Most Texas Legislators are gutless windbags. They really are. Texans face serious issues: education funding, and the budget, to name two.

But what are these windbags wheezing on about? Issues they have no business getting into. They waste the people’s time gassing about non-binding resolutions regarding immigration reform. Immigration reform? Hell, they might as well flap their gums about whether the United States ought to send Marines back to the shores of Tripoli, because the Texas Legislature has about as much power over America invading foreign countries as it does about federal issues such as immigration reform.

Then there is legislation that the Legislature at least has power over, but is not nearly as immediately pressing as education funding, such as the right to carry handguns on college campuses, and voter ID. Oh, and let’s not overlook the Legislators’ precious right to carry handguns wherever the hell they want to, even to those places where we ordinary humans, we “sub-Legislators,” cannot carry them even if we have a Concealed Handgun License. But that’s a topic for a different blog.

With the exception of Elliot Naishtat, Texas Legislators are cowards when it comes to the topic of medical marijuana. House Bill 1491 died in committee, but at least Rep. Naishtat had the guts to propose it.

Most Texas Legislators are so gutless they don’t even have the nerve to acknowledge that there exists a difficult issue and to appoint experts to study the issue. That difficult issue is whether the use of medical marijuana would be appropriate for terminally ill Texans.

I was talking to someone I love last weekend, someone who has known me since I was an infant, someone I might have lost to breast cancer. When she called me some five years ago to say she had been diagnosed with cancer, it rattled my world pretty hard. I could not help but recall that when I was a boy, my father died of lung cancer. That event shook my world to its foundations, made me question the existence and nature of God Himself.

Anyway, she told me that a friend of hers in her cancer support group had been told that she had less than two years to live. I began to think about how one manages the nausea and pain that cancer often brings. I thought about my uncle, a WWII veteran of the Philippines, who died of stomach cancer not long ago. I thought about my father-in-law, a fourth generation Texan and Korean War veteran who I loved dearly, who became a real father figure to me, who died of liver cancer.

I thought: I’m just one ordinary guy, one sub-Legislator, and I come from a relatively small extended family. I don’t have a huge number of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. I love the ones I have, but I can’t say our number is huge. But I’ve lost three loved ones, and could have lost a fourth, to cancer. I sincerely doubt I’m the only sub-Legislator in Texas whose life has been so deeply affected by cancer.

Certain facts are incontrovertible. No one can deny that some medical studies show that certain patients with terminal illnesses benefit from the use of marijuana. No one can deny that other states have implemented medical marijuana programs with varying degrees of success. No one can deny that information exists on the web about how to grow marijuana to great potency. It would not require a huge pharmaceutical company to invest billions of dollars to figure out how to grow potent marijuana. That research has been done. So if grown, the price of research would be low. No one can deny that the federal government, through very close DEA regulation, permits a very select few people to legally grow marijuana for such purposes as medical research. No one can deny that THC is already used in certain medications to treat diseases such as glaucoma.

All of this raises the issue of whether Texas should pass a medical marijuana law.

Now, I’m not saying Texas should pass such a law.

I’m not even saying that Texas Legislators should even spend their time thinking about whether to propose such a law.

I’m not even saying that Texas Legislators should pass a law that would spend one penny of tax money to pay people to study this question.

All I am saying is this. First, people are literally suffering and dying from cancer. Second, their families suffer while they watch their loved ones suffer. Third, medical marijuana might just alleviate the patient’s suffering. Fourth, the issue of whether Texans should be able to consider a referendum measure to approve or disapprove medical marijuana exists.

And fifth, if the Texas Legislature does not possess the political courage to pass a resolution authorizing the governor to appoint a blue-ribbon panel of unpaid experts to study the issue and make non-binding recommendations, then by their inaction they prove themselves to be the gutless wonders I’ve already said they are.

Real experts: physicians, law professors, legislators from out of state, prosecutors, and criminal defense lawyers, and tax experts who could offer hard data on whether even a nominal tax (twenty five cents per pound) could benefit the Texas treasury could come testify before any panel you might choose to appoint.

All I am saying to most of the mighty Legislators is: have the guts to appoint other people to think about something and tell you what they recommend.

If that is too much for you, then you gutless windbags should go back to debating non-binding resolutions about what some other political sovereign ought to do. Go back to passing private resolutions honoring some constituent’s 100th birthday and other tough issues like that. Oh, and don’t miss out on the killer party the liquor lobby is throwing this weekend. You’ll need to relax after all the hard work you’ve done.