CHARLESTON — Delegate Mike Manypenny is convinced the Lord put marijuana in his grand scheme of creation to provide mankind with a measure of relief from chronic pain.

Trouble is, most folks rolling a joint are smoking it to get high, unless, of course, like one famous politician, they don’t inhale.

Manypenny says the Bible itself proves that God intended that man use marijuana strictly for medical reasons. And he thinks fellow members in the House of Delegates realize this.

A fresh bill put to the chamber Friday would decriminalize pot to some degree, limiting its use strictly for medical reasons.

Some years ago, constituents asked him to sponsor the bill, and Manypenny was hardly turned on to the idea.

“I thought, ‘they’re crazy,’” the Taylor County Democrat said.

Then he began to view a number of documentaries on the growing medical marijuana movement.

“It’s just running rampant across the country,” he said.

Added to that were volumes of articles in national publications from Fortune Magazine to Time and Newsweek, chronicling the pros and cons of marijuana.

“It started to fascinate me,” he said.

“I wanted to know more about it. I’m a herbalist.”

Manypenny says he doesn’t use pot for either recreational or medical purposes, but wouldn’t be adverse to trying it to relieve the constant pain of nine damaged discs in his back.

Traditional pain treatment runs him about $750 a month, he said. Others are shelling out $1,000 or more for relief from Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and the like.

“It is not a simple issue, but it is growing more popular especially with the research going on,” he said.

Manypenny sees a clue in the very first book of the Bible, in which Genesis says God created “the herb yielding seed.”

For many unable to afford expensive pain killers, Manypenny says marijuana could be a cheap alternative.

“It gives them an opportunity to use a natural plan that the good Lord put on earth for mankind to use,” the delegate said.

“The Lord put this plant on the earth for man to use. It’s a plant, and an herb, and it has seeds.”

Manypenny’s bill calls on the Department of Health and Human Resources to come up with rules so that the use of marijuana is strict.

“No matter what you do, I think, there’s always going to be abuse, no matter what the drug is,” he said.

A doctor would have to recommend it and patients could use an access card, possibly in tandem with ID cards through the Division of Motor Vehicles, he said.

Limits would be imposed on quantity, such as a maximum of six plants grown at home, or two ounces, or the amount one could get at a compassionate use center acting in the fashion of a pharmacy.

Perhaps, he suggested, the state might want to dispense the marijuana.

“There are several ways it can be ingested,” Manypenny said.

One documentary advised against smoking, since the lungs could trap tars and nicotine, he said.

A new twist calls for vaporizing marijuana, heating the plant to the verge of combustion, and this imparts all of the chemical without the risk of smoking, he explained.

There has even been research of extracting certain unwanted elements, he said.

“I would try it,” Manypenny said.

“I don’t know how effective it would be, due to the extreme condition my back is in.”

For those skeptical about the Lord’s intentions in including marijuana in the list of plants placed on earth, Manypenny says research has shown that the human body contains cannaboid receptors. And the active ingredient in marijuana is cannabis.

“Isn’t that kind of an odd thing?” he asked, while sitting at his House desk after a floor session.

“It’s like a lock and a key.”

Marijuana has been used as medicine for more than 5,000 years in China, Asia, Africa and South America, the delegate said.

Even in America, until 1937, some used it for that purpose, he noted.

And marijuana figured in an issue that remains with the nation even today — that of immigration.

Mexicans and inhabitants across Central and South America poured across the border more than a century ago to work on farms in the Southwest.

“After a long day, immigrants were using marijuana as a means to relax, or deal with aching pain and painful muscles, after a 12- to 14-hour day in the hot sun of the Southwest,” Manypenny said.

“That was the other thing — it was made illegal to try to regulate immigration.”

Within the next few years, he said, a marijuana pill might be on the market, thanks to an exclusive award by the federal Health and Human Resources agency to a pharmaceutical firm.

Manypenny sees a measure of hypocrisy by the federal government.

“If they can take an extract from a plant and put it in a pill to be produced by a pharmaceutical company, how can they talk out of one side of their mouth and say it has no medical use and the other side partner with and give exclusive rights to produce it by a pharmaceutical company out of another country that is already producing it?” he asked.

Manypenny plans to make his case for medical marijuana in Monday’s floor session.

But from a realistic standpoint, he doesn’t expect any huge wave of support. His is the only name on the bill.

“I don’t believe this year is a good year,” he said.

“Maybe half of the members have an interest in the bill. But because it’s an election year, they don’t feel comfortable with it.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com