CLEAR THE FUMES AT THE DEA

Suzanne Pfeil suffers severe pain and muscle spasms from post-polio
syndrome. One fall day last year, Pfeil, now 44, awoke to find federal
agents pointing automatic weapons. They were raiding her Santa Cruz
assisted-living facility, which is a provider of medical marijuana
under a measure that the state's voters passed in 1996. It's the sort
of armed raid that California could soon see more of, with the
confirmation of Karen P. Tandy, a federal associate deputy attorney
general, as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Tandy did not order the raid against marijuana activist Pfeil in
particular, but for the last two years she has coordinated the
nation's overall national drug enforcement strategy, including an
aggressive crackdown on California and eight other states that
authorize medicinal marijuana. Last month, Sen. Richard Durbin
(D-Ill.) gave Tandy a chance to distance herself from DEA policy,
asking whether she would support a "moratorium on the raids of medical
marijuana providers until Congress could hold hearings on this
matter." Tandy emphatically said no, adding that "marijuana itself has
not been shown to have medicinal benefits."

When Durbin countered with a federal Institute of Medicine report
concluding otherwise, Tandy said she was "not personally familiar"
with the landmark 1999 report.

Tandy should look at the medical record, and at a stinging assessment
this year by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The OMB
faulted the DEA for its murky, diffuse agenda and for being "unable to
demonstrate progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in
the United States."

Tandy should also consult the DEA's own Web site, which lists its two
top responsibilities as prosecuting "major violators of controlled
substance laws operating at interstate and intergovernmental levels"
and "criminals and drug gangs who perpetuate violence in our
communities and terrorize citizens through fear and intimidation." No
mention of people like Pfeil, who last month handed Tandy in person a
letter about her experience.

Senate leaders hastily shoved through a late-night vote last week
approving Tandy for the DEA job. Obviously they were aware that
Americans have little taste for training guns on chronically ill
people and their doctors. Tandy, now in a position where she can make
policy and not just carry it out, has a chance to use more common
sense in drug policy and should grab it.