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.” Drug like cocaine and morphine fall in this category. Marijuana does not belong there. At worst, marijuana should fall in Schedule III – where Marinol, which is synthetic THC is placed – a category of drugs that “may lead to moderate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence.”

The New York Times article even included a quote from Governor Gregoire, suggesting that marijuana was not on the same level as the more dangerous Schedule II drugs.

Ms. Gregoire noted that many doctors believe it makes no sense to place marijuana in a more restricted category than opium and morphine. “People die from overdose of opiates,” she said. “Has anybody died from marijuana?”

No, Ms. Gregoire, they haven’t. And the harms from marijuana overall are quite limited. You and Mr. Chafee have come a long way today. Now it is time to step entirely out of the world of negative marijuana stereotypes and allow medical marijuana programs to move forward in your states. Rescheduling will happen eventually — and we commend you for petitioning for it — but you shouldn’t make patients in your state suffer in the meantime.

* The author would like to include a clarification, or perhaps it is a correction, here. After consulting with experts, he believes that a lengthy FDA approval process, meaning full trials to prove that marijuana is effective for a specific condition, would not be needed before marijuana could be available in pharmacies. However, there could still be a significant delay before marijuana appears in pharamacies after rescheduling (a process that could be quite lengthy itself). The DEA would have to license entities to cultivate the marijuana — a process likely to be slow, given the DEA’s history in this area. Then, maybe six months to a year later, the FDA would need to examine the marijuana produced by any entity to ensure that it is a consistent, reliable and pure product. And even after all of these steps have concluded, patients may have to deal with obstacles stemming from marijuana being listed as a Schedule II drug, including the fact that doctors and pharmacies would have to report every prescription to the DEA and that there would be no refills allowed, increasing the number of times patients would need to see doctors.

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Over the past month or so, there has been a mini-boomlet in coverage about the potential impact of marijuana initiatives on young voter turnout. Most notably, an article in the Wall Street Journal appeared earlier this month with the headline, “Democrats Look to Cultivate Pot Vote in 2012.”

With this as background, it was interesting to see this blog post by the polling firm PPP yesterday prior to today’s release of a survey on Proposition 19 in California, the initiative to tax and regulate marijuana in the state:

One of the big questions in California this year has been how big of an impact Proposition 19, the ballot proposal to legalize marijuana, will have on turnout in the state. In an effort to figure that out we asked respondents on our new survey there what on the ballot they were most excited about voting for: 39% said the Governor’s race, 26% the Senate race, 10% Prop 19, 4% one of the other props, 2% a local race, 1% their US House race, and 18% said they weren’t sure.

But this 10 percent figure did not appropriately convey the true impact of the initiative on voter turnout. If you examine the crosstabs provided by PPP today along with the full results of the survey (click on “here” at the end of the hyperlinked blog post), you will see that young voters – who are less likely to vote in a mid-term election – expressed much greater enthusiasm about Prop. 19. When voters 18-29 were asked which race they were most excited about a full 29 percent said Prop. 19!

Marijuana-related initiatives do inspire young voter turnout. The only question is whether progressives, who will generally benefit from this increased turnout, will take advantage of it politically.

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Earlier this week, the Tennessean newspaper published an interview with former Tennessee Titans running back LenDale White in which White acknowledged that he was likely going to be suspended from the National Football League for four games because of marijuana use. White accepted his “wrongdoing” with the following mea culpa:

“I did it, so it is my fault. I smoked marijuana; that is all I have ever done. That’s all I do, that’s it. I smoke. I don’t care about any other drugs, but it’s marijuana. … But I have changed. I am a good man. Unfortunately the stuff that I did in my recent past caught up to me in the present and it’s affecting my future.”

We have written on this blog before about the travesty of having athletes and celebrities pilloried in the media for marijuana possession. And I have personally decried NFL policies that punish players for marijuana use and end up steering them toward alcohol instead. But the quote above really hits me hard for some reason.

We have seen other athletes, like Michael Phelps and Tim Lincecum, apologize for making the “mistake” of using marijuana. That is almost to be expected. I mean, the bottom line is that they did violate the law in some minor way. So as much as I might feel like they have nothing to apologize for, I can see why they are dong it.

What White is saying is different. He said that he has “changed” and is now a “good man.” The obviously implication is that when he was using marijuana, he was “bad.” Well, he wasn’t — at least not for using marijuana on its own. If he didn’t do anything to harm anyone else after consuming marijuana, then he was just choosing to relax with a substance less harmful than alcohol.

Unless White believes that having a beer makes him a bad person, there is no reason he should feel that way about using marijuana. In fact, given the fact that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, the act of using marijuana instead of alcohol is far from bad; it is actually sensible.

So keep your chin up, LenDale! Societal attitudes are shifting, slowly but surely.

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The absurdity of marijuana prohibition in the United States is on full display today in The New York Times. On the one hand, we have the national “newspaper of record” publishing a long, mouth-watering and entirely non-critical article about “haute stoner cuisine” in the restaurant industry. On the other hand, we have an article on their Web site reporting that a professional basketball player for the NBA’s New York Knicks was arrested last night for marijuana possession.

Beneath a headline, “Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture,” the Times explains that marijuana use is rampant throughout the restaurant industry – but that isn’t a bad thing.

“Everybody smokes dope after work,” said Anthony Bourdain, the author and chef who made his name chronicling drugs and debauchery in professional kitchens. “People you would never imagine…

“There has been an entire strata of restaurants created by chefs to feed other chefs,” Mr. Bourdain said. “These are restaurants created specially for the tastes of the slightly stoned, slightly drunk chef after work.”

But what is apparently a bad thing is someone actually using marijuana outside of this exclusive restaurant culture. This is the message sent by the screaming headlines in the Times and elsewhere about the arrest of Knicks star Wilson Chandler. Ironically, he was arrested at almost the exact time the restaurant article appeared online.

We are at a crazy time in history in which marijuana’s popularity in an ever-expanding segment of the populace has advanced far ahead of more traditional segments of our society’s acceptance of it. We look forward to the day when traditional society — and our lawmakers — catch up. Fortunately, that day is being forced upon them whether they like it or not.

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In breaking news out of North Carolina today, four members of the NC State football team were cited on “drug charges” for hanging out in an apartment smoking a little marijuana. Apparently, an off-duty police officer working in the apartment building smelled marijuana and decided he needed to protect the community by busting in and arresting as many people as possible.

Three of the four players were charged with possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. All four, including one who apparently did not possess the marijuana but resided in the apartment with the other players, were charged with “maintaining a dwelling for the purpose of using a controlled substance.” Are they kidding? Do the police believe they specifically rented that apartment so that it would be a drug den?

Let’s review what was found on the premises:

[Police Sergeant R.E.] Hoffman said he found two homemade bongs, a multi-colored glass bong, three clear sandwich bags containing approximately six grams of marijuana and a blunt cigar containing marijuana in the apartment, according to the warrant. The warrant also stated the finding of Bryan’s BlackBerry, which contained images of a marijuana plant in growth.

Quite the drug den.

The article noted that the four players “were” expected to play substantial roles on the team next season. But their status may be in jeopardy because of this situation.

Here is the most troubling part of this story. We are only hearing about it because these individuals are college athletes. There are more than 800,000 marijuana arrests in the U.S. every year. Every single day in this country otherwise law-abiding citizens have their worlds turned upside-down because they made the rational decision to use a substance less harmful than alcohol one night. This is as absurd as our law gets.

Reversing this madness is the mission of MPP.

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