Patients have exhausted the option of working through the judicial branch of the federal government. The courts ultimately defer to the judgment of the DEA, which creates its own regulations in order to keep medical marijuana illegal.
Efforts to obtain FDA approval of marijuana have similarly been thwarted by prohibitionist agencies. Instead of supplying marijuana to any FDA-approved researcher who requests it, the National Institute on Drug Abuse -- the only legal source of marijuana for clinical research in the United States -- uses unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to justify denying researchers the marijuana they need.
In the meantime, patients continue to suffer. Congress has the power and the responsibility to change federal law so that seriously ill people nationwide can use medical marijuana without fear of arrest and imprisonment.
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