SC should learn from other states’ medical marijuana experience

All eight states that have enacted medical marijuana laws quickly moved to legalizing recreational marijuana, having not realized that medical marijuana was a slippery slope to disaster: rise in traffic deaths, candy- and cookie-laden enticements for young people, the burden on social service programs, babies born with low birth weights, more parental neglect charges and deaths from overdoses.

South Carolina is fortunate to have learned from the costly mistakes of these other states.

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Legislators hope 2017 is the year for medical pot in SC

SLED chief, SC senator clash over legalizing medical pot

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Money is pouring into our state from Washington and other states to influence our General Assembly to pass Sen. Tom Davis’ craftily written medical marijuana bill, because S.212 is a blueprint for legalized pot.

In a 2016 poll conducted by Winthrop, 77 percent of respondents said medical marijuana should be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration just like other drugs, with researched dose levels, and should be prescribed by physicians, not just recommended as Sen. Davis’ bill condones. The many years spent trying to use the legislative process to legalize pot could have been used instead to conduct evidence-based research.

Some have criticized the many law enforcement, social service and medical personnel, children advocates, crime victim advocates and substance-abuse experts for testifying against medical marijuana and recreational pot use; but these experts would be remiss in not expressing their concern for the immense cost if this money-driven legislation were to become law.

It’s impossible to calculate the burden taxpayers would incur in trying to regulate and absorb the needs of new victims created by such a law.

No one wishes to deny access to THC oil to those convinced that marijuana helps with a myriad of medical issues, but let that access be governed by legitimate medical personnel with doses approved, prescribed and regulated by the FDA. Any responsible parents would want to know the exact dosage of anything they give a medically fragile child.

As the Rev. Mark Creech, a former director of the Christian Action Council of North Carolina, put it: “We don't determine medicine according to the political winds of the day.… In this country, the procedure we have traditionally used, much to our benefit, is that we require a proposed curative go through the rigorous testing and research of the scientific process.”

This story was originally published February 15, 2017 at 5:48 PM with the headline "SC should learn from other states’ medical marijuana experience."