'MEDICAL' POT UP IN SMOKE

To those who have worked on federal narcotics legislation for decades, the
notion of state referenda allowing "medical" marijuana, as an exception to
federal drug trafficking laws, has always been an oxymoron.

There was nothing "medical" about smoking marijuana; the two words were
mutually exclusive. The idea made no more sense than "medical glue
sniffing, or free-lance "medical heroin injection." It was dangerous,
indulgent nonsense at best, a cynical hoax at worst. Thanks to the U.S.
Supreme Court's lucid ruling this week, the hoax is over.

The so-called "medical marijuana movement," led by cleaned-up former
hippies and underwritten by three or four wealthy anti-establishment
millionaires, including George Soros, seems to have been intended to find a
back door into the federal legislative, federal law enforcing, and federal
regulatory process -- one that logically, sensibly and thankfully forbids
the production, sale and distribution of narcotics.

To the clever few, a possibility of tricking the vast majority of Americans
into supporting a colossal change in society's approach to a substance that
measurably lowers human immunities, thus leading to early death for those
with AIDS; creates direct and polydrug addition; accounts for the greatest
number of young people in drug treatment today; contributes to tens of
thousands of emergency room incidents annually; and alters personalities
and brain function -- seemed just too good to be true.

The motivation was always mixed. The leading aim was to dupe a coalition of
former and present drug users, relatively inattentive libertarians, states'
rights conservatives, and anti-establishment liberals into toppling
existing laws. Never mind that those laws protect kids, stop polydrug
trafficking, empower our local, state and federal law enforcement officers
to exclude drug trafficking from our communities, reduce violent personal
and property crime, and have helped prevent everything from domestic abuse
to workplace accidents.

The idea was simple. They would execute a multiyear end-run on Congress,
which tends to place special value on kids and community safety. They would
politically seek to subvert the Food and Drug Administration's lengthy drug
trials and science-based safety studies by claiming an urgent need, and a
state's right to redefine what constitutes "medicine."

They would press for "administration" of the narcotic by a sophisticated
process called "smoking." They would disparage and reduce proven pain
relievers, from synthetic Marinol, based on similar elements, to hundreds
of other pain-relief options.

Cynically, they would first recruit and roll onto radio and television a
coalition of willing victims, especially those with terminal diseases, who
could be poster folks for their movement. They would ignore, diminish,
outspend and dismiss lifetime efforts by parents -- tens of thousands of
them -- who lost kids or worked with kids suffering from drug abuse. They
would vilify the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Office of
National Drug Control Policy, nonprofits like DARE America and anyone who
points out the lunacy in this campaign of disinformation. They would merge
their movement into the United Nations, which would defend elements of it
under the rubric of "harm reduction," work it across Europe, expand the
"medical marijuana" notion into areas like giving away drugs and needles in
European countries.

It was a good plan, from both a strategic and operations viewpoint. You can
fool all the people some of the time. The strategy would catch off-guard
overworked and underfunded U.S. legislators. Parent groups and nonprofits
fighting to preserve kids' lives, from the Partnership for a Drug Free
America to PRIDE, would be methodically, frenetically and geographically
outspent. The messages of the 1980s -- such as Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No"
and that decade's success in lowering drug use of all kinds across all age
groups and all drugs -- would be criticized, mocked, hopefully forgotten.
The plan would leverage wide European anti-establishment drug distribution
efforts, in places like Amsterdam and Switzerland, to shame America into
"getting with the Euro program" and "coming along." It was a neatly
packaged approach.

But Americans are not fools. Americans and the U.S. Congress are not about
to choose the freedom to "smoke" a dangerous drug -- even one conveniently
described as "medical" through the magic of open-ended state referenda --
over the safety and health of their kids, or the safety and health of the
their nation. This is America, not Amsterdam or Switzerland; the United
States, not the United Nations.

As a people, we have long respected those we elect to craft federal
criminal laws, and we rightly revere those who defend us by enforcing them.
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court takes a similar view. Neither our
reverence for the rule of law and medical science, nor the Supreme Court's,
is likely to change. You cannot fool all the people all the time.

Accordingly, the "medical pot" hoax is over.