Why We Should Legalize Marijuana

Persuasive Position: Changing Texas Cannabis Law

Cannabis laws are changing all over the nation. Yet Texas continues to have some of the most restrictive ordinances prohibiting even the prescription of marijuana for medicinal purposes as well as recreational use in the nation. Houston Public Media’s Jerry Quijano Kut’s recent article “New Medical Marijuana Law Goes into Effect, Expanding Access to Cancer Patients and Texans with PTSD” proclaims sensationally that the recently passed House Bill 1535 means: “Thousands more Texans can now be prescribed medical cannabis oil with low levels of THC, the ingredient that gets people high” (Kut, 2021, par.1). But people who are using marijuana for pain relief are not using the drug to feel high. They are merely using it, in many instances, simply to feel normal and to be able to manage the acts of their daily lives.

Regarding the fact that marijuana is a potentially dangerous narcotic, the same could be said of any number of controlled substances prescribed for pain relief. Instead of viewing cannabis as a particularly nefarious drug, a more useful comparison might be with other substances, such as opioid medications, which have an even higher degree of addictive potential. Marijuana, simply because people also use it recreationally, should be viewed in the context of other medical substances (and also recreational substances like alcohol), rather than demonized in the rhetoric of the media. The Houston Public Media article’s reference to getting high simply contributes to the spread of misinformation that medical marijuana legalization advocates have been trying to fight for decades.

If anything, advocates for the chronically ill argue, the bill does not go far enough. As noted by the bill’s advocates, individuals suffering from severe illnesses should not have to worry about proving that they are sick to warrant a prescription, if their physician believes it may be helpful. The bill does provide some hope by allowing all forms of cancer to be treated with the drug. Previously, only terminal cancer patients could get a prescription for cannabis. The current bill notes any form of cancer can potentially be terminal, and even patients without a terminal cancer diagnosis can suffer debilitating pain and loss of function due to chemotherapy treatment (Kut, 2021). But the bill also only allows certain sufferers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as veterans, to access cannabis to address their psychological needs (Kut, 2021). Cannabis also has psychological applications, and the bill falls short in this regard, since PTSD sufferers from sexual abuse and other common afflictions cannot get relief.

This is not to say that every single person who wants to use marijuana wants to do so for medicinal purposes. But the highly restrictive treatment of the bill interferes with the relationship between patient and doctor. Pain relief can be a very individual thing, as can responding to psychotropic medications. Ultimately, legislators should take a light rather than heavy hand with regulating such substances.

The author of the article did ultimately defend the bill, noting that it is an important baby step in reforming the law. Texas legislators have advocated incremental change, in an attempt to see how the law’s effects regarding liberalization of marijuana use evolve over time. But that does not help all people who could potentially benefit from the drug in the here and now. Given the pace with which other states nearby are adopting more liberalized legislation, Texas is increasingly seeming behind the times to an absurd degree.

Even with doubling the permissible amount of the substance (THC) which produces marijuana’s psychological effects, Texas’s marijuana legalization law (first passed in 2015) remains one of the most restrictive in the country, relative to its neighboring states (Kut, 2021). Texas’s notably conservative electorate overwhelmingly supports legalization (Kut, 2021). Additionally, it could also be argued that liberalization is consistent with the Texas libertarian philosophy of expanding individual liberties, and allowing people to make their own decisions (with their physicians) about how to manage personal affairs like their health.

It is true that legalization cannot be a black-and-white issue. Legalization cannot be instituted like flipping on a switch. But since the groundwork for liberalization and legalization for most medicinal purposes was laid in Texas as far back as 2015, the fact that the law continues to remain so restrictive and only incrementally reformed is problematic. For example, only permitting PTSD sufferers who are veterans to access the drug is a very narrow segment of the population who could potentially benefit from the drug, and no real justification is given only limiting it to veterans. Even a veteran’s rights advocate who supported legalizing prescriptions for PTSD supported it for all patients, not simply veterans (Kut, 2021). Limiting PTSD treatment to only specific classes of suffers implies a hierarchy of severity, and non-veteran suffers of the illness already struggle with gaining recognition for their disorder’s negative impacts upon their lives.

Furthermore, it should be noted that autism is already a permitted treatment under current Texas law, so allowing cannabis use for psychological as well as physical treatment is well-established (Kut, 2021). Thus, the number of existing restrictions ties the hands of physicians for patients with other severe illnesses beyond the current list, limiting the ability of doctors to exercise the full range of their prescriptive, professional judgement for a substance that more and more physicians are prescribing for a wide range of uses across the country.

Creating a patchwork of medical marijuana legislation is unlikely to be feasible or useful. Patients will simply go to neighboring states if they do not feel like their physicians can accommodate them in Texas, or will break the law, obtaining cannabis illegally. Unfortunately, if someone is very sick, this can result in additional inconvenience, pain, suffering, and expense, in addition to the physical and mental trauma they are already coping with, along with their illness. For patients who attempt to obtain it locally and illegally, there are fewer guarantees that they can access cannabis that is of high quality and will genuinely address their medical needs.

Finally, reason the bill has gained such traction is the awareness of the increased risk of opioid addiction. Cannabis is thought to be less addictive. Texas has been hard-hit by the opioid epidemic. “In 2018, Texas logged 1,402 opioid-involved overdose deaths, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That appears to have risen significantly in recent years and during the pandemic” (Wistrom, 2021, par.4). Although marijuana is not a risk-free substance, when compared with opioids, which have been much more widely prescribed, it is often a more mild, less addictive, and more effective palliative. It can increase appetite, mood, as well as relieve pain, making it particularly helpful for patients grappling with severe physical illnesses which also impact their mood. And opioids do not have the psychological application cannabis use does.