White House has no plans to reverse course on purpose of weed.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Earlier this month, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta announced that he was reversing his long-standing position against the use of medical marijuana. His announcement posted on the CNN website where it has received almost 27,000 comments, became an Internet and news sensation that many cited may turn the tide in the battle to pass federal legislation that legalizes medical marijuana nationwide. But President Barack Obama apparently has no plans to change his stance on the issue.
“[The President] does not, at this point, advocate a change in the law,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Wednesday. He reiterated the President’s commitment to hunting down and prosecuting drug traffickers, saying that individual users are not a big enough problem to be of concern to the federal government.
The use of medical marijuana has become a state issue; 20 individual states like California and Colorado, as well as Washington, DC, have sanctioned the sale and distribution of marijuana for medicinal purposes only for designated patients and sold by carefully monitored medical outlets. The White house has supposedly spent $300 million during Obama’s presidency to combat the illegal growing and distribution of marijuana in the US.
Gupta changed his stance on the issue as a result of his working on a documentary entitled Weed, which is one of the most common street names for the substance. While researching and producing the film, which aims to provide a definitive answer to the question of whether or not marijuana has sound medical uses, Gupta says he spoke to hundreds of doctors around the world that showed him the evidence he needed to see in order to be convinced that marijuana was a legitimate medical tool. Marijuana is classified by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as a “Schedule 1” controlled substance, meaning that it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Other substances in the same category are heroin and peyote.
“I apologize because I didn’t look hard enough, until now. I didn’t look far enough,” said Gupta in his August 8th post on CNN’s website. “I didn’t review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis [the scientific term for marijuana].”
Gupta was born and raised in Novi, Oakland County, Michigan (which has been in the news recently for a racially-charged lawsuit involving Indian-Americans). He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Michigan, and his Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from the University of Michigan’s Medical School in 1993. He declined an offer from President Obama in 2009 to join his administration as Surgeon General. In 2011, Forbes Magazine called him one of the ten most influential celebrities in the US. He currently lives in Atlanta, where he works for CNN, with his wife Rebecca Olson Gupta and their three daughters.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com