Jerry Nadler: “I think there are some aspects of our drug laws can be characterized as fanatic. We use morphine for pain, we prescribe…”

“I think there are some aspects of our drug laws can be characterized as fanatic. We use morphine for pain, we prescribe it. It is a controlled substance. I do not understand why marijuana, a controlled substance, should not be prescribable if a doctor feels that that drug is useful to someone who has cancer or AIDS or whatever. It is up to the doctors, it is not up to the politicians here in Congress, or it ought to be. Frankly, yes, George Soros has funded these referenda. In every referendum they have had, the people have spoken. Yes, the Federal law is supreme. We do not have to contest that. These laws cannot stand up against Federal law, but they are doing it through the States because this Congress and the President and the former President were not sensitive to the cries for help from desperately sick people and desperately pained people and their families. We ought to yield to those cries. This amendment simply says, let them have the relief from the pain. Let them do it. It has nothing to do with legalization, nothing to do with decriminalization. Those are other issues. But if a controlled substance is useful for pain, and, yes, we do not have decent studies on it because the DEA prohibited those studies, let us yield and help desperately sick people.”