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The following comes from NORML: ...
Medical Necessity Defense
[ "...Although an increasing number of states are enacting statutes permitting seriously ill people to use marijuana legally for medicinal purposes, the majority of states still provide no legitimate access to marijuana for medical use. In states where affirmative rights to use marijuana for medicinal purposes have not been enacted, individuals may still be prosecuted for growing, possessing or using marijuana for treatment of their medical condition. When these prosecutions occur, raising the "medical necessity defense" may provide a means of avoiding a criminal conviction.
[ "The medical necessity defense is usually grounded in either a state's common law or general necessity defense statute. Regardless of its origin, the basis of the necessity defense is that society is sometimes willing to excuse or even justify conduct that would otherwise be illegal if that conduct was done to avoid an even worse or greater evil. This defense theory reflects society's understanding that external forces beyond a person's control sometimes place that person in an emergency situation where he or she must choose between the harm or "evil" of breaking the criminal code or complying with the code and allowing an even greater harm or "evil" to occur. In these situations, if a person violates the law in order to avoid the greater harm, the defense of necessity excuses the person from being guilty of what would otherwise be a crime.
[ "The elements of a necessity defense vary from state-to-state, and from the federal standard. Generally, the defense must show 1) that the defendant did not intentionally bring about the circumstance which caused the unlawful act; 2) that the defendant could not accomplish the same objective using a less offensive (i.e. "more legal") alternative available to the defendant; and 3) that the evil sought to be avoided was more heinous than the unlawful act perpetrated to avoid it. Under federal law, a defendant must establish the existence of four elements to be entitled to a necessity defense: 1) that he was faced with a choice of evils and chose the lesser evil; 2) that he acted to prevent imminent harm; 3) that he reasonably anticipated a causal relation between his conduct and the harm to be avoided; and 4) that there were no other legal alternatives to violating the law. See , e.g., United States v. Aguilar, 883 F.2d 662, 693 (9th Cir. 1989). ..." ] --- From:
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3410
For anyone that finds Hemp oil, or other Hemp products, to be a useful and necessary adjunct therapeutic agent(s), the Medical Necessity is obviously "the lesser of two 'evils'."
Peace
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