L<\/span>ike a parent not quite ready to cave in but unwilling to confront their children\u2019s demands head-on, state legislatures in many Republican states aren\u2019t quite bending to their voters\u2019 will and legalizing medical marijuana.\u00a0Instead, lawmakers often promise that they are \u201copen\u201d to the notion and that they will address it in due time \u2014after the issue is thoroughly studied.<\/p>\n In Utah, repeated efforts to legalize medical marijuana that just barely failed culminated in such a promise to study, and\u00a0then<\/em>\u00a0perhaps take action.\u00a0Results from a state-commissioned, state-funded research project could be presented to the state legislature sometime this year<\/a>. In the meantime, state lawmakers who\u2019d pushed for medical marijuana have eased off.<\/p>\n Over in Indiana, the top lawmaker in Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s home state has a similar challenge. In House Speaker Brian Bosma\u2019s caucus are such firebrands as Jim Lucas, who wants to legalize medical marijuana outright. In a state hit hard by the opiate crisis, in a country where nearly two-thirds of states have accepted medical marijuana as a real thing, you could call such a step modest \u2014 conservative, even.<\/p>\n But Lucas\u2019s medical-marijuana bill is still stalled in committee<\/a> for want of a hearing. Meanwhile,\u00a0Bosma and the state\u2019s other legislative leaders are calling for a study.\u00a0<\/a>If all goes well, an official research entity will be commissioned this summer, and will report its findings back to the state in time for next year\u2019s legislative session.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we just need to know a lot more about it before we do anything,\u201d Bosma told the Indianapolis Star. \u201cMy mind could be changed, but it\u2019ll be based on facts not opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n In a way, Bosma is right \u2014his statehouse heard a wide swatch of testimony on the cannabis issue, including anti-marijuana testimony from an advocacy group representing Virginia prosecutors that argued marijuana decriminalization will lead to an increase in toddlers consuming cannabis.<\/p>\n But in very real way, calling for state studies into cannabis is just a delaying tactic.<\/p>\n These lawmakers are essentially saying \u201cWe\u2019ll see\u201d rather than confronting a difficult decision.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see\u201d and \u201cWe\u2019ll study it\u201d are the equivalent of saying \u201cWe\u2019d rather not think about this now until we absolutely have to\u201d\u2014 because what can a state agency find out in less than a year that generations of researchers don\u2019t already know, particularly when they lack the funding and the legal authority to actually, you know,\u00a0scientifically<\/em> study <\/em>marijuana?<\/p>\n \u201cBarriers to medical-grade marijuana research may be resulting in the preventable and unnecessary pain of countless Americans,\u201d\u00a0wrote Utah\u2019s delegation to Congress, all Republicans, in a recent op-ed published in the Salt Lake Tribune, <\/a>publicizing Rep. Rob Bishop\u2019s bill to ease restrictions on federal marijuana research.<\/p>\n \u201cMany have sought to address this by legalizing medical marijuana at the state level,\u201d the quartet wrote. Mind you, the lawmakers are not<\/em> calling for medical cannabis and they certainly don\u2019t want recreational cannabis, they\u2019re quick to assert. What they want is research, the very kind of research that their state delegations are calling for, that state researchers really can\u2019t do, because of federal restrictions.<\/p>\n The data on medical marijuana is clear and publicly available.\u00a0Last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a comprehensive review of all research done to date,<\/a> a compendium of knowledge to which the state reviews will not add, for they, too, are mere reviews of existing data. Among their findings: cannabis relieves pain and is very good for treating the wasting syndrome through which AIDS and cancer patients must suffer.<\/p>\n Remember: Marijuana was medicine for centuries, far longer than it\u2019s been a banned plant (something even the University of Utah admits<\/a>). Modern cannabis science is admittedly lacking \u2014 stunted, because of the federal government\u2019s prohibition.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the rest of the world has moved on. Canada has licensed medical-marijuana providers with federal government approval. In Italy, sick people can get medical marijuana grown for them by the military.<\/p>\n America stands nearly alone in clinging fiercely to a retrograde ideology. Promises to \u201cthink about it, and get back to you\u201d may look like progress, but it\u2019s really a way to delay the inevitable and play out prohibition as long as possible. It\u2019s a transparently obvious delaying tactic and should be identified as such.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think states should keep reviewing cannabis research?<\/p>\n The post Delay Tactics: Lawmakers Order Cannabis \u201cStudies\u201d<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers in red states, where voters want legal medical cannabis, are instead pushing for state-funded studies into marijuana\u2019s efficacy. But what do they want to learn that we don\u2019t already know? Spoiler: Nothing. Like a parent not quite ready to cave in but unwilling to confront their children\u2019s demands head-on,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,901,1203,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23370,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23369\/revisions\/23370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Delay Tactics: Lawmakers Order Cannabis \u201cStudies\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"