An arm of the White House’s anti-drug office has asked Massachusetts and several other states where medical marijuana is legal to turn over information about their registered patients, triggering a debate over privacy rights and whether state officials should cooperate with a federal administration that appears hostile to the drug.
Dale Quigley, deputy coordinator of the National Marijuana Initiative, or NMI, has asked Massachusetts health officials for demographic data on the age, gender, and medical condition of the state’s approximately 40,000 registered medical marijuana patients. Quigley is a former police officer in Colorado with a long history of speaking out against legalization.
That is clearly a violation of patient privacy rights. And it's really odd that the same people who are against a national gun registry because they're supposedly worried about the government taking away their guns are not saying anything about the government trying to get people's medical information, one of the most private sets information Americans can have.
Obviously Trump is trying to go against medical marijuana users. But that's a state's rights issue, as several states have legaized medical marijuana and a handful have legalized it for recreational purposes.
This is in effect big government infringing upon people's privacy. Instead of going after opioids, which kill thousands of people every year, but are controlled by big pharma, Trump is going against a drug that kills nobody.
Perhaps those who voted for Gary Johnson because he smokes pot should reconsider what they did in 2016 and vote Democrat in 2020 to get Trump removed from office. Otherwise, you bet their right to medical marijuana will be in danger.
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