GOVERNMENT ROLLS OUT A BIG FAT LIE

Once again, government servants have told Americans that marijuana
ranks right up there with heroin. The Drug Enforcement Administration
ruled on July 8 that marijuana has "no accepted medical use" and will
continue as a schedule 1 drug - the most forbidden category.

The DEA is a law enforcement bureaucracy. The medical opinions of law
enforcement bureaucrats should be of little interest. We do not ask
cops to make laws; we pay cops to enforce the laws established by
constitutions or enacted by the people or the decisions of their
representatives.

Furthermore, what drug a person takes for an illness should be
between that person and his or her physician. Drug laws - like laws
that regulate rape, murder, arson, property crimes and almost all
criminal matters - should be the purview of states.

That's a right wing, conservative Republican view of the world that
is shared by the left-leaning Obama administration regarding the
regulation of medical marijuana. Nothing in the Constitution grants
authority to the federal government, let alone a lone bureaucracy
such as the DEA, to regulate drugs. Efforts by the federal government
to regulate alcohol failed miserably, just as the efforts to regulate
drugs have empowered black-market criminals. The war on drugs is a
deadly and expensive political indulgence of the past that our
country can no longer afford.

The agency's statement came in response to a 2002 petition by
supporters of medical marijuana who want the drug reclassified. The
ruling means, in the view of the federal bureaucrats, that even a
terminal cancer patient cannot use marijuana to control severe pain
even if it is the best course of treatment as recommended by the
patient's physician. The DEA would prefer the patient go on other
drugs - something created and sold by pharmaceuticals.

Most prescription-strength pain relievers, unlike marijuana, are
liver toxins that have the ability to kill upon overdose. Most,
unlike marijuana, are so physically addictive that withdrawal can be
deadly. Over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, such as aspirin, kill
more than 7,000 Americans each year who either overdose intentionally
or by accident. Tobacco has killed an average of 430,700 Americans
each year, based on research from the Centers for Disease Control.
Alcohol has killed more than 110,000 Americans each year. Adverse
reactions to prescription drugs have killed more than 32,000
Americans each year.

Marijuana, a drug that should not be used for recreation, has been
the direct cause of this many deaths each year: Zero. We are able to
buy aspirin - a pharmaceutical that can kill. But the government says
no to marijuana - a drug that quite likely has the safest track
record of any drug in history - even if a physician says it is what
we need. This is the type of insanity that led President Ronald
Reagan to say: "The nine most terrifying words in the English
language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

The ongoing schedule 1 classification of marijuana - as a drug akin
to heroin - is an obvious indulgence of bureaucratic exaggeration. It
seems clear that DEA officials want to demonize marijuana because it
guarantees the DEA's ongoing funding and growth.

This ruling does nothing to harm the reputation of medical marijuana,
and everything to diminish the reputation of the DEA.

We must demand that government employees stop lying to the Americans
they are paid to serve with integrity and truth.