Why Don’t Legislators Consult Doctors When Writing Laws Regarding the Medical Community?
As Dr. Dara Huang said, doctors follow the laws, but they don’t create them. Therefore, there exists a major disconnect between lawmakers and practicing physicians regarding the use and prescription of medicinal marijuana. I think that in order to rectify this divide and better integrate marijuana into the (legal) medical repertoire, the government should really partner with doctors and learn from their firsthand experiences the positive effects marijuana has to offer in order to draft more educated, inclusive, and functional laws regarding medicinal marijuana. This would of course require bipartisan support from whatever government entities that would be involved, as well as support from the medical community and doctors who might have a background or interest and knowledge in legislature/law.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning it supposedly has no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse (LSD and Ecstasy are other notable Schedule I drugs, while Meth and Fentanyl are confoundingly classified as Schedule II). Doctors all over the country disagree with the notion that marijuana has no acceptable medical usage because patients have used marijuana — both legally and illegally — to treat and alleviate symptoms of ailments such as glaucoma, HIV, Crohn’s disease, and even seizures for decades. It is fair to assume that because of the restrictions imposed by both federal and state governments, thousands of people unnecessarily suffer because they do not have access to medical marijuana to treat their ailments.
In the breakout rooms, my groups have always concluded that the government has seemingly disregarded all types of evidence proving the effectiveness of marijuana to prevent people from using it as a legitimate medicine despite decades’ worth of evidence from medical studies and legal testimony saying that marijuana works better than other typically prescribed drugs (Jenks v. State, for example). Given the government’s unwillingness to utilize the myriad types of evidence to the contrary at its fingertips, it seems as though it wants to perpetuate the myths surrounding marijuana that began the 1930’s.
One of the articles we were assigned the first week of class, druglibrary.org’s “Social impact of marihuana use”, talks about the stereotypes that marijuana use created. The article says “[the medical, law enforcement, newspaper, and legislative communities] viewed [marijuana] as a menace to the public order. Crime, insanity and idleness were thought to be the inevitable consequences of its use.” The medical community (and arguably newspapers) has clearly changed its tone now, but the legislative community controls law enforcement, and they still view marijuana as a gateway drug that has no useful medical implications. The article goes on to say that in the 1930’s,
[n]ewspapers all over the country began to publish lurid accounts of “marihuana atrocities.” In the absence of adequate understanding of the effects of the drug, these largely unsubstantiated stories profoundly influenced public opinion and gave birth to the stereotype of the marihuana user as physically aggressive, lacking in self-control, irresponsible, mentally ill and, perhaps most alarming, criminally inclined and dangerous.
These stereotypes influenced the legislative bodies that created laws that criminalized marijuana and classified it as a dangerous, addictive drug with no redeeming qualities. The article admits that the stories were unsubstantiated, and the effects of marijuana were largely unknown at the time. A century later, the same excuses cannot be made. Doctors have been outspoken regarding the many positive effects that marijuana possess as a viable treatment, but legislative bodies are still unwilling to accept these findings and rewrite laws to permit marijuana as an acceptable treatment for myriad diseases.
Dr. Huang also mentioned the vertical integration that is necessary to obtain medical marijuana in New York. First, the doctor must be licensed to practice in the same state in which the patient resides, otherwise the patient must go to a doctor who practices in the state in which they live. And if that doctor is not their primary care doctor who knows their history, that doctor might not be comfortable recommending medical marijuana for the patient. My mom is a nurse and a lot of the patients at her New Jersey office come from both New York and New Jersey, so if a New York patient wanted a prescription, they would have to go find a new doctor in New York willing to give it to them, which might be hard due to limits with insurance coverage.
Dr. Huang also brought up a point I hadn’t thought of: it is a felony to cross state lines with marijuana in your possession, and this provision extends to medical marijuana. But for people living west of the Hudson River, you basically have to cross state lines to get into NYC. I live in Rockland, so the fastest way for me to get to the city is to take the Palisades Parkway into New Jersey and then cross the George Washington Bridge back into New York. It’s a 20-minute trip, but I’m in New Jersey for the majority of the drive (I could take the TZ Bridge through Westchester to stay in New York, but it’s an annoyingly longer drive). If a doctor were to prescribe medical marijuana for me, I would likely want to take the Palisades route to get to a dispensary in Manhattan, thereby committing a felony just to reach another part of my state. This type of restriction on medical marijuana is a deterrent and a roadblock (no pun intended) for people trying to access what could be argued as medically necessary healthcare. Though I’m sure New York is one of the very few states, if not the only one, that poses this intrastate travel obstacle, it probably did not occur to legislators that people need to cross into NJ to get to and from different parts of New York, thereby further complicating their ability to legally obtain marijuana.
In order to rectify almost a century’s worth of misconceptions regarding marijuana use, both recreationally and medically, and to legitimize its presence as a medicine, I think legislative bodies need to be more receptive to listening to real people’s experiences with the drug and work with doctors like Dr. Huang in order to create more comprehensive, inclusive, and acceptable ways to integrate marijuana as a valid medical treatment. The fact that we have a government comprised of non-medical professionals creating laws surrounding medical treatment is perplexing and on the same level as insurance companies dictating what procedures beneficiaries can have done, despite what doctors prescribe. There are aspects of the medical use that simply do not occur to legislators who are not necessarily well-versed in medicine. It would greatly benefit those affected by these laws if physicians were consulted and actually listened to when legislators draft laws regarding medical marijuana.
