As an activist, there are a plethora of excuses you hear day today about why medical marijuana should not be legal, and one that always stands out to me is: “people will abuse medical marijuana.”
Their argument is that people will either over use their medical privileges or that they will use their medical card to buy for minors or people that do not have a medical card. To this I say of course. Of course people will abuse their medical marijuana privileges. People will over use their medication. People will use their medical card to sell to people that do not have a card. People will even sell it to minors. Without a doubt, this will happen on a daily basis if medical marijuana is legalized.
So what? Has this argument stopped you before? People already do this constantly with opioids, opiates, and ADD medication. Today, thousands of people across the nation will get their hands on prescription medication that doesn’t belong to them. Today, thousands of high schoolers will get their hands on tobacco or alcohol when they are underage for these substances. Today, thousands of people in prohibition states will get their hands of marijuana regardless of the law.
This happens! People will get their hands on these substances no matter what. But the questions is if this is a sufficient reason to punish medical patients who need it for legitimate reasons? Would that not be a major injustice done upon people that are already suffering? Just because some people may break the law, doesn’t mean that all that are suffering must suffer even more because of the choices of others according to opponents of medical marijuana.
