NEW LOBBYING GROUP PRESSES FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA USE

On the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision
allowing the federal government to overrule state medical-marijuana
laws, a new lobbying group is trying to persuade some of the House's
most conservative members to protect the terminally ill's right to
use the drug.

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a nonprofit group funded by
patients, doctors and researchers who support exploring marijuana's
therapeutic potential, opened its Washington office last month and
completed its first grassroots lobbying visits yesterday.

ASA's two lobbyists and seven members, dubbed "citizen experts," met
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), who will offer his traditional
medical-marijuana amendment to the Justice Department appropriations
bill when it hits the floor next week, and 20 more House members,
most from the California delegation. California permits cannabis use
for medical reasons, but the Supreme Court ruled last year in
Gonzales v. Raich that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
could legally raid the supply of state-sanctioned users.

"Eventually we do see legislation being put forth" to end the federal
ban on marijuana research, said ASA's government-affairs director,
Caren Woodson, "but the first thing we need to happen is that
patients and doctors in states with laws stop being harassed by DEA
agents." Hinchey's amendment, co-sponsored by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
(R-Calif.), would bar Justice from spending federal money on raiding
stashes in California and nine other states with legalization laws.

Along with Woodson, a former lobbyist for the pro-legalization Drug
Policy Alliance, ASA sent a past president of the American
Association of Psychiatric Administrators and Garry Silva, a
nerve-damaged California man whose home was raided by the DEA in
March, to meet with lawmakers. ASA's grassroots team met with senior
aides to Reps. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), John Doolittle (R-Calif.) and
Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) and Resources Committee Chairman Richard
Pombo (R-Calif.), among others.

Though the politically incendiary debate over medical marijuana has
made strange bedfellows out of the left-leaning Hinchey and the
conservative Rohrabacher, their amendment faces long odds on the
House floor. For Woodson, however, the week has been a golden
opportunity to position ASA as a new player in the debate dominated
by often-stereotyped players like NORML, the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and the George Soros-funded
Marijuana Policy Project.

"There is a lot of back-and-forth about medical marijuana being a
stalking horse for something greater, but what ASA is going to be
able to provide is ... a fresh perspective," Woodson said. "We don't
have any mission or scope beyond medicine."

Hinchey and Rohrabacher already have taken the fight for therapeutic
cannabis to the Bush administration. Along with 22 other House
members, they wrote to new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief
Andrew von Eschenbach in April protesting an agency release that said
no scientific evidence exists to prove marijuana's medical value.