The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act of 2008, also known as H.R. 5842, was a bill repeatedly introduced in the United States House of Representatives since 2001, most recently on April 17, 2008, by Ron Paul, M.D. (R-TX), Barney Frank (D-MA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), and Sam Farr (D-CA). It seeks to enact legal protections for authorized medical marijuana patients, in the House of Representatives. It was introduced along with HR 5843, or Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008.
Currently, 13 states -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington -- have enacted laws protecting medical marijuana patients from state prosecution, but they are not recognized federally, and, thus, federal raids are still possible on state-legal institutions of cannabis growing and distribution. Due to Gonzales v. Raich, federal agents may intervene even when the cannabis does not cross state boundaries.
It does not change current federal regulations on recreational use, but simply lets states choose their own stance on medical marijuana regulations, as well as opening the door for further study, regulation, and use by reclassifying the plant medically.
Famous quotes containing the words medical, marijuana, patient, protection and/or act:
“Mark Twain didn’t psychoanalyze Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Dickens didn’t put Oliver Twist on the couch because he was hungry! Good copy comes out of people, Johnny, not out of a lot of explanatory medical terms.”
—Samuel Fuller (b. 1911)
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—Richard Neville (b. 1941)
“For who would bare the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)