The Kettle Calling Pot Black

I think it's an oxymoron.  You know what an oxymoron is, right?  No, it's not someone who believes laundry detergent commercials.  It's two words that are used together but don't fit, like "jumbo shrimp" or "congressional intelligence."

Or "medical marijuana."

I'm sorry, but I just don't get it; there's something in my BS meter that goes wild when the topic comes up, and here it is:

In the USA it takes years to get through FDA testing in a rigorous, controlled and peer-reviewed process which produces scads of interaction warnings, and very specific dosages and instructions for what you can and cannot prescribe it for.  Yet here we are, prescribing a known mind-altering drug that comes not in a dose-measured pill bottle but in a weed bag (I assume), with addictive properties, and the dosage is determined by the "patient".

This makes no sense to me.  I once wrote, on a different topic, about reacting to circumstances that don't quite align and the rule of circumstantial evidence.  Medical pot is just like that.  I am not arguing the medical utility of marijuana as a pain reliever.  I haven't done the research; have only read a little since it doesn't matter for this purpose; I will stipulate that there is a constituent of marijuana that alleviates pain.

So let's ask:
(1) Why does it have to be delivered in the same way (smoked) that produces the dangerous high?
(2) Why, among all prescribed drugs, is it allowed to be dosed so haphazardly?
(3) Why do we not trust only actual pharmacies with actual pharmacists to dispense it?
(4) Why is it not that just the active pain-killing ingredient is compounded into a pill, like all other drugs?

The answer is simple.  There is a large set of pot-smokers there trying to legalize their recreational drug of choice, and have found that making it a prescribable intoxicant for the least provable condition (pain) was the fastest path to full legalization.  Remember the "inconsistent with innocence" rule?  If the medical marijuana advocates were seriously concerned only for the well-being of the aching American, this would have been put in the hands of the FDA by an actual drug company years ago as a compounded drug, and an extract (i.e., a pill, not a cigarette) with the pain-reducing but without the mind-altering capabilities would be in pharmacies all over the USA.

I guess we'll have to look at the results, including the auto fatality rates in Colorado and Washington State, to see what the collateral damage is, but for me, I just want to keep asking why, if the pain relieving capabilities of C. Sativa are that wonderful, they weren't just made into a pill.

If you know, please tell me.

Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton