by Charles Krauthammer

About the author: Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist.

Take any morally dubious proposition—like assisting a suicide—and pretend it is merely help for the terminally ill, and you are well on your way to legitimacy and a large public following. That is how assisted suicide is sold. That is how the legalization of marijuana is sold. Indeed, that is precisely how Proposition 215, legalizing marijuana for medical use, passed in November 1996 in California.

The Prop 215 ad campaign dwelt on the medicinal uses of marijuana for AIDS and cancer, neatly skirting the clause in the referendum that legalizes it for “any other illness.” And now the New England Journal of Medicine has taken up the refrain, with its editor-in-chief, Dr. Jerome Kassirer, editorializing passionately in favor of giving marijuana...