FEINSTEIN URGED TO GRILL DEA NOMINEE ON POT STANCE

Tandy targeted in open letter from drug-reform advocates to senator

Drug-reform advocates have used political and personal tactics to pressure
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to grill President Bush's nominee for Drug
Enforcement Administration chief on her medical marijuana stance.

Feinstein, D-Calif., sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, scheduled to
consider Karen P. Tandy's nomination today. But spokesman Howard Gantman
said Feinstein won't be there; she'll be at a simultaneous Intelligence
Committee briefing on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Still, she intends to submit written questions to Tandy about the "general
issue" of medical marijuana and "some of the issues around the crackdown in
California," Gantman said.

Valerie Corral, director of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana
(WAMM) near Santa Cruz -- which the DEA raided in September, but against
which no charges were ever filed -- issued an open letter Monday to
Feinstein.

"Years ago, you hosted the wedding of a mutual friend in your back yard --
an extraordinary woman, of unwavering integrity, she served as police
commissioner of San Francisco" and later developed colon cancer before
joining WAMM, Corral wrote. "And while (her)passing has taken her from us,
it has not silenced her. I do not presume to speak for her, but I believe
she would also ask of you what I am about to ask.

"As you review Ms. Tandy's upcoming appointment, please remember the
experiences of those you have known who faced illness and death. Then, ask
Ms. Tandy what priorities she will set regarding medical marijuana and
whether she will continue the raids against Californians acting in
compliance with the Compassionate Use Act, Proposition 215."

Corral's letter doesn't name the mutual friend but it is clearly Jo Daly,
whom Feinstein -- then San Francisco's mayor -- named a police commissioner
in 1980. Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1988, Daly had become an outspoken
medical marijuana advocate by the time she died in 1997.

Another, similar letter was sent to Feinstein on Friday by Corral and 22
other medical marijuana providers or their relatives. Feeling snubbed, some
of them and their supporters gathered outside Feinstein's San Francisco
office Tuesday to turn up the heat.

National groups including the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy
Project believe Senate GOP leaders want Tandy -- an associate deputy
attorney general who heads the Justice Department's Organized Crime Drug
Enforcement Task Force -- confirmed with as little fanfare as possible. Her
judiciary hearing is paired with that of another Justice Department nominee,
after a slew of judicial nominees.

If Tandy doesn't pledge to stop the raids, we will urge Feinstein to vote
against her, he said. We don't expect Feinstein to vote no, but if she
doesn't even ask a critical question, she is basically turning her back on
California voters and the families of those being victimized by the DEA's
heavy-handed approach to medical marijuana.