The New York Times reports that the US Veterans Administration (VA) has now been instructed to “ease the rules for users of medical marijuana.” The VA has basically been told to ignore the use by military veterans of prescribed marijuana in those states where it has been declared legal. (Vets who are found using illicit drugs often lose their VA medical benefits.)
- Vet-Grown Reefer
This is the first time that the gov’t has given an inch since its participation in the creation of the drug laws.
While it’s only a small step, it will be interesting to witness how it plays out with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Some 12% of the nation’s jails and prisons are comprised of military veterans. As a veteran myself (Army, 101st Airborne), I receive all my meds and health care thru the VA—when I’m not otherwise getting them thru the BOP.
Prior to the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution, hemp or cannabis was legal. In fact, the very idea of telling people what they can or can’t ingest in their own bodies—much less criminalizing it—was totally foreign to the concept of basic American freedoms.
NY Militia Fires on Anti-Irish Crowd 1871
My grandmother at that time was just reaching puberty, and my grandfather was a teenager. They were first-generation Irish immigrants.
Certain forces in ruling and governmental circles (never a shortage of people who need to control the behavior of others), in conjunction with the Rupert Murdoch journalist of the period, William Randolph Hearst, chose to demonize Mexican immigrants fleeing from the troubles across the Southwest US borders (a generation earlier, in fact, it was Mexican land) by popularizing an association with marijuana and “creating” a fictitious use to “sexually enslave white girls.”
Hearst, who had bragged about creating the then-recent Spanish-American War (ca. 1898-1901), along with America’s first major foray into colonialism (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, etc.), simply employed racism to accomplish that purpose.
The tabloid media campaign of the time created enough of an hysteria against Mexicans that pandering politicians soon saw the political profit in criminalizing the weed (reports of the period indicate that most in the public, including legislators, weren’t even aware that “marijuana” was, in fact, simply a form of the ubiquitous hemp plant).
The criminalization of a variety of other drugs soon followed (i.e., alcohol [initially] and cocaine by blacks; opium by Asians, etc.), which has led to today’s largest prison system on the planet—and still growing. Some 55% of the US prison populations are incarcerated for drugs and drug-related “crimes.”
This site has no illusions that the BOP will allow medical marijuana under any circumstances. They barely allow, for that matter, much of anything else other than aspirin or Tylenol. In addition to charging prisoners a fee to go to sick-call (the money is deducted from the prisoner’s account), ”medical personnel” even insist that prisoners buy these drugs themselves thru the commissary.
The myths that drug programs have been generating all these years around the use of marijuana will soon be further undermined by these recent directives. What about prisoners now in halfway houses and on Supervised Release, many of whom receive their medical attention thru the VA? I can envision test cases soon coming before the courts.
Maybe I’ll even be one…
Dr. Publico
