TREATMENT INTERRUPTED

Orange County Agrees to Medical-Marijuana ID Cards Just As the DEA
Cracks Down on Dispensaries in L.A.: Every Positive Step Seems to Be
Met With a Step Backward

Eleven years after California voters, by passing Proposition 215,
created exceptions to the marijuana prohibition laws for medical
patients using marijuana, or cannabis, with the recommendation of a
licensed physician, the issue of safe access to this medicine is
still in turmoil. Orange County just became the most recent county in
California to comply with California law and begin the process of
setting up a voluntary ID cards program for patients. The Los Angeles
City Council has declared a temporary moratorium on new medical
cannabis dispensaries, but under the leadership of Dennis Zine, a
former policeman, it has declared its clear intention to set up a
regulatory and licensing regime for them.

After endless hassles from the federal government, a UC San Francisco
research team finally got the go-ahead from the federal government to
conduct rigorous scientific studies on limited aspects of the
medicinal efficacy of cannabis. Its double-blind study against a
smoked placebo showed that HIV patients experienced a significant
reduction in the chronic foot pain associated with the disease; those
who smoked cannabis got a 72 percent reduction in pain as opposed to
15 percent for those who smoked the placebo.

Doctors at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst are making steady
progress in their quest to have the federal government permit them to
grow their own cannabis for scientific research; researchers have
complained that the cannabis from the federal government's pot
plantation in Mississippi - the only legal source for scientific
experiments - is of erratic and sometimes low quality. Allowing
botanists in Massachusetts to grow their own should open the way to
more extensive scientific research. Research from Europe has shown
efficacy against multiple sclerosis and even against certain kinds of cancer.

So we see steady progress in discovering and documenting medicinal
uses for cannabis and sometimes halting but still encouraging
progress in providing patients with reliable ways to get access to
medicine while differentiating the medicinal market from the
recreational black market. Against this backdrop, however, the
federal government has continued to deny officially that cannabis has
any medicinal uses at all, and the Drug Enforcement Administration
has started playing hardball with patients and dispensaries,
especially in California.

On July 6, the Los Angeles office of the DEA sent letters to as many
as 150 landlords who rent to cannabis dispensaries, noting that their
tenants are breaking federal laws and that as accessories to crime
the landlords could receive 20 years in prison and have their
property forfeited - stolen under color of law. Most, though not all,
of the landlords gave their tenants eviction notices. The same day,
in an apparently unrelated action, the DEA closed a chain of seven
medical cannabis cooperative dispensaries in central California, as
well as dispensaries in Bakersfield, Morro Bay and Corona. Meanwhile,
Anaheim joined six other Orange County cities by passing an ordinance
prohibiting - not creating rules for, but prohibiting - cannabis dispensaries.

On July 25 the DEA raided 10 more medical cannabis clinics in Los
Angeles and arrested five people. That was the same day,
coincidentally or not, that the L.A. City Council was voting to
impose a temporary moratorium on new cannabis clinics, with the
intention of developing regulations so the clinics - which had been
proliferating like weeds - could operate in a more controlled,
clearly legitimate fashion. The council also passed a resolution
urging Congress to approve the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which
was being considered in the House of Representatives that same day.

Hinchey-Rohrabacher is an amendment to the appropriations bill
covering the Justice Department that would deny funds for enforcement
activities against patients, growers or distributors in those states
- - 12 since New Mexico, with the active support of Gov. (and
Democratic presidential candidate) Bill Richardson, approved one in
May - that have passed medical marijuana laws. Some medical marijuana
advocates have tried to spin the fact that it got more votes this
year than last year - from 163 to 165 - as an encouraging sign. In
fact, it was a deep disappointment.

Last year Republicans held the majority, while Democrats are in
charge now. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had supported
Hinchey-Rohrabacher in the past. Democratic presidential candidates,
including Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, were on record opposing
DEA raids in states with medical marijuana laws. Hinchey-Rohrabacher
would get a lot more votes and maybe even pass this year.

Didn't happen. Obviously the leadership didn't push the measure
(Pelosi didn't record a vote). As Bruce Mirken, communications
director of the Marijuana Policy Project advocacy outfit in
Washington told me, a number of freshman Democrats, especially in
traditionally conservative or marginal districts, were unwilling to
stick their necks out on what they believed could be an attack point
in their reelection campaigns.

To be sure, even if Hinchey-Rohrabacher had passed the House it
probably wouldn't have passed the Senate, and in the unlikely event
it passed the Senate President Bush would probably have vetoed it.
But the fact that it did so poorly in a Democrat-controlled House
suggests that the feeling among the political class is still that any
move toward even modest loosening of the nation's drug laws is the
political kiss of death.

That shouldn't be the case. National polls consistently show 70
percent to 80 percent support for allowing the medicinal use of
marijuana. Gerald McNerney, the only San Francisco Bay area Democrat
to vote against Hinchey-Rohrabacher - a freshman who took the 11th
District from Republican Richard Pombo - got more criticism than
congratulations for his vote. And Paul Broun, a Republican with
impeccable conservative credentials who just won a special election
in Georgia and was a surprise "yes" vote, got more favorable than
unfavorable publicity.

A comment from Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy, was both galling and encouraging. "More
and more people are realizing there is a con going on," he said,
"that a lot of people who are behind this aren't really interested in
sick people who need medicine, they're interested in marijuana
legalization, and they're playing on the suffering of sick people to get it."

It's telling that Mr. Riley would rather demonize his opposition than
deal with the substance of the issue. But if he's sincere, there's a
way to call the bluff of these demon legalizers - carve out an
exception for medical use in federal law and focus on enforcement
against "recreational" users without the distraction of all those
grandmothers in wheelchairs and other sympathetic sick people to give
the other side an emotional advantage.

In fact, this would be in line with federal law as written. The
Controlled Substance Act says that for a drug to be on Schedule I,
which mandates no legal use and where marijuana is currently placed,
it has to meet these criteria: A) "a high potential for abuse"; B)
"no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United
States"; and C) "a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or
other substance under medical supervisions."

As affirmed most recently by the 1999 government Institute of
Medicine report, cannabis meets none of these criteria. So if the
drug warriors were really interested in the law, they would take
marijuana off Schedule I today.

Francis Young, a DEA administrative law judge, strongly recommended
just that in 1988. The most recent petition to "reschedule"
marijuana, by activist Jon Gettman, dates from 2002. The Catch-22 is
that the administrator of the DEA makes the final decision, and in
response to several petitions in recent years it has always been made
on political rather than scientific grounds.

Despite setbacks, however, there's an active medical-marijuana
community that is growing in sophistication and is not going away. At
the Orange County supervisors hearing last month on medical marijuana
ID cards, one man got up and announced he heads a cooperative of 600
patients that has operated under the radar, but since the cards would
be so helpful to the patients he was going public for the first time.
Dale Gieringer, head of California National Organization for Reform
of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told me his sources know of at least 400
cannabis dispensary operations in Los Angeles County, so even if the
DEA closes as many as 150 of them, hundreds will still be in operation.

Americans for Safe Access, a patient advocacy group headquartered in
Oakland, is pursuing an interesting lawsuit. The recently passed Data
Quality Act requires that government policies and statements be based
on sound current science and provides avenues for challenging those
that aren't. The Department of Health and Human Services says in
several of its publications and on its Web site that marijuana "has
no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States."
ASA started with administrative petitions and has been rebuffed, but
it's now in court to require HHS to change that statement to:
"Adequate and well-recognized studies show the efficacy of marijuana
in the treatment of nausea, loss of appetite, pain and spasticity,"
backing up its filings with a three-inch stack of medical studies.
Spokesman Kris Hermes told me the next brief will be filed Friday.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance in
New York, told me allies in Congress are considering a proposal to
take away the final determination of what drugs go on what schedules
from the DEA administrator, giving it to an independent medical
panel. There's also the possibility of a law that would prohibit the
use of forfeiture where a building's use is in compliance with state law.

One would think that the federal government would not be able to dig
in its heels forever against sound science and public opinion. But
prohibitionism is a religion more than a policy, so the true
believers won't give in without a struggle.