When the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers face off in game one of the World Series tonight, it will be the first time two teams from different medical marijuana states meet in the Fall Classic (The Giants and Angels played an intrastate series in ’02). There may be a smattering of Tigers fans in attendance, but unless they’re transplants living in California, they probably won’t be medical marijuana patients. When the series shifts to Detroit for game three, however, patients in California will be able to follow their team to Detroit with their medicine. Why the difference? Reciprocity.

Reciprocity is what allows patients to travel from one medical marijuana state to another. States that have it recognize the legitimacy of those out-of-state patients’ ID cards, at least for a short period of time and under some limited exceptions. For example, some states only provide protections for visiting patients who would qualify under their own laws, so a patient from California who uses marijuana to treat insomnia would not be able to use marijuana in Arizona, where insomnia is not a qualifying condition.

Here’s what Michigan’s law says:

"Visiting qualifying patient" means a patient who is not a resident of this state or who has been a resident of this state for less than 30 days.

…

A registry identification card, or its equivalent, that is issued under the laws of another state … that allows the medical use of marijuana by a visiting qualifying patient … shall have the same force and effect as a registry identification card issued by the department.

There are 17 states that allow patients with doctors’ recommendations to use medical marijuana, but only five—Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Montana, and Rhode Island—include reciprocity. All of those states’ laws were drafted by MPP.

So how does a medical marijuana patient travel, you might ask? It would be very risky to drive from, say, California to Michigan, since that would involve passing through plenty of states that don’t recognize any form of medical marijuana. And while you might think the T.S.A. won’t take too kindly to flying with medical marijuana, they do have an unofficial policy of deferring to state and local authorities, and there are a few examples of patients boarding planes after their medication turned up at the security checkpoint. Obviously we don't recommend Giants fans doing so without checking with the T.S.A. in Detroit first.

So there you have it. No word on whether two-time Cy Young winner, World Series champion, and noted marijuana user Tim Lincecum is aware of the policy.

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Twenty-four-year-old American Ivory Williams—one of the fastest 100-meter sprinters in the world—will not be allowed to compete on the U.S. Team for this year’s World Indoor Championships.

His offense? He tested positive for marijuana. Now Williams, who just last month ran the fastest 60 meters in the world, will be ineligible to compete for the next three months and will have to complete an anti-doping educational program.

It’s simply maddening to see a 24-year-old world-class athlete get sidelined from his sport just because he used a substance that is safer than alcohol and isn’t exactly what you’d call a performance-enhancing drug.  To add insult to injury, his manager felt compelled to issue a token apology, saying Williams exhibited “poor judgment.”

In a related, possibly even more frustrating story, the defending champion in the Iditarod—where dogs do the racing, not humans—might now be disqualified because he uses medical marijuana to treat the effects of throat cancer.

Of course, these are just the most recent examples of athletes being reprimanded and forced to apologize for using marijuana. (How can anyone forget the faux-outrages over Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps and Cy Young Award Winner Tim Lincecum?)

It’s one thing for law enforcement to issue penalties to athletes for breaking the law, but it’s quite another for sporting organizations to take it upon themselves to suspend athletes for doing something that isn’t affecting their performance and is actually safer than many of the substances they could be using legally. The fact that these successful, healthy athletes sometimes use marijuana helps to defy inaccurate lazy stoner stereotypes, but the harsh penalties handed down by sporting officials in response simply furthers the baseless notion that marijuana is a particularly harmful drug that consenting adults should be ashamed of using.

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