Editorial: Puff, puff pass to the left wing

A fter spending the weekend listening to The Mars Volta and watching “Harold and Kumar,”… A fter spending the weekend listening to The Mars Volta and watching “Harold and Kumar,” President Obama decided to halt federal prosecutions of state-licensed medical marijuana users and providers.

So we don’t know his process, but the Department of Justice did announce on Monday that it will no longer interfere with states that allow medical marijuana. Righteous, dude.

The Department of Justice said in a statement that pursuing these prosecutions is not a good use of time or resources, according to the New York Times.

Until now, the federal government actively prosecuted people using medical marijuana, even if they were under compliance with their state laws, because they were still violating federal law. This wasted tax revenue could be better spent fighting the spread of universally illegal narcotics, including unprescribed marijuana. It also usurped power from doctors in their diagnoses of what could help unhealthy patients.

As the health care debate rages in Congress and across the country, each side argues that their solution will best empower doctors, yet with medical marijuana, the doctors get glossed over.

If a doctor thinks that a marijuana subscription is the best thing for a patient, why should the government stand in the way?

Doctors deserve our belief that they will write these prescriptions for the right reasons. They’re already responsible for prescribing addictive and potentially dangerous drugs, so marijuana feels like an awkward place to draw the line. While opponents of medical marijuana certainly have their reasons, the decision should ultimately fall upon one’s doctor as to whether the potential advantages are worth the potential drawbacks.

That isn’t liberal. It’s responsible.

By refraining from prosecuting the medical marijuana community, Obama is actually making a classically conservative move — and a good one. His decision reinforces both individual and state rights by removing federal bureaucracy from the process. It also provides clear, consistent guidelines for a citizenry befuddled by conflicting state and federal laws.

Now that this contradiction has been removed, states can openly debate medical marijuana without the non-starter of “Well, it’s still illegal at the federal level, so why bother?” The conversation has always been happening, but perhaps now it won’t be quite as taboo to advocate for legalizing medical marijuana, so our society can have an educated debate and decide, for the right reasons, whether to allow it.

Currently, 14 states have legalized or decriminalized medical marijuana. Believe it or not, Pennsylvania is not among them. However, allowing and taxing medical marijuana might alleviate some of the commonwealth’s migraine headaches from the budget crisis, while potentially helping medical patients who could be waiting for the right treatment for them to be permitted.

Next year’s gubernatorial race has already started, and this would make a fascinating proposal to consider. The next question for the federal government will come when an especially liberal state like California decides to decriminalize marijuana entirely. But that’s a very different debate, and hopefully, both sides of this debate will recognize it as such.