Minnesota state Representative tells feds to get moving on marijuana research

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Minnesota state Rep. Diane Loeffler.


About the only thing people can agree on when it comes to the medical marijuana debate is that the federal government isn’t helping. Many of the disputes at the state level wouldn’t be necessary if the Drug Enforcement Administration would reconsider its classification of the plant as a Schedule One narcotic and expedite, rather than hold up, serious research on its medicinal value.
Troubled by this, Minnesota state Rep. Diane Loeffler (DFL-Minneapolis) introduced a resolution Thursday that calls upon President Obama and Congress to force those federal agencies into action.


Loeffler voted in favor of the House medical marijuana bill (and was a sponsor of the 2009 version that then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed) but says people shouldn’t have to figure out the benefits of marijuana through their own trial-and-error process.
“We think medical marijuana needs to be available to the people,” she says, “and the people really want good science backing this like all other medicines.”
It’s difficult, of course, to have a serious conversation when the people tasked with managing drug policy won’t even acknowledge that there’s a difference between pot and crack cocaine. Huffpo reports Friday that Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonhart has gone so far as to “pick a fight with Kentucky over the state’s purchase of industrial hemp seeds to begin a newly legalized agricultural test.”
Read more over at the Minneapolis City Pages.

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