COURT VS. VOTERS

Feds Have No Business Regulating Medical Marijuana

As Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden continues his valiant fight against efforts to
weaken or abolish the state's physician-assisted-suicide law, another
voter-approved law is headed for a showdown with an adversary more powerful
than Congress.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a case that could
overturn laws in Oregon and eight other states that allow seriously ill
people to use marijuana as a medicine. The justices' remarks made it clear
they will likely side with federal authorities who want to shut down
California's "cannabis clubs" that were formed to distribute the drug to
patients.

Oregon voters passed a medical marijuana initiative in 1998. We supported
the concept of a workable law to allow medical use of marijuana, but
opposed the initiative on the grounds that it contained too many flaws.

We now consider the federal government's attempts to overrule state medical
marijuana laws in the same light as congressional moves against the
assisted-suicide statute. This is an arena where the federal government has
no business.

Opponents of medical marijuana laws call them the first step toward
legalization of all illegal drugs, and argue that such laws fly in the face
of federal anti-drug efforts on all levels.

Supporters point to scientific research concluding that marijuana can be
effective in controlling the nausea brought on by chemotherapy and the pain
associated with terminal illness.

We are not advocating the wholesale legalization of marijuana or any other
illegal substance. We do respect the judgment of voters who decided that
terminally ill people should have the right to end their own lives and the
right to use a substance that eases the pain and suffering their illnesses
cause.

The Clinton administration threatened to revoke the prescription licenses
of California doctors who recommended marijuana. That was the same tactic
threatened against Oregon physicians who prescribed lethal doses of
medication under the assisted-suicide law. In either case, it was a
heavy-handed use of federal power.

We now have an administration supposedly run by conservative Republicans.

A Supreme Court dominated by conservatives -- and a White House dedicated
to Republican values -- should adhere to those principles, which include
the rights of states to govern themselves without interference from
Washington. But we are not confident that will happen in this case.

Bush Tries To Use Northwest To Repay Contributors

The haste with which the Bush administration is paying off its cronies and
campaign contributors suggests the Bushmen and women have doubts the
restoration will have a second term in the White House.

Now, some of the administration's recent efforts to reward its political
friends and punish political enemies threatens new and established tourism
assets in the Northwest.

Hiding behind the expedient fig leaf of "consulting local officials," the
Bush administration says it is considering reducing the size of the new
Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument southeast of Ashland. The Bush
administration insists its motives are based on protecting "property
rights," despite the fact the monument proclamation is limited to land
management policies on federal public lands in the designated area.

The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced
they will offer mining leases on thousands of acres in the Columbia Gorge
owned by American Indians. Both federal agencies have ignored their legal
duty to manage American Indian land for the economic benefit of the tribes
for decades. The new administration's meretricious interest in tribal
economic development interests reeks of political porkbarreling.

The administration's sudden attack on the Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument perpetuates the myth that its designation in June last year was a
hasty, ill-considered decision made in Washington.

President Clinton's designation of the area as a national monument
culminated 18 years of patient work by the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council
to persuade the BLM to manage the area to reflect its unique botanical and
geological characteristics. Its work was no secret to anyone in the area.

The Cascade-Siskiyou area is the northeast corner of the Klamath Knot. To
geologists, a knot is a place where geological formations of different ages
come together and overlap. The Klamath Knot is the meeting place of the
ancient Klamath and Siskiyou mountains and the younger Cascade and Coast
mountain ranges. This jumble of rocks creates the most diverse plant
habitat in the American West. Habitats not normally near one another,
including oak savannah, douglas fir, white pine and juniper, are just
around the corner in the Klamath Knot. Some 70,000 acres around Soda
Mountain are among the most biologically diverse in the entire Klamath
Knot. Only 52,951 acres was designated as a national monument.

The highest and best use of the Soda Mountain area is as a laboratory for
plant and wildlife observation and for ecosystem protection and
rehabilitation experiments that can be tested for use in other damaged
environments. It is unlikely to draw summer crowds like Crater Lake or
Yosemite. But it is likely to attract organized tours, research groups and
specialized tourist groups such as Elderhostel, whose members are
interested in something more substantive than shopping and seeing the sights.

The Jackson County commissioners complain the decision to designate the
monument was already made before they were consulted. The commissioners are
guilty of backing the wrong horse. Historically, they backed a handful of
people who bought property in the area to perpetuate the illusion they
still lived in the Wild, Wild West. Now the commissioners have engaged
former Congressman Bob Smith to oil his way around Washington and protect
the interests of a handful of landowners who fear new management policies
for the area will destroy their Wild West illusions.

The Bush BLM and BIA are not the first philistines to want to quarry the
Columbia Gorge. When navigation interests wanted to build the South Jetty
at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1896, they planned to quarry Beacon
Rock. It is a spectacular haystack-shaped lava plug on the Washington side
of the Columbia River just below what is now Bonneville Dam. Lewis and
Clark named Beacon Rock in their journals. It was a waypoint on the Oregon
Trail until Sam Barlow built his road from The Dalles to Oregon City over
the south slopes of Mount Hood.

When the Washington Legislature in Olympia learned the Portland landowner
might sell Beacon Rock to the state of Oregon for a state park to prevent
quarrying, Washington lawmakers promptly made Beacon Rock a Washington
state park.

Because the best quarrying sites are adjacent to freeways and
transcontinental rail routes, the BLM and the BIA expect bids from the
nation's largest aggregate suppliers.

Scars from more recent quarrying in the gorge have healed with time and
restoration efforts. New quarries in the gorge will become running sores
damaging the tourism industry on which both the tribes and the gorge
communities now depend. It's the equivalent of siting a dump beside Old
Faithful or a landfill at the base of Mount Rushmore.

An effort to make the gorge a major national supplier of basalt aggregate
flies in the face of decades of local, state and federal efforts to
preserve the considerable scenic value left in the gorge as a tourism asset.

The Columbia Gorge is a remarkable place. It has absorbed much
environmental abuse. Despite the railroads and highways on both banks, dams
and power lines, canneries, industrial plants, sawmills, resorts,
subdivisions and native fishing sites, all outside the established cities,
the gorge is still a spectacular sight from the highway overlooks or from
the decks of the growing fleet of small cruise ships that now sail through
the gorge between Astoria and Lewiston, Idaho. But there is a limit to the
abuse the gorge can absorb and still remain a world-class attraction. There
is no evidence the nation is so strapped for crushed rock that the federal
government must sacrifice major tourism assets in the Northwest.

There are still people who remember when the Northwest was an economic
backwater and a "plundered province" for the benefit of Eastern
industrialists. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., should warn the Bush
administration the Northwest is unwilling to become a national sacrifice
area so Bush can plunder public land to pay back the folks who bought his
way to the White House.