What does medical marijuana question and a classic social science study say about District 6 candidates' morality?

A little more than a month ago, my colleague Chuck Dean asked a number of Alabama politicians a question. It was a question many of you, in an online poll, said you wanted them to answer.

"If someone you love could have their pain reduced by the use of marijuana would you buy it for them? If you could not buy it, would you support their use of it?"

Most of the answers were variations of "the law's the law."

State Rep. Paul DeMarco said he'd only consider legal options.

Chad Mathis said, as a doctor (Remind everyone again he has a M.D.? Check!) he would never do anything illegal and would follow the Carly's law approach. Apparently if there's a medicine you need, you might have to get the prescription from your state legislature.

Will Brooke said he wouldn't break the law, either. And Tom Vigneulle said he's against illicit medical marijuana, too, and he knows a lot about it. (Maybe too much.)

There was only one candidate who broke with the bunch. We'll get to him in a second.

What struck me about Chuck's question was how close it comes to something called the Heinz Dilemma.

The Heinz Dilemma was a question put to subjects by Lawrence Kohlberg, a University of Chicago research psychologist who studied moral development.

Kohlberg's questions went something like this ...

Heinz's wife is dying. A medicine exists that might save her, but it's expensive. He scratches together enough money to pay for the cost of manufacturing the drug, but the pharmacist who has the exclusive rights to the formula wants to profit and marks up the price much higher than Heinz could ever afford.

With no legal option left to save his wife, should Heinz steal the medicine? And if he does, what should happen to him?

Kohlberg's question and Chuck Dean's question are not one-to-one comparable, but they're in the same ballpark. The only way to help a loved one is to break the law. What do you do?

Kohlberg even created a continuum, which is now called the Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development. You can read a lot more about that here.

So where do our candidates land on that continuum? At best they believe in law and order, which puts them in the middle of the six stages of development. At worst, they're abiding by the law only because they want to avoid punishment, which would give them the moral development of a small child.

Of course, there's another possible answer – they're merely telling you what they think you want to hear, which opens up a whole other bag questions about their character.

Among the congressional candidates Chuck quizzed, only one gave a distinctly different answer.

"I've seen studies on the effectiveness of marijuana in treating pain and some studies seem to show it's not as effective as some say," one candidate said. "But I'm not a doctor. I am a husband and father and if my spouse or children were in pain and I thought using marijuana would help ease their suffering, I'd do everything I could, go anywhere in the world I had to go to get them that drug. Maybe that answer makes me a bad politician but if the choice is between being a good politician or a good husband and dad, well that's not a hard choice for me."

Alabama Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, apologizes at a press conference at the Gardendale Civic Center on Tuesday Sept. 27, 2011, for using the word "aborigine" to describe people at Greenetrack. (The Birmingham News/Tamika Moore)

For the last several years, that candidate has caught heat from all over, including from me, for stands he has taken on different issues – on gun rights, immigration reform and just what he meant when he referred to African-Americans in Greene County as "aborigines."

But on Kohlberg's scale, he would rank far above the rest of the choices on the Republican primary ballot on Tuesday.

Yeah, that guy is state Sen. Scott Beason.

(One more thing: Chuck also asked candidates for governor and attorney general what they would do. All but one gave the same the-law's-the-law reply, except for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Parker Griffith. As an oncologist, Griffith said he not only supported the use of medical marijuana, but that he had used it to treat cancer patients who were suffering.)