LAWS TO LEGALIZE PAIN-MANAGEMENT DRUGS SPLIT CONSERVATIVES

I have long suspected that the marriage of convenience between
religious-right and nanny-state conservatives must inevitably end in a
messy divorce.

Other than a desire to achieve political power in order to compel the rest
of us to follow their vision (by force, if necessary), these two groups
actually have no more in common than, say, environmentalists and feminists
- -- strange bedfellows from the other wing of the bird.

Now, it appears the catalyst for the final breakup may have appeared on the
scene in the person of Jack Kevorkian.

Right to Life, the Roman Catholic Church and their fellow travelers are
well aware that their successful campaign to defeat Proposal B last month
(which would have permitted physician-assisted suicide under strictly
regulated conditions) is ultimately only a holding action.

The scare tactics about granny being brow-beaten into submission by greedy
heirs -- and, ironically, the appeal to libertarian objections about the
proposed bureaucracy's intrusiveness -- will give way to the sensible
notion that human beings are entitled to at least the same level of
compassion society has for its suffering pets.

Kevorkian made this point rather forcefully a few weeks ago on network
television.

That's why some of the Citizens for Compassionate Care who fought Proposal
B are now calling for a significant overhaul of state laws regarding pain
management.

This, of course, means adopting a new attitude about and approach to the
use of drugs -- the ultimate bugaboo of their erstwhile allies in the
conservative movement.

Now there is little dispute in the scientific community that the most
efficacious treatment for intractable pain would be the refined version of
morphine, the best drug currently available.

Not surprisingly, the more potent form provides better pain relief at lower
doses and with fewer side-effects. Indeed, this drug was originally
developed more than a century ago for precisely those reasons. Prior to
being made completely illegal, it was marketed in the United States by the
Bayer company under the trade name: Heroin.

We can probably gauge the reaction of the nanny-state conservatives to a
proposal to make heroin available for medical use by their response to
similar recent proposals with regard to marijuana (a drug so mild that
there has never been so much a single recorded instance of a fatal overdose).

In 1996, medical marijuana proposals appeared on ballots in California and
Arizona. They passed in both states.

Federal government officials promptly went ballistic. A furious Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, White House drug czar, threatened to pull the prescription
writing privileges of any doctor who dared recommend marijuana to a patient
(the drug has proven effective in ameliorating the side-effects of cancer
and AIDS treatments as well as relieving the symptoms of glaucoma, multiple
sclerosis and other chronic maladies.)

This year similar measures appeared on ballots in Washington, Nevada,
Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia. Also, the legislature in
Arizona put a referendum on the ballot asking its citizens if they didn't
want to reconsider their 1996 vote.

The results were that laws allowing medical marijuana use passed in all
four additional states.

Furthermore, the good folks in Arizona said they were not interested in
rescinding the approval they had given previously.

However, the results of the vote in Washington, D.C. remain unknown. It
seems that Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., managed to insert a provision in the
District's budget authorization bill last October that prohibited the local
government from expending any funds whatever on any vote for any measure
that would reduce the penalties for marijuana possession. Too late to amend
the already printed ballots, the vote went ahead. The results were simply
withheld.

The American Civil Liberties Union promptly filed a lawsuit demanding that
the results be released under the Freedom of Information Act and alleging
that the measure attempting to prohibit the vote was an unconstitutional
"viewpoint-based restriction" in violation of First Amendment in any case.

The Libertarian Party has filed a friend-of-the-court brief and joined the
complaint, which was heard by U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts on
Dec. 18. A ruling is expected by year's end.

Whatever the outcome, one thing recent events have made manifest about the
nanny-state branch of conservatism -- is that their drug jihad hysteria has
reached truly astonishing proportions. They not only no longer care about
the wishes of the people, but refuse to even recognize that in a democratic
system citizens have a right to make their wishes known.

Of course, the religious-right zealots who want to stop Kevorkian at all
costs are a pretty determined bunch themselves.

It's definitely going to be messy divorce.

Checked-by: Richard Lake