Sen. Casey Murdock, a Panhandle legislator, wants to give his constituents the right to opt out of State Question 788, a voter-approved law allowing medical marijuana.

Imagine that: Medical marijuana could be safe, legal, regulated and taxed in one county and prosecuted a few miles down the road. What gets you over the nausea of chemotherapy in Guymon, gets you thrown in jail in Boise City.

The state could license a doctor-recommended drug to people in Woodward County, but they better not get caught holding it in Beaver County.

That’s not the way it’s supposed work, Sen. Murdock.

If it were, there are lots of laws we might want to suspend in our part of the state.

Murdock points out that voters in his Senate district overwhelmingly rejected SQ 788 last summer. In Texas County, for example, the “no” vote got more than 64 percent of the vote.

But the voters of Oklahoma — all of Oklahoma, voting as a single state — approved SQ 788 by nearly 57 percent.

We are one state. If we get into the habit of having a different set of criminal laws according to local tastes, we might as well not be.