ENFORCE MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWS

IT'S not pretty to see federal agents swooping across Los Angeles,
raiding medical-marijuana dispensaries.

Legalizing pot's medicinal use was a compassionate decision
California voters made 10 years ago, a decision that's never been
appreciated in Washington, but one that the feds ought to respect
just the same.

And yet it's hard to blame the federal government for cracking down,
given how badly the state has failed to regulate the pot clubs.

Medical marijuana was supposed to be for the truly ill - cancer
victims and AIDS patients who could use the drug to relieve pain or
restore their appetites. Yet the number of dispensaries has
skyrocketed from five in 2005 to 143 by the end of 2006. In North
Hollywood alone, there are more pot clinics than Starbucks. Hacienda
Heights was one of the first communities to get one in our area.

So either there's been an unreported, massive outbreak in terminal
illnesses, or a rampant abuse in the distribution of "medical"
marijuana. Now which one seems more likely?

Any doubt on that score was laid to rest earlier this week, when one
pot club distributed fliers at a high school in Van Nuys - not
exactly a cancer ward.

This problem is not new.

Local officials have been scrambling to regulate these seedy
businesses or rein in the abuses. Hacienda Heights has a dispensary
and Diamond Bar allows one. Whittier has said OK, too. Pasadena has
enacted a ban and El Monte, Glendora and Monterey Park have
moratoriums. Proponents of medical marijuana insisted that
Proposition 215 was not, in fact, backdoor legalization.

So now Washington is stepping in where some state and local officials
have failed, and that's a shame. Whether or not you believe marijuana
helps sick people, Californians voted to give very ill people that
option, and that ought to be how the law is administered.