Marijuana is always illegal under all circumstances — except when it’s not. This is the directive we’ve given to the seriously ill patients who qualify for medical marijuana, which is illegal under federal law but permitted by some states, including Maine.

This lack of coordination between two different levels of government has already resulted in conflicts, and it was just a matter of time before we started seeing the results in Maine.

Here, it was an unjust crackdown, rescinded Tuesday, on seriously ill, low-income patients who risked losing their subsidized housing if they used or grew the medication that they are permitted to have under state law and would be able to possess if they lived in different housing.

Earlier this month, the Maine State Housing Authority board voted to bar any tenant receiving support through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 program from using or possessing medical marijuana while at home. The decision was driven by concern that the agency could jeopardize its federal funding if it did not take this step. Fortunately, the board put other concerns first.

Seriously ill tenants with AIDS or cancer should not have to go without treatment or risk eviction because two branches of the government can’t get on the same page.

There were two reasons not to implement a crackdown. It is not U.S. Department of Justice policy to prosecute medical marijuana users who are following their state’s law. The friction so far has been in states where some dispensaries were seen as intentionally sneaking around the law and selling marijuana as a party drug.

And the board was cracking down on the wrong people. Some medical marijuana patients in the Section 8 program might be able to go elsewhere to keep and use their medication, but some would not and would have to go without a substance that eases their pain. It’s best for this issue to be fought out in court between state regulators and federal authorities, instead of making people who are by definition both poor and sick bear the brunt of the dispute?

The ultimate solution here is a change in federal regulations to give marijuana the same standing as drugs like morphine, which are legal in medical applications. But until then, MaineHousing was right not to make its tenants pay for a dysfunctional public policy.

 


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