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:
“Unusual precocity in children, is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.”
—Richard Neville (b. 1941)
“Oh that my Pow’r to Saving were confin’d:
Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)