'CHEECH AND CHONG MEDICINE'

Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy, barely missed a beat. The new report on marijuana
overturned almost everything that McCaffrey, the White House, and the
Washington establishment have been saying about marijuana.

But the nation's drug czar didn't let a little thing like being
debunked prompt him to re-examine his position. He is the spokesman
for the drug war, and to him, marijuana is the enemy and legalization
is defeat. His job is to make sure the enemy is seen as dangerous.

Thus, for the past three years, McCaffrey has derided the increasingly
popular belief that marijuana might be medically useful. He has
dismissed the idea as "hooey" and called the notion of medical
marijuana "a sham."

While voters in a half dozen states have voted to legalize medical
marijuana, McCaffrey has mocked the initiatives as "Cheech and Chong
medicine." President Clinton has stood behind McCaffrey, suggesting
that the voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and
Washington, where medical marijuana initiatives were approved, must
have been confused.

Despite the new state laws, the federal government still insists on
keeping all forms of marijuana illegal. McCaffrey's problem is that
Washington's credibility on the subject is nil. Americans simply do
not believe the official line anymore. And increasing numbers of them
do believe that marijuana may offer some significant medical relief.

Now their common sense has found support in a report that, ironically,
was requested and paid for by McCaffrey's own office. Last week, the
Institute of Medicine, an affiliate of the National Academy of
Sciences, concluded in its report that some patients -- particularly
those suffering from cancer and AIDS -- could be helped by marijuana.

The Institute's analysis follows a 1997 report in which experts
brought together by the National Institutes of Health reached
essentially the same conclusion. Even though word of a very
inexpensive yet highly effective medicine might seem like good news,
it's bad news for McCaffrey's White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy.

The drug czar did not hail the latest report's findings that
marijuana's active ingredients can ease pain, nausea and vomiting. And
there was certainly no audible sigh of relief over the report's
equally important conclusion that there is no scientific basis for the
oft-repeated claims that marijuana acts as a "gateway" to harder
drugs; that marijuana is addictive, or that use of marijuana as a
medicine would encourage its abuse either among patients or the
general public.

But surely, McCaffrey is not surprised. Scientists have been issuing
similar reports for years. As far back as 1972, the Shafer Commission,
appointed by President Nixon, recommended that marijuana be
decriminalized -- and not just for medical use. Nixon ignored the
advice. Demagoguery has always beat out science in the marijuana
debate. And look at the results:

o The crackdown that began with marijuana escalated to a war on
drugs.

o Judges had their hands tied with mandatory sentences.

o Police forces burgeoned.

o Families and communities were decimated by incarcerations due to
drugs.

o Prisons exploded into a blue-chip industry.

o Thousands of patients whose suffering might have been relieved
endured needless misery.

Now that yet another group of scientists has pointed out how
marijuana's benefits appear to outweigh its relatively minor
liabilities, we might dare hope that Washington would listen. We might
dream that our leaders would throw in the towel and be grateful to
learn that they can stop trying to fight this ancient non-enemy.

But, I'm afraid we will hope and dream in vain. At the same time that
support for medical marijuana has swelled, marijuana arrests have been
proceeding at a record pace. There were three-quarters of a million of
them in 1997, and 90 percent of those were for simple possession.

Some of those arrested argued that they used marijuana for pain. But
that's a claim that political leaders continue to reject -- science
notwithstanding. They say they're protecting us, but the real reason,
I submit, is money. Too many people have gotten rich on illegal
marijuana to want it legalized, and so far, they have prevailed.

But now that the tide is turning and the move to legalize medical
marijuana appears unstoppable, the drive will be to keep the drug
profitable in a different way -- by routing it through the
pharmaceutical industry.

McCaffrey has already pointed the new direction. After the report's
release, he explained that, "the future of marijuana as medicine lies
in things like inhalers" and in drugs extracted from the plant --
certainly not in the raw vegetation. Development will take years.

It has never mattered in the past how many people's lives, how many
civil liberties, or how much of the nation's wealth had to be
sacrificed to keep marijuana illegal. Nothing appears likely to change
that -- neither science, nor sense, nor mercy.