IT'S TIME TO TURN TABLES ON WAR ON DRUGS

One of the joys of doing a weekly Internet column is the mail from readers.
That mail is often humbling because it is more informative and much better
written than the column that inspires it.

I have a handful of "regulars" who have become fast e-mail friends. Among
them is Brent Andrews, who I met (online) when he was a reporter in
Tennessee. We stayed in touch when he moved to Idaho, when he quit the news
business to become a dot-commer, and when he retreated back home to
Tennessee after his personal dot-com bubble burst.

I'm going to meet Brent in person this week, when he comes to San Francisco
for the 2002 conference of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML). The conference will be held at the Crowne Plaza
Hotel, on Sutter at Powell, Thursday through Saturday. Local speakers will
include San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, and the
well-known criminal defense attorney, Tony Serra.

In honor of Brent's visit to the city, I'm turning my column over to him
this week. Here is what Brent has to say:

Tired of the drug war? Then choose sides

I come to San Francisco this week because I'm mad as hell about the War on
Drugs.

I am tired of seeing failure follow failure in the unending fight against
methamphetamine and cocaine. I'm tired of seeing police buying and selling
marijuana and seizing property and cash, and leaving families ruined.

I am tired of hearing about Asa Hutchinson's DEA raids on California's
medical marijuana co-ops, raids planned and conducted at great expense at a
time when I wonder whether my Tennessee neighbors might be mixing crank in
their kitchens and bathrooms.

I am looking forward to the time when drug war bureaucrats and agents
become the enemy in the new drug war. I believe every town in America might
one day seek out such people, burn them out of their homes and confiscate
whatever is not burned for sale to the highest bidder.

It will be good to watch those fires burn, to bid on those seized items. It
will be high time the present enemy -- free people -- fought back against a
corrupt and broken system. If our legislators won't stop the drug war, then
we must do so ourselves "by any means necessary."

That means getting drug policy out of the hands of law enforcement and into
the hands of physicians and educated citizens.

I'd rather see open revolution in America's streets than organized raids
and stings by drug police who are wasting our time and our money and making
a mockery of our inalienable rights.

I'd rather see America fail then become a police state. But when the DEA
has more authority in California than the voters, perhaps that police state
is already here. If so, I will dismantle it or die trying.

It's been five months and six days since I lost a dear friend to an
overdose of meth and cocaine. She ingested fatal amounts of both drugs one
night in northern Idaho while I was covering for the local newspaper the
trials of three men accused of buying marijuana from the DEA.

While she died alone in her apartment, the drug warriors were making sure
those young men went to prison for buying marijuana the DEA agents
themselves had brought to northern Idaho from Oregon.

Sitting in the trial after hearing news of my friend's death, I watched as
a DEA agent produced the 10 pounds of pot for the jury to see.

I couldn't help wondering at the irony: The drug was painted by the state's
attorney as the scourge of America, yet something else was really claiming
lives on the streets.

I wanted to run to the front of the courtroom and grab the marijuana and
smoke it all in a sitting to prove to those misguided people that marijuana
is not the problem in Idaho or anywhere else, that they're wasting their
time and mine dealing it.

I wanted to scream at the DEA agent who was a star witness: Where were you
when my friend was buying her meth and cocaine? Were you somewhere selling
marijuana to college kids? Are you a coward, or just ignorant?

Instead, I asked him how he could live with himself. He looked surprised,
then like all good bureaucrats declined comment.

The DEA got the convictions it was seeking. Plans are probably in the works
to bring more marijuana from Oregon or British Columbia to Idaho to sell to
the locals.

I won't have to write about these future pot deals as an unbiased reporter
because I stopped being a reporter in the wake of my friend's death and the
DEA's marijuana trial. Those events transformed me from an observer into an
activist.

And so I come to San Francisco this week for the annual conference of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Since my friend
died five months ago I have learned that there are many people as angry as
I am about the War on Drugs, and I have joined them.

I hope it's not too late to save our country from this damaging war that
has gotten us nowhere.

Brent's opinion is supported by the 1972 National Commission on Marijuana
and Drug Use. In its report, that commission, appointed by President
Richard M. Nixon, contained this conclusion:

"Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual
users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy
designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it. This judgment is
based on prevalent, use patterns, on behavior exhibited by the vast
majority of users and on our interpretations of existing medical and
scientific data. This position also is consistent with the estimate by law
enforcement personnel that the elimination of use is unattainable."

Unfortunately for all of us, the commission's findings were not what Nixon
or other repressive people wanted to hear, so the report was never acted
upon. We still treat marijuana as if it were some kind of deadly poison.