​“No man’s life, liberty or happiness are safe while Congress is in session,” Mark Twain once famously said, and much the same could be said of the Maryland Legislature. A Republican delegate has now filed an amendment to Maryland’s proposed medical marijuana law which would allow patients to inject — but not to smoke — cannabis.

Never mind that marijuana’s not water soluble, and never mind that smoking — while not an ideal form of administration — is a LOT safer than injecting. That’s the kind of silliness you get when you have politicians writing rules for medicine.

Delegate Mike McDermott’s amendment, if added, would require anyone with an medical marijuana authorization from a doctor to consume it through vaporization, ingestion or injection — but smoking it would still be against the law.

Delmarva Now. “With the amendment, it becomes a medical issue entirely, but I can’t vote for it in the present form,” the clueless McDermott said, reports Jennifer Shutt at

The bill, with or without McDermott’s amendment, is deeply flawed. It would make marijuana a Schedule II controlled substance and allow it to be prescribed by doctors in certain cases — but since it only changes that rule at the state level, any doctor prescribing marijuana would be subject to losing his license, since cannabis is still considered Schedule I (no medical value and high potential for abuse) at the federal level.

That’s the very reason that, in all 15 medical marijuana states and the District of Columbia, doctors and health professionals “recommend” — not “prescribe” — marijuana. Prescribing a Schedule I controlled substance could result in the loss of authority to prescribe anything else.