Given the federal government’s intransigence toward the medicinal use of marijuana, one can easily empathize with the position held by Maine’s chief drug-enforcement officer, Roy McKinney of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.

Mr. McKinney told a legislative committee Monday that he opposes having his agency turn over seized marijuana to patients for whom doctors say marijuana would have a palliative effect. His primary reason: The federal government still considers marijuana an illegal drug, and as such, it is at best awkward – and, at worst, illegal — for his agency to hand out dope.

The problem here is even simpler than that. Maine cannot hand out medicinal marijuana for the same reason that it cannot hand out any other medicine it finds in someone’s backyard — officials cannot be certain of its purity or potency. If the question were over homemade pills instead of homegrown pot, there would be no question at all.

Nevertheless, Mr. McKinney is right. A shortcoming with medicinal marijuana laws is that while states are overwhelmingly supporting medicinal marijuana, the federal government remains opposed to legalizing the drug in any manner. Until Congress legalizes marijuana, at least for medical use, no state can hope to form a cogent and legal method for getting pot to the sick.

Consider: According to NORML, a national pro-marijuana advocacy group, seven states besides Maine have approved medicinal marijuana by referendum. In total, 34 states and the District of Columbia have voted to legalize some form of marijuana use; 23 states have medicinal marijuana laws on the books.

Also, note that the federal government’s own study, conducted by the Institutes of Medicine at the request of the nation’s drug czar, supports the claim that marijuana has valid medicinal uses, especially as a relatively safe pain reliever, and urges the government to conduct limited trials on the drug.

Trials would be a good start to calming the wide-ranging claims about marijuana as medicine. But no matter what they conclude, ill residents using marijuana would be taking huge risks in accepting the confiscated crop. That’s just not how medicine is dispensed.