PEOPLE SUFFER WHEN POLITICIANS POSTURE ON MARIJUANA LAWS

The Supreme Court has spoken. Federal anti-drug laws trump state laws
that allow patients to have marijuana when their doctors recommend
it.

That's sad news to Kathleen Marie ''Kitty'' Tucker, a 57-year-old
lawyer and mother who favors the legalization of marijuana for
medicinal use.

She could use some.

Since 1987 she has suffered from migraines and fibromyalgia, a chronic
muscle pain disorder, too severe to let her work outside her suburban
Maryland home.

She's been using such legal drugs as Marinol, a synthetic version of
the active ingredient in marijuana. But none relieve her symptoms as
well --- and with as few side effects --- as smoking marijuana used
to, she says.

She knows because she used to grow her own marijuana in the basement
of her family home in Takoma Park, Md., a Washington suburb.

But, in 1999, her then-16-year-old daughter, in an apparent burst of
teen rage, told the local police about mommy's indoor garden.

Weeks later, the charges were dropped. But, by then, Tucker's husband,
Robert Alvarez, had lost his job as a senior policy adviser at the
U.S. Energy Department, and the family had been put through an
emotional and legal ringer.

Tucker's hopes for legal pot evaporated along with those of numerous
other sufferers last Monday when the Supreme Court ruled 8-to-0
against marijuana-supplying co-ops in California. Federal law does not
allow the distribution of marijuana even to people whose doctors
recommend it to alleviate symptoms of serious illness, the court ruled.

That ruling dealt a setback, if not a definitive blow, to the movement
that, so far, has led to the legalization of medical marijuana in
eight states plus the District of Columbia.

Sure, you can legalize medicinal marijuana all you want, the high
court told the voters and legislators, but that doesn't mean
Washington has to let it happen.

''It is very disappointing to see our democracy kicked away,'' Tucker
said in a voice that sounded wracked with pain.

Yes, ''kicked away'' is a good way to describe the way marijuana, even
for legitimate relief of illness, has become a political football.
Poll after poll tends to show that most people support doctor-approved
medicinal use of marijuana.

Yet, the issue has failed with most Washington politicians and most
state legislatures, except for Hawaii. It is as if the issue has
nothing to do with real science or even real people anymore, just
politics and posturing.

Nobody ever lost an election by promising to be ''tough'' on drugs,
even when it means being unnecessarily tough on the sick.

Justice Clarence Thomas, author of the high court's ruling, offered a
good example. When he cited the federal statute that says marijuana
has ''no currently accepted medical use,'' he was expressing a
political view, not a scientific one.

Lawmakers could simply look at the 1999 report by the Institute of
Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. It confirmed
the effectiveness of marijuana's active components in treating pain,
nausea and the anorexic wasting syndrome associated with AIDS.

The report did caution against smoking marijuana for more than six
months. After all, smoking anything is hazardous to your health.
Unfortunately, the study did not discuss vaporizers, a popular
nonsmoking alternative in the California marijuana clubs that were
parties in the Supreme Court case.

So more research needs to be done. Both sides of the debate can agree
on that. Yet, Washington politicians have been extremely reluctant to
grant government-approved marijuana for research. So, new research
gets stuck in a Catch-22: The politicians say we can't legalize
marijuana because there's not enough research; then they don't fund
the research. How convenient.

Opponents of legalization say that prosecutors probably won't spend
much time or money going after sick patients. They're probably right.
It wouldn't be worth it. Juries would be reluctant to convict,
especially in a state or town that voted overwhelmingly for
legalization.

But, as Kitty Tucker's case shows, you don't have to be prosecuted
after a drug arrest to be punished by it.

First the punishment, then --- guess what? No trial. That's what
happens when politicians care less about people than they do about
posturing.

During his presidential campaign, President Bush said he opposed
legalizing medical marijuana in Texas but thought the federal
government should leave the question up to the states. That's a
campaign promise he should keep.