Medical Marijuana Requests Rise Under Obama
More and more Americans are finding out the truth. Using cannabis as medicine is not only safe, but it is effective.
The rise in requests for medical marijuana has been dramatic of late. In various states where laws allow, dispensary owners recently admitted to an increase in 2009 requests for the pain reducer that ranges from 50 percent to as much as 300 percent. The high numbers seem to be implicitly linked to the stance of the Obama administration on the subject; the federal government will not interfere with state laws and patients who abide by them.
As people feel safer with the idea of medical cannabis and a President who supports the idea of “medical cannabis.” more states will follow and allow its citizens to become medical marijuana patients.
While some analysts insist the rise in medical marijuana requests pertains to the economic recession and subsequent growing number of Americans without health insurance, as they may turn to alternative and less expensive treatments for pain and disease, treatments like medical marijuana. However, most dispensary owners attribute the increase to the word from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that the Obama administration would not involve itself in state matters regarding medical marijuana.
The word first hit the medical marijuana community when the Obama for America campaign acknowledged its opposition to the Bush policy on the matter. A response letter to those inquiring on the subject read, in part: “Many states have laws that condone medical marijuana, but the Bush Administration is using federal drug enforcement agents to raid these facilities and arrest seriously ill people. Focusing scarce law enforcement resources on these patients who pose no threat while many violent and highly dangerous drug traffickers are at large makes no sense. Senator Obama will not continue the Bush policy when he is president.”
Every citizen in any state of America should be allowed to use medical cannabis.
Though Holder has not always held the same view, he has changed course since his appointment as the Attorney General. And despite Drug Enforcement Administration raids that happened as Obama took office in late 2008 as a continuation of the Bush policy, which stated that federal law overrode that of the states, those have since been ordered to an end. Holder stated in February of 2009, “What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing in law enforcement… What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”
According to Colorado clinic numbers, applications for medical marijuana have risen significantly. As December 2008 came to a close, there were 4,720 applications on file, as compared to the 6,796 by February 28, 2009. While this certainly does not indicate that doctors are willing to authorize all of the new patients for marijuana use, the requests are difficult to ignore. And to accommodate, some dispensaries are paying doctors to be on staff and provide the oversight to patients whose own doctors are unwilling to sign off on the applications.
medical marijuana applications continue to rise, and it is time for other states who do not have medical marijuana programs to start them!