How Federal Marijuana Policy Is Pushing Veterans Into the Black Market

It's unconscionable that those who have risked their lives and suffered injuries on the front lines protecting our country are treated like criminals for using marijuana.  Here's why that is:

"Due to the federal government’s decades-long classification of cannabis as a so-called Schedule One drug, one that has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” U.S. scientists have been blocked from properly conducting research on cannabis. And due to its federal prohibition VA heath care providers are not allowed to recommend cannabis to veterans, or assist veterans in obtaining cannabis."

In other words, a veteran who needs a prescription for medical marijuana cannot get one from his VA physician, nor can a VA physician either recommend to the veteran that he get one elsewhere, or assist him to obtain one.  These are the people who literally put their lives and their health on the line for all of us, and yet our federal government deprives them of the help that so many of them need.  It truly is unconscionable.  

Also unconscionable is the fact that veterans who use medicinal marijuana are forced to turn to illicit dealers, rather than purchase from state-legal dispensaries, because current federal gun regulations make it illegal for users of "any controlled substance" (which marijuana is currently designated as) to ship, transport, receive or possess firearms or ammunition.  

“The federal law is not real friendly if you get caught with guns around … a Schedule One Substance,” says Dale Schafer. “They can really cram that up your colon, really far.”

Many veterans are also fearful of using legal dispensaries because of their concern about being in a federal database, and having that fact used against them. 

“The vets that I’m looking at, that were being served well by medical marijuana, they were afraid to be part of a registry,” says Michael Krawitz, a disabled Air Force vet and executive director for the Virginia-based Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access. He says veterans he’s spoken to fear retribution by the federal government; of “having their benefits, especially their financial benefits, taken away from them as a result of being … associated with marijuana.”

This is wrong, and must be changed.  In addition to thanking veterans for their service, we need to ensure that they are treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve, and that means not forcing them to break the law in order to maintain their health.  

Source:https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/27/federal-m