At a campaign appearance in Dover, New Hampshire on Saturday, Mitt Romney was confronted head on with the issue of medical marijuana. Clayton Holton, whose muscular dystrophy keeps him in a wheelchair, explained to Mitt that pot is the only medicine that seems to help him, and his doctors say he is “living proof [that] medical marijuana works.”

“My question for you,” Holton continued, “is will you arrest me or my doctors if I get medical marijuana?”

Romney’s reaction, as seen in this video, is contemptible. He says, shortly, “I am not infavor of medical marijuana being legal in this country,” and abruptly walks away. Another member of the audience asks Romney if he’s going to answer Holton’s question, and Romney replies, “I think I have.”

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be Holton in that situation—to have a leader of your country say, effectively, that they’d let you die or go to prison before they’d let you smoke pot, and then walk away, smiling and shaking hands.

My infuriation with the anti-medical pot camp lies in their dogmatic denial of hard science that refutes their position. If people’s lives are at stake, the least you should do is enter into a reasoned debate where all the facts are openly considered. Then again, this might be too much to expect from our government, where the pre-Iraq war debate amounted to a quibble over whether Iraqi’s would welcome us with open arms or whether they’d bring us fruit baskets as well.

The Hinchey Medical Marijuana Amendment failed in the House Wednesday night by a vote of 165 - 262. The amendment would have prohibited the federal government from prosecuting people caught with a small amount of pot so long as they had a doctor’s permission and medicinal marijuana was legal in their state.

Though this vote is certainly a huge disappointment for those of us who are against locking up sick and dying people for the crime of, you know, trying to ease the pain of being sick or dying, at least a few more votes were gained this round — last year it was defeated 163 - 259 — marking the best record yet since the amendment was originally offered in 2001. But I’m still dismayed that the 110th Congress failed to muster up more than 2 additional votes than the last time around when the Republicans were in the majority. Even worse, out of the nine members who voted “yes” last year but this year switched their vote to “no”, eight are Dems. This from the party that is supposed to be so sympathetic to the medical woes of the American people.

I expected so much more from this Congress, but I guess the political fear of appearing “soft on drugs” never abates. Let’s hope the reality of being hard on patients starts to weigh on some consciences.

Americans recently celebrated another 4th of July, the day we as a people celebrate our independence. It’s been over two centuries since those men in Philadelphia declared that we are all endowed with, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Such stirring words for a country to be based upon. Yet, we know that not everyone was granted these rights (i.e., women, peoples of African ancestry, even those who didn’t own property).

Yet on this day that we celebrate “freedom” we are reminded that even now, in an era when all have been granted those rights that were signed in Philadelphia, we are still subjected to prosecution. I’m speaking of the “War on Drugs.”

On July 4th I participated in a rally against this injustice here in Washington, DC. To this day, the majority of our prison population is imprisoned for no other reason than possessing or sharing with a friend one particular type of “smoked grass” compared to another. It is unconscionable that this should result in the denial of liberties that the War on Drugs produces.

What do you think? Why in an era when we are faced with the far more serious threat from prosecuting a real, live-action war in the Middle East do we continue to devote billions of dollars to prosecuting people for choosing to smoke a harmless substance? Is it not harmless, or does it really pose a threat? I’m interested in knowing what a humanist thinks about the War on Drugs.