Ask 3 presidential candidates about medical marijuana and you'll get 6 different answers

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has become an increasingly firm advocate of ending federal intervention and letting states make their own rules when it comes to medical marijuana.

His Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is less explicit, recently softening a pledge she made early in the campaign to halt federal raids in states with medical marijuana laws. But she has expressed none of the hostility that marked the response of her husband's administration to California's initiative, Proposition 215.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, has gone back and forth on the issue - promising a medical marijuana patient at one campaign stop that seriously ill patients would never face arrest under a McCain administration, but ultimately endorsing the Bush administration's policy of federal raids and prosecutions.

Jacob Sullum at Reason digs in a little deeper to Obama's position in particular. His conclusion:

Obama now has unequivocally promised to back off and allow states to make their own policy decisions about the medical use of marijuana within their own borders. He also seems to be saying the federal government should consider rescheduling marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act so that doctors can legally prescribe it.

He's right that seemingly innocuous statements about marijuana should be "controlled and prescribed in a way that other medicine is prescribed" and "subject to [FDA] regulation like other drugs" could be a lot more radical change than people might realize. Wouldn't that mean getting access to that legendary government grown pot? Or to strains certified with certain THC and cannibidiol levels. Or at least stuff that doesn't have freakin' lead in it.

It's not clear quite what that would mean, or whether Obama could really make it happen. But it sure does sound better than what we got now.