Friday, March 28, 1997 =B7 Page A 23 =A91997 San Francisco Examiner

When Newt Gingrich spoke out for medical pot

STEVE HEILIG

THE HISTORY of our nation's recurrent "war" on drugs is full of irony.
Consider the following quote:

"We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and
patients have a right to employ marijuana legally, under medical
supervision from a regulated source.

"The medical prohibition does not prevent seriously ill patients from
employing marijuana; it simply deprives them of medical supervision and
access to a regulated medical substance.

"Physicians are often forced to choose between their ethical
responsibilities to the patient and their legal liabilities to federal
bureaucrats."

True words, and wisely put. But who is the source? An activist spokesman
from a cannabis buyers' club? A committed physician angry when threatened
because he believes some patients benefit from marijuana? A liberal
academic or columnist?

None of the above. The author is House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

He wrote about pot in the Journal of the American Medical Association in
March of 1982.

At that point, the Republican from Georgia was embarking on his rise and
fall as King of the Hill, but he had a way with words and seemingly a good
grip on the true conservative's creed of minimal governmental interference
in private lives.

Republicans since have been deafeningly silent on this issue. Isn't it
ironic, then, that our "liberal" Democratic administration has taken a
hardline prohibitive stance on medical marijuana following California
voters' strong approval of Proposition 215 and the enactment of a similar
initiative in Arizona?

The public understands the difference between the issue of medical use and
the broader debate over drug decriminalization, but some of our elected
officials cannot seem to grasp that distinction.

That bureaucratic inability to draw lines leads to another irony in the
medical marijuana debate: Since medical use of marijuana became "legal" in
California, doctors who had for decades been quietly supervising a few
patients' use of marijuana where other remedies failed are now afraid to do
so.

So far, regarding Prop. 215, nothing fails like success. Washington's drug
warriors have intimidated doctors, and some sick patients' needs are held
hostage. A few good doctors are so angry that they are suing their own
government for the right to practice medicine as they see fit. Something
seems wrong here.

Our legal drugs tobacco and alcohol harm and kill far more people than
illegal ones. Highlevel government health panels have endorsed needle
exchange as a means to fight AIDS without worsening drug problems, but the
feds refuse to approve such programs.

Another example of our confused policies is seen in the fiasco regarding
the Mexican government's leading narcotics bureaucrat, hailed as a true
antidrug hero by our own drug warriors and promptly exposed as a corrupt
figure one step removed from cocainesmuggling kingpins.

The widespread belief among Americans that shadowy figures in our own
government have been involved in drug dealings in Central America and
elsewhere indicates how bankrupt our policies are perceived to be.

Our kids are pretty skeptical, too. President Clinton's new drugcontrol
strategy contains some encouraging words about being honest with children
and not demonizing all drug users. But if we "follow the money," the same
old story prevails: Law enforcement takes precedence over health and
medical needs.

We'll build more prisons, where drugs are rampant and few prisoners are
rehabilitated.

The schoolbased DARE program, wherein police officers visit schools and
attempt to scare kids away from drugs, has been shown to be less than
effective but will continue to be fully funded anyway.

And tobacco and alcohol merchants largely will escape being targeted by the
government's new antidrug media campaign.

What can be done? The conviction that drug abuse is more a public health
issue than a legal one is shared by an increasing number of experts from
all walks of life.

So to start, we might consider making treatment for addiction available to
everyone who needs it, instead of expecting them to wait for so long that
they get frustrated and disappear. We might pay for that by increasing the
taxes on legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco to levels found in other
civilized nations.

We could further restrict or even ban tobacco and alcohol advertising
altogether.

We might repeal mandatory sentencing of drug users and instead have
mandatory addiction treatment for criminals. Money saved on prisons could
be spent instead on drug treatment and education.

We might focus the drug education of our children on the dangers of legal
drugs and the truth about illegal ones, rather than hysterical
scaremongering.

The issues are complicated, yes, and there's much work to be done. But if I
can be in full agreement with Newt Gingrich on such an issue as medical
marijuana, anything is possible, and perhaps some of these other drug war
ironies can be resolved at last.

Examiner contributor Steve Heilig, a Join Together National Fellow focusing
on drug policy, is director of public health and education for the San
Francisco Medical Society.