ELDERS BACKS MARIJUANA FOR SICK, SUFFERING

In December 1994, Joycelyn Elders, the U.S. surgeon general, was
unceremoniously booted out of her job by President Clinton. The
pediatrician and former director of the Arkansas health department had
taken controversial stands on a number of issues.

She urged anti-abortion groups to "get over their love affair with the
fetus and start supporting the children."

She said it was impossible to teach teenagers how to protect
themselves from AIDS "without telling them about sex."

She said girls who were lesbians should be allowed to join the Girl
Scouts because "none of us is good enough, or knows enough, to make
decisions about other people's sexual preferences."

She suggested that the government study the feasibility of legalizing
drugs.

But the last straw came when she suggested that sex-education courses
should probably include a discussion of masturbation.

In a heartbeat, Elders was out the door and back in Arkansas -- too
much of a perceived political embarrassment for the Clinton
administration.

I admired her commitment to saying what she believed to be the truth,
even if it was politically unpopular. If you can't get a straight
answer from the nation's top doctor, then whom can you trust? But
Elders paid the price for it.

I'm pleased to report that she's still at it, though. Now 70, Elders,
who spends a lot of her time giving speeches, is working with the
, an advocacy group, to get states to adopt
medical marijuana laws. These laws, which are in effect in eight
states and are being considered in five others, including New York,
would legalize marijuana to treat the symptoms of diseases such as
cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS.

Writing last month in The Providence Journal, Elders called on the
Rhode Island legislature to approve such a bill, saying it was "simply
wrong for the sick and suffering to be casualties in the war on drugs."

Nearly 700,000 arrests in 2002 were on marijuana charges, according to
the U.S. Department of Justice, 88 percent of them for simple
possession. Elders views the drug laws as "a war on our young people"
and says that, while we let police lecture students about drugs, we
haven't taught young people the real disadvantages of drug use.

"We've been very silent on that issue, except to pick them up and put
them in jail," she told me. "We just commit them forever to a terrible
handicap."

The hypocrisy in this is that while tobacco kills 435,000 Americans a
year, we continue to sell it knowing that, even though it's forbidden
to minors, any young person who wants to can buy it.

Elders wants to see marijuana treated the same way as alcohol and
tobacco, and to have harder drugs dispensed legally on a controlled
basis, which would lower their cost and eliminate the crimes that are
committed to get the money to buy them. But people do get upset when
you talk about relaxing the drug laws.

"I'm aware of that," Elders said. "I just have to express what I
believe. I can't worry about what other people think. And if you can
give me enough facts to show me I'm wrong, I would change."

Elders says she doesn't regret any of the stands she has taken. "I
feel very good about taking those positions. Many of them were very
unpopular then, but more and more people are moving towards my position."