Do you remember how last fall, John McCain said that we never arrest dying patients for using medical marijuana? "You'll have to show me a case," he said. "I haven't heard of such a case, nor has anyone I know heard of such a case, so it must be a very well-kept secret."
Well, the AP is now reporting on the story of Timothy Garon, a 56-year-old with Hepatitis C who was not only arrested for his doctor-approved, state-legalized use of medical marijuana, but who was apparently denied an organ transplant for his failing liver as well. When the AP first reported the story on April 26, his doctors were telling him that without that transplant, he wouldn't survive. And last week, after being denied a transplant for the third time, Garon died.
All legal and scientific controversy associated with medical marijuana aside, the fact is, there are plenty of federal laws that go unenforced around the country every day. The federal government, theoretically, could prosecute you for any number of old-fashioned crimes like disrupting a rodeo, making a false weather report (penalty: up to 90 days), and writing a check for less than $1. It's not going to. Why? Because it's got better things to do. It'd be nice if respecting patients whose use of medical marijuana is legal under state law would also make that list.
Apart from cases like Garon--as if any other evidence of the issue's absurdity was needed--it's little-known fact that even as the federal government continues to arrest patients, for decades, it has simultaneously been dispensing medical marijuana to people like Elvy Musikka, a 68-year-old woman from Oregon who suffers from glaucoma. She's one of the last remaining patients from a 1978 FDA medical-marijuana program that Bush Sr. shut down in 1992, after an surge of applicants with AIDS.
--Te-Ping Chen
