On December 21, 2000, after passing through both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2001 (H.R. 4577) received the presidential signature. The bill provided a detailed summary of the funds that would be available for a wide variety of federal programs during the 2001 fiscal year and, like most bills of its kind, also specified a number of changes to the United States Code.
Among these changes was Section 515, a two-sentence rider requiring the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to “issue guidelines ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.” Although it had no official name in the original legislation, the rider became known as the Data Quality Act (DQA). It was a relatively invisible addendum to a tremendously complex piece of legislation, but it would not remain so for long.
In October of 2004, the nonprofit medical marijuana advocacy organization Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed a legal challenge against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) claiming that its stated position on medical marijuana violated the DQA. In their original legal petition (pdf), ASA attacked the official federal position on medical marijuana, which asserts that “marijuana has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”
HHS rejected ASA’s petition in July of 2006, and the subsequent lawsuit was dismissed by a lower district court on the grounds that the DQA does not provide for judicial review. On April 14, 2009, ASA argued its case in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a press release announcing the appeal, ASA Executive Director and medical marijuana patient Steph Sherer made clear where she and her organization stood.
The science to support medical marijuana is overwhelming. It’s time for the federal government to acknowledge the efficacy of medical marijuana and stop holding science hostage to politics.
So what?
[...] Last week I wrote about a recent legal action by the medical marijuana advocacy organization Americans for Safe Access (ASA), who claims that the official federal position on medical marijuana relies on outdated and altogether false scientific facts about the dangers and efficacy of marijuana for medical use. Again, let’s take a look at the statement by ASA Executive Director Steph Sherer: The science to support medical marijuana is overwhelming. It’s time for the federal government to acknowledge the efficacy of medical marijuana and stop holding science hostage to politics. [...]