[420 Girl]

State Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, who won the long and necessary fight for a needle-exchange program for street drug addicts, is moving with as much forethought on the issue of medical marijuana.

She is backed by a growing medical community consensus and possibly critical judicial authority.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to California's medical marijuana law, thus allowing it to stand. Likely, the nation's highest court has come to the right conclusion about marijuana's value in terms of alleviating patient suffering, particularly the excruciating pain and side effects from treatments for catastrophic illnesses.

Sen. Henry wants Delaware to become the 14th state to legalize marijuana solely for such purposes. Senate Bill 94 would require doctor certification of the medical need. Residents would be allowed to have up to 6 ounces of marijuana for a month's supply and be issued identification cards to prevent prosecution for having that amount or less. A regulated process would be used to allow patients to grow their own plants. The state would license centers to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes.

S.B. 94 would usher Delaware into an appropriately modern era allowing the state to address a legitimate social need by users of banned substances. In the case of dirty needles, addicts are able to exchange them for clean ones to avoid transmission of HIV, one of the leading causes of AIDS in that population.

But there are lessons to be learned from elsewhere. For example, patients in Washington and Oregon worry about tainted batches of "pot" from poorly monitored and regulated facilities, even state-managed sites. They urge distribution from accredited medical facilities.

Other states rightly worry that some users won't be able to comply with regimented laws and resort to the black market.

By barring patients and caregivers from growing their own marijuana plants, Oregon calculated, it could raise $188 million a year for the state budget off 10,000 pounds of medical marijuana sold each month. Patients would pay state tax of $98 per ounce.

In this current economy, the profit potential is enticing.

But S.B. 94's priority should be to quickly provide access to a consoling drug for ailing patients in keeping with the medicinal adage to do no harm.

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