Issue Position: Medical Marijuana Initiative

Issue Position

If marijuana has medicinal benefits (and by most accounts it does), then I would like to encourage the federal government to approve it through the FDA. Once approved, it could be dispensed in a traditional pharmacy by prescription like every other drug. It could be grown elsewhere and transported across state lines, etc. I think pushing for FDA approval is the way to pursue this, not harvesting our own homegrown marijuana and having "bud tenders" (that is really what they are called) dispense from every strip mall in Utah as they do in some other states. Prop 2 is a Trojan horse initiative. For every person with a legitimate medical need that it would help, it would harm dozens of others. I have personally witnessed how marijuana saps initiative. It's an escape drug, like alcohol. It is mind-altering. Maybe it isn't as detrimental as alcohol - I'm certainly not going to say that it is, given alcohol's track record of destroying lives and families - but this isn't about alcohol. It's about what kind of society we want to have. I would like FDA approval of real medical marijuana (after all, morphine and other heroin derivatives are approved!), but I oppose Prop 2 as it is currently written.

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