This could lead to a showdown between the federal government and the states whose laws allow medical marijuana.  I’ve noticed in the last couple of days a real push on CNN about drug abuse and I wonder if that isn’t being pushed by the new impetus we see to legalize marijuana.  When prescription drugs are being abused at a high rate does it make since to keep marijuana illegal?  I guess there are two ways to look at that and I’m not sure which side of the issue CNN is trying to help.

I find it disturbing that people in real and chronic pain find it more and more difficult to have their pain treated because of those who abuse drugs.   My  husband has a friend who is dying from cancer.  The Oxycontin no longer controls his pain and it makes him quite nauseous and the THC pills don’t work.  Marijuana does help when he can get it and when he can stand to smoke it….unfortunately he hasn’t had enough to have it baked into brownies or something and smoking the marijuana smoke causes him to cough which hurts him.  Given he probably only has weeks to live I have to wonder why they haven’t upgraded his medication to something stronger.

Will the federal government accept the Third District Court of Appeals decision or fight back?

Medical marijuana patients and growers can sue police for illegally raiding their property and destroying their plants, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 2-1 decision by the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento was the first in the state to allow a patient or grower to sue claiming that their rights to cultivate and use medical marijuana have been violated. Those rights are protected by state law but banned by federal law.

Officials in Butte County, where the case arose, argued that patients and suppliers can invoke the medical marijuana law only as a defense to criminal charges, not to sue for damages. The court’s dissenting justice said no one is entitled to compensation for the destruction of a drug banned under federal law.

But the court’s majority said a marijuana patient or member of a collective has the same right as anyone else to sue officers who violate the constitutional ban on illegal searches and seizures.

via REST OF ARTICLE.