OUR VIEW: DEA agent maligns for-profit drugs (vote in poll)

Profit pays for compassion. Yet profits are demonized, and lately they’ve been used to malign the medical marijuana trade as something sinister and lacking in compassion. The assumption is that if one sells a drug for financial gain, the seller cares about money and not sick people.

The latest use of this weird myth comes from Kevin Merrill, special agent in charge for the Denver office of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Merrill gave the Associated Press a statement that associates profits with criminals.

The quote showed up in a story that said up to 18 percent of dispensaries are run by people convicted of felonies in the past five years, which will disqualify them to remain in business under Colorado’s new marijuana regulations.

“There’s people who are in the marijuana business strictly to make a profit and not what was portrayed to the voters, which was care for the very sick and imminently dying people,” Merrill said of convicts who sell pot.

When very sick and imminently dying people receive compassionate care, it’s linked to someone’s ability to profit. What is profit, after all, but the cost of money?

When a cancer patient receives Vicodin, Percocet or some other destructive heroine-like narcotic, it’s because a doctor was paid to prescribe the drug with money that resulted from a profit. It’s because a pharmacist was paid by the proceeds of someone’s profit. It’s because scientists were paid to develop the drug by investors who rely on profits to provide the money they invest, or by government money raised by taxes levied on profits.

The development, production, acquisition and distribution of any drug costs money; profits provide the currency and back its value.

Nearly 20 percent of American hospitals are for-profit ventures. Others are government-run or private non-profits, funded by those who create goods and services in return for profits. There is no other source to pay the costs of health care — including socialized government care.

Some of the sick and dying in underdeveloped countries receive medical care from the United States government, the Catholic church or the United Nations. The source of their funds is profits, which were given to charities or taken by governments with taxes on profits.

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Just as we couldn’t buy aspirin without profits, we could have no medical marijuana trade without profits — whether Robin Hood or "Wall Street's" Gordon Gekko mans the checkout stand.

Felons don’t have all the rights afforded those who abide by society’s rules. So it’s fine to enforce a law that says felons can’t sell medical marijuana.

It’s not fair or accurate to suggest that medical marijuana is something less than compassionate or helpful, if someone profits. It’s downright dishonest to associate profit motive with crime. The most compassionate of marijuana sellers could not function if it weren’t for someone’s profit — the ultimate provider of all care and compassion for the very sick and imminently dying people.

— Wayne Laugesen , editorial page editor, for the editorial board. Friend him on Facebook