[420 Girl]

The effort to allow marijuana's legal use by seriously ill Minnesotans isn't new at the Capitol. Proponents have been making their case since at least 1992, with this person’s support.

But the accounts of disease victims and their loved ones about the drug's benefits pack an emotional punch that's still fresh. No one could listen to Joni Whiting of Jordan tell legislators on March 24 of her late daughter's facial melanoma misery, relieved by no drug other than marijuana, and not be moved.

Over the years, mounting evidence has attested to marijuana's effectiveness in relieving pain, nausea, muscle spasms and glaucoma symptoms. So have success stories from the 13 states in which marijuana has been decriminalized for use by the sick.

Norm Stamper, a former Seattle chief of police, came to St. Paul last month to attest to Washington state's experience since decriminalizing marijuana's medicinal sale and use in 1998. Though he spent 40 years fighting criminal drug activity, he came to support the drug's decriminalization for the sick when two people close to him were wracked with pain that only marijuana eased.

In Stamper's state and eight others, medical marijuana became law via a ballot question, not legislative action. That approach often limits the authority of elected officials to regulate who can prescribe marijuana as medicine, who can receive it, for what conditions, in what quantities, and from which sources. While Stamper reported reduced crime and illicit drug use in Washington and other medical marijuana states, he recommended that Minnesota policymakers keep the issue in their own hands.

Washington's way of legalizing medical marijuana should not be Minnesota's — but it could be. Supporters of the decriminalization bill are understandably frustrated after nearly two decades of futile effort to change state statutes, even as polls have shown that a strong majority of Minnesotans share their position.

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