Judges--the New Doctors?

Despite the authorization of his doctor for lower back pain and arguments by his attorney that opiates made him sick, Robert Dalton of Washington was recently convicted of marijuana cultivation. Superior Court Judge Anna Laurie sided with the "Kitsap County Deputy Prosecutor Coreen Schnepf [who] argued during the trial that Dalton was receiving relief from opiate pain medications and that he needed to have pain that was not relieved by other medications in order to use medical marijuana. It is not known where Schnepf obtained her medical degree."

We can now apparently add judges and prosecutors to the list of professionals guilty of practicing medicine without a license--right after the police who decide daily whether or not an individual 'looks sick enough' to rightfully possess medical marijuana.

Also, given the evidence that marijuana works synergistically with opiates to alleviate inflammatory pain, allowing patients to use a smaller effective dose of the addictive opiates, it seems foolish to take a 'one or the other' approach to the use of medical marijuana when opiate medications are also involved.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/533/medical_marijuana_washington_judge_doctor