Puerto Rico’s governor signs decree to authorize medical marijuana
Puerto Rico’s Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla has authorized the use of marijuana for medicinal use, in a surprise move after the US possession’s legislature failed to act on the issue
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The governor provided few details of the plan, but smoking marijuana will continue to be banned.
Rius Armendariz said regulations must now be drawn up governing how cannabis will be dispensed, who will have the right to produce it and what diagnoses will be required for treatment with marijuana-derived products.
While this is thrilling I want to draw attention to how "smoked marijuana" will still be banned. This is an artifact of longstanding anti-marijuana propaganda and reefer madness.
I call this "driving the car with the brake on". I see this in therapy a lot: people want change, know they need change but are still terrified of letting go and letting change happen, so they micromanage everything in a vain attempt to assuage the anxiety that comes with giving up control over this or that.
Clearly the Governor there understands the medical significance of the cannabis plant and has some good grasp of the issue and MOST LIKELY this continued 'ban on smoked cannabis' reflects some political considerations to get this thing passed.
Thank God cannabis prohibition has been a miserable and counter-productive failure and people RE able to get cannabis to use as they wish each day.
And, in a way, the medical marijuana movement was inevitable if the hell of cannabis prohibition was to be stopped: It is the Completion Backwards Syndrome. If marijuana was legal again, people would simply use it for what they are going to use it for: medical marijuana is a stepping stone to actually fixing the hell of cannabis prohibition.
As long as it gets fixed...
And, by the way, it is taking so long to fix because Reefer Madness is just too good of a government scam to end abruptly, no matter how egregiously wrong it is.