Rhode Island

Has once again overridden the governor's veto of medical marijuana use. This is another issue on which I come out on the wrong side of the Republican Party (though I still wont succumb to the siren call of the Libertarian party, or as I call it, political irrelevance).

I have to admit the couple of times I have been around people who, um, self-medicate their "glaucoma," I have been pretty uncomfortable. Not because I care what people do to their bodies (as a law student, I am required by the rules of professional conduct to drink a minimum of one liter of liquor or four bottles of wine per week--why do you think our professional association is called the bar?), but because I don't want to be involved in the mindless enforcement of a ridiculous law. Gay Republicans tend to prefer to stay out of jail, unless it's tennis prison for some barely illegal offense like embezzlement or insider trading.

Sure the medical use exception is a narrow one, but it's a welcome, if small, retreat of the government (in only a few states) from our private lives. I wonder why no Republican is willing to say that our limited (were it only so!) tax dollars might be better spent not on the war on drugs, but the war on terror. Heck, I'll say it.