FIGHTING "CHEECH & CHONG" MEDICINE

Did The White House Drug Office Go Too Far In Trying To Stop The Spread Of
Medical Marijuana Initiatives?

July 27, 2000 - NEW YORK -- When voters in California and Arizona passed
ballot measures legalizing medicinal marijuana in November 1996, White
House drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey mobilized his troops to combat the
spread of what he had previously called "Cheech & Chong" medicine.

McCaffrey quickly proposed that doctors who "recommend or prescribe"
marijuana be stripped of their DEA registration -- that is, their ability
to write prescriptions for controlled substances -- and be excluded from
treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. But a group of California doctors
and patient advocacy groups sued to enjoin those restrictions, and a
federal judge agreed.

Now that same lawsuit provides evidence of a more ambitious, but less
well-known, effort by McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control Policy to
stop the spread of state initiatives legalizing medical marijuana -- an
effort that, among other achievements, helped inspire the ONDCP's
controversial taxpayer-funded, anti-drug media crusade.

The cooperation of the ONDCP and its key ally, the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America, in the fight against medical marijuana is a little known
chapter in the annals of the nation's ongoing drug war. In the last few
years, drug warriors have attempted to slow the spread of medicinal
marijuana initiatives, and, with varying success, block their
implementation in states that passed them -- even as data about the
therapeutic uses of cannabinoids, the chemicals that appear in marijuana,
to treat nausea and pain is increasingly well documented. In fact, for
nearly 20 years, the federal government sought to curb medical marijuana
research, and McCaffrey has been among the most zealous bureaucrats on that
front.

But the documents uncovered by the California lawsuit reveal the extent of
McCaffrey's role in spearheading the political fight against medical
marijuana -- and in turn, the role played by the pot initiatives in
strengthening the drug warriors' determination to mount a paid media
campaign, at least in part to keep similar initiatives from passing in
other states.

Within days of the California and Arizona pot initiatives' passage, for
instance, McCaffrey convened a high-level meeting of some 40 government and
private sector drug warriors to plan a response to the medical marijuana
threat. At least one participant knew at the time that the meeting --
convened by federal officials to counter the will of state voters -- would
be controversial if word of it ever became public.

"The other side would be salivating if they could hear [the] prospect of
[the] Feds going against the will of the people," commented Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation vice president Dr. Paul S. Jellinek, according to notes
of the meeting taken at the time and uncovered by the California doctors'
lawsuit.

Daniel Porterfield, who is currently vice president of communications for
Georgetown University, attended the meeting as a deputy assistant secretary
in charge of coordinating various anti-drug efforts within Health and Human
Services. He told Salon, "The reason for the meeting was to organize the
effort for the other 48 states."

One outcome of the meeting was a determination to step up the media war
against drugs, which helped lead to ONDCP's paid media campaign. Salon
revealed earlier this year that television networks, TV producers and some
magazine publishers inserted anti-drug messages into television shows and
nonfiction magazine articles in order to fulfill ONDCP's requirement that
it get ads on a two-for-one, half-priced basis -- or that programming or
editorial content satisfy this stipulation.

The White House drug office stumbled back into the headlines a few weeks
ago, when McCaffrey told members of the House subcommittee on Criminal
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources that his office plans to expand
its media campaign to influence the content of movies, not just television
and magazines. Elaborating on the plan and referring to potential financial
credits for films with anti-drug motifs, ONDCP spokesman Bob Weiner told
the Los Angeles Times, "But if the movies choose to do that, they can
submit it to our contractors after the movie is completed for review for
credit."

Meanwhile, ONDCP critics question whether the federal agency or the
tax-exempt PDFA should have been seeking to influence state elections at
all. "The use of government resources to politic on controversial issues is
clearly against ethics, as well as the law stating that federal employees
can not take public positions for or against legislation under
consideration," insists Thomas H. Haines, head of the Partnership for
Responsible Drug Information, a persistent McCaffrey critic.

American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen believes the
meeting convened by McCaffrey, which according to an attendance record
included no medical-use proponents, raises "at the very least a moral and
political question. It raises First Amendment-type concerns about the
nature of a free society, and what an open debate should be in a democratic
society."

McCaffrey declined to comment for this story, but Weiner told Salon:
"Consistently throughout this process, Gen. McCaffrey has been aware of the
[political] restrictions, and has honored them." Weiner wouldn't comment
directly on the November 1996 ONDCP meeting. But when asked about whether
the paid media campaign had the potential to create a national political
climate inimical to the passage of medical marijuana initiatives, he
responded, "If it has a peripheral effect, so be it."

Steve Dnistrian, executive vice president of PDFA, also denied that the
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign was designed to combat medical
marijuana legalization. "The NYADMC is focused on teens, pre-teens and
parents. No ads or other pieces of communication have anything to do with
medical marijuana," he said in an e-mail. Dnistrian told Salon that
discussions about the paid media campaign began long before concerns about
medical marijuana initiatives "were even on the radar."

But even some of those invited to McCaffrey's November 1996 meeting now say
that there were concerns about the political nature of the discussions, and
questions about whether the campaign's organizers should be seeking to sway
public opinion against medical marijuana initiatives.

It was Nov. 14, 1996, just nine days after the passage of medical marijuana
initiatives in California and Arizona, that McCaffrey convened the first
meeting at ONDCP's Washington office. The attendees included then DEA
administrator Thomas A. Constantine and three other DEA officials; seven
ONDCP staffers; and representatives of the FBI as well as the U.S.
Departments of Justice, Treasury, Education and Health and Human Services.
Also present were White House domestic policy adviser Leanne Shimabukuro
and public liaison Christa Robinson, plus eight senior executives from
private groups supportive of the drug war, including the president of the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

With overwhelming public support, the medical marijuana votes represented a
rebuke to the anti-drug mandate of McCaffrey's office. The initiative
passed in California by 56 percent and in Arizona by an astounding 65
percent. In 1998, District of Columbia voters approved their initiative by
69 percent, though no one knew of the landslide for a year because Congress
delayed counting the vote.

According to two separate versions of meeting minutes obtained by Salon, as
well as interviews with several participants, these government officials
and senior executives intended to ensure that neither voters nor
legislators in the other 48 states would pass similar medical use legislation.

The two sets of contemporaneous notes surfaced as part of the discovery
process in the federal lawsuit Conant vs. McCaffrey, currently under
adjudication in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
California. The lawsuit was filed in response to Gen. McCaffrey's formal
policy statement -- issued Dec. 30, 1996, at a press conference attended by
Attorney General Janet Reno, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna
Shalala and a DEA official -- in which he threatened to revoke the federal
prescription-writing privileges of doctors who recommended or prescribed
medical marijuana to their patients, bar them from treating Medicare and
Medicaid patients and criminally prosecute them. The plaintiffs were
granted a preliminary injunction; the next court date is Aug. 3.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs provided Salon with copies of documents the
federal government has made available to them as required by the court in
the case's discovery process. Currently a senior trial attorney at the
Justice Department, Wayne Raabe was a staff attorney for ONDCP in November
1996. He confirmed his attendance at the meeting, and that he authored one
set of the notes, but declined to comment further.

Some participants in the ONDCP meeting believed that the medical marijuana
effort veiled a broader movement that sought gradual full-scale
legalization of the Schedule 1 controlled substance. According to the
notes, James E. Copple, then president and CEO of the Community Anti-Drug
Coalition of America, told his colleagues, "Need to frame the issue
properly -- expose this as legalizers using terminally ill as props."
Maricopa County District Attorney Richard Romley, who led the Arizona
delegation, stated that, "Even though California and Arizona are different
prop[osition]s, the strategy of proponents is the same. It will expand
throughout the nation if we all don't react."

As summarized in the documents' clipped parlance, Copple also told those
gathered at the meeting, "We'll work with Arizona and California to undo it
and stop the spread of legalization to other 48 states. Twenty-seven states
have the potential." He added, "Need to go state by state. $ to do media."
And Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates, long a prominent critic of medical
marijuana, is quoted as saying, "Legalizers are going national. We need to
get organized quickly to counter the Americans for Compassionate Use" -- a
pro-medical-use group.

In addition to Copple's statement regarding media funding, comments from
two executives of the private Partnership for a Drug-Free America suggest
that the meeting was a major catalyst in replacing the nonprofit
advertising and media industry umbrella group's then nearly decade-old,
donated-media public service campaign with a taxpayer funded effort.(PDFA
is an unpaid consultant in ONDCP's media campaign, and its name appears on
all of the campaign's advertising.) As PDFA executive vice-president Mike
Townsend stated at the meeting, "National Partnership [PDFA] concerned
about what they can do about spending $ to influence legislation."

One attendee who asked not to be identified said, "I recall a general
discussion of the media campaign, what should and shouldn't be done."

PDFA president Richard Bonnette laid out the challenge to the group. "We
lost Round I -- no coordinated communication strategy. Didn't have media,"
the notes quote Bonnette telling his colleagues. One participant not
clearly identified in the notes asked the gathering, "Who will pay for
national sound bites? Campaign will require serious media and serious $."

PDFA's Townsend suggested the group should reach out to "California
parents" and, according to the notes, said the effort required "$175
million. Try to get fedl $." In fact, that was the amount backers of the
anti-drug media campaign first asked Congress for, according to Rep. John
L. Mica, R-Fla., chair of the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human
Resources subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee.

In a memo to his House colleagues, Mica wrote: "In 1996 and 1997, the PDFA
approached Congress for assistance. The PDFA worked with Congress to fund
the President's budget request ($175 million) to replace the decline in
donated media air time." Congress later bumped the first year's
appropriation up to $195 million.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation prescient Dr. Jellinek worried aloud about
the political implications of such a campaign. According to the notes, he
told the group: "It is a political problem. You need a Federal response,
but [it] can't be viewed as outside interference." Reached last week for
comment, Jellinek said, "I don't have anything more to say. If you have the
quote, you have the quote. Let it stand. Let it speak for itself." Fueled
significantly by money derived from shares it holds in pharmaceutical and
healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, Jellinek's foundation contributed $15
million to the PDFA in 1999 alone.

But PDFA's Townsend told Salon, "I never said anything about that." PDFA
president Bonnette did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

During the meeting, attendees viewed television commercials paid for during
the elections by proponents of the medical marijuana initiatives. The notes
summarize the remarks of Orange County Sheriff Gates as follows: "Money
made the diff. on [California's] Prop 215. $2 million spent - advertising
campaign - Drug Policy Foundation - Soros $." The last references are to a
reform group and billionaire financier George Soros, a major financial
backer of medical use initiatives.

A second participant, who requested anonymity, told Salon, "People were
talking of Soros money at the meeting. That was a real topic, and that
there was limited federal money that could be used. We were trying to
counter the California and Arizona initiatives. But at that point there was
no money." Eleven months later, a five-year, $2 billion (half public, half
private) federal campaign was instituted to shape the views of Americans of
all ages regarding illegal drugs.

Asked two weeks ago whether the intent was to limit further state
initiatives to approve usage of medical marijuana, another participant who
asked not to be identified said, "Yes. They wanted to influence public
opinion. There was a lot of talk that this was the tip of the iceberg of a
national campaign to legalize marijuana, period."

But White House deputy press secretary Jake Siewert says, "The switch to
the paid media campaign was driven entirely by the decision to move to
curtail drug use. In fact, ONDCP is specifically prohibited from using
political messages in paid advertising." Confronted with Jellinek's
statement about the "Feds going against the will of the people," Siewert
said, "I don't understand it." But Siewert did caution that "The ONDCP is
prohibited from involving itself in political causes in its advertising."
When asked whether the meeting was intended to roll back the California and
Arizona initiatives, Siewert stated, "Ask McCaffrey."

A public statement released by McCaffrey on December 30, 1996, refers to
the meeting and states that the "coordinated administration strategy" was
developed by the group "at the direction of the president."

When McCaffrey was deposed for the California doctors' lawsuit on May 23,
2000, he stated that the November 1996 meeting "was an organizational
meeting to sort out what are we going to do about Proposition 215." In
response to another deposition question, he replied, "It wasn't an open
debate. It was what are we going to do about the proposition."

McCaffrey's role in fighting medical marijuana has been multifaceted. Until
1999, the federal government only permitted research on the health benefits
of the drug using limited grants from the National Institutes of Health,
which effectively put the lid on such proposals. But last year, the Clinton
administration said it would sell limited quantities of government-grown
pot to legitimate medical researchers, who could then secure financing from
sources other than the NIH. The move came only after a report by the
National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine confirmed some
healthful benefits of marijuana -- a study McCaffrey tried to downplay.

But researchers seeking to study the medical merits of smoking marijuana
still find themselves frozen out. Dr. Ethan B. Russo, a neurologist and
clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington School of
Medicine, has been trying for years to gain approval to study the
effectiveness of smoked marijuana as a treatment for chronic migraines.
"After the Institute of Medicine report came out in 1999, they said they
would streamline the process. But it hasn't happened; the process is every
bit as difficult as before. It's smoke and mirrors." McCaffrey has even
threatened legal action against California Attorney General Bill Lockyer if
he promoted medical marijuana research on the state level.

Following the ONDCP-convened meeting, PDFA chairman James E. Burke moved to
take action on his colleagues' sentiments, including their desire for
federal money. Working closely with Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, he began a
heavy lobbying campaign in Congress to transform his organization's model
of donated ads into the current taxpayer funded program. Portman's former
chief of staff, John Bridgeland, told this reporter last year, "Burke came
to Portman, came up and wowed a lot of folks on the Hill."

Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee
which funds the drug office, and the self-styled "chief appropriator" of
the ONDCP media campaign, said last year, "We were convinced by the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America to spend tax dollars." Finally,
testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee on February 3, 2000,
ONDCP campaign media director Alan Levitt stated, "PDFA is a key campaign
partner. Mr. Jim Burke, chairman of the Partnership, has been one of the
strongest advocates for this public-private media campaign."

For its part, PDFA has said that the public campaign was necessary because
privately donated advertising was drying up. But while PDFA's donated
advertising declined in the early '90s, it didn't exactly evaporate.
According to Competitive Media Reporting, a company that tracks advertising
spending, the value of PDFA's anti-drug campaign was larger than the
advertising budgets of many of the country's most established brands. With
$278 million worth of donated advertising time and space in 1995 and $252
million in 1996 (down from 1991's peak of $367 million), PDFA was the
fourth and fifth largest advertised "brand" in the country -- competing
alongside companies like AT&T and Burger King for the public's attention.

It should be acknowledged that the media campaign has never directly
tackled the issue of medical marijuana in its paid advertising. And yet
fully half of the current ONDCP advertising budget for a campaign nominally
geared toward curtailing youth drug use is actually directed at adults.
According to a statement issued on Jan. 18, in response to a Salon article
about its anti-drug script-doctoring relationship with television networks,
the "pro bono [sic] match component" of the ad program has "generated over
100 million teen and tween [read: pubescent] impressions and 250 million
adult impressions."

ONDCP's priorities would seem to lie at least as much with influencing
adults -- who profoundly influence kids' attitudes and behaviors, but also
vote -- as with steering children away from drugs.

The November 1996 meeting took place immediately following an election
season in which President Clinton had been slammed by the Republicans as
being soft on drugs. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R.-Texas, described the
administration as "drug coddling" during the 1996 Republican convention, a
theme echoed by candidate Bob Dole.

Last month -- when ONDCP was offered the chance to respond to a draft of a
congressionally mandated, General Accounting Office analysis critical of
McCaffrey and the drug office's management -- ONDCP chief of staff Janet
Crist wrote: "The agency is very mindful of previous congressional
complaints that the administration had been 'AWOL' in the area of drug
control early in its term and determined to respond to constituent demands
that their extensive efforts in the areas of prevention, treatment,
enforcement and interdiction be publicly recognized."

But the October 1997 legislation that paved the way for the paid media
campaign states that ONDCP must submit a strategy for approval by both the
House and the Senate that includes "guidelines to ensure and certify that
none of the funds will be used for partisan political purposes." As their
statements quoted in this article suggest, the participants discussed using
public monies for a media campaign to try to defeat a specific political
viewpoint -- one that will be contested in the upcoming elections in
Colorado and Nevada.

Medical use initiatives have passed in six states: California, Arizona,
Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Maine. A non-binding first initiative also
passed in Nevada, and an initiative in Colorado was disqualified because
supporters hadn't gathered enough signatures to get it on the ballot. Both
states will reconsider the matter this year. Additionally, this past
spring, state legislators in Hawaii voted to allow medical use.

When asked about her department's participation in the meeting, Department
of Education spokesperson Melinda Malico would say only that "General
McCaffrey sets drug policy for the federal government. We participate in
many meetings over at ONDCP." The Treasury and Health and Human Services
departments declined comment.

However, in the statement he issued on Dec. 30, 1996, regarding "the
administration's response" to the Arizona and California initiatives, a
response coming "at the direction of the president," McCaffrey noted that
the "interagency working group" met four times during November and December
1996. He also notes that "HHS and the Department of Education will educate
the public in both Arizona and California about the real and proven dangers
of smoking marijuana." But there was no discussion of the multimillion
dollar anti-drug media campaign ONDCP was developing with the assistance of
HHS -- and the PDFA.

Not surprisingly, ONDCP critics were dismayed to hear of the meeting. Steve
Kubby, California's Libertarian Party candidate for governor in 1998,
decried a meeting involving "public officials on the public payroll in a
public facility conspiring to commit actions to undermine an election." The
medical marijuana advocate is undergoing prosecution for alleged marijuana
possession with the intent to sell, but he recently told the Los Angeles
Times he was just using marijuana to combat the effects of adrenal cancer.

Another campaign critic, Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at
the Institute for Policy Studies, observed that Rep. Mica has held hearings
on the lobbying efforts of nonprofit drug reform groups. "Rep. Bob Barr
[R-Ga.] even wanted to prosecute [reform] advocates under the RICO laws.
Does this mean the Republican drug warriors will investigate the lobbying
activities of PDFA?"

Adds Kevin B. Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, "We see one
more example of the drug war going too far, putting the drug war ahead of
democracy. In reality, the drug czar is ginning up support through a phony
grass-roots effort."