RECOVERY PLAN

The day after the medical pot community celebrated convicted marijuana
grower Ed Rosenthal's one-day sentence, a top Bush administration
official came through town to offer the sort of stern condemnation of
medical marijuana widespread among Washington Republicans but not
often heard in this city.

Dr. Andrea Grubb Barthwell, President Bush's Deputy Director of Demand
Reduction at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called
marijuana an "elixir" and compared it to smoking opium as a cure for
pain.

"It's really, really unfortunate that people look at that and believe
that smoke-weed can help them as medicine," she said. "It is silly,
even outrageous to suggest that a smoke-weed is medicine and that it
would be more efficacious than other forms of medications that have
been developed over time."

She called the medicinal marijuana movement "a smokescreen for another
agenda" and said Rosenthal message was never really about pot for the
ill.

"This is not about marijuana as a medicine," she said. "This is about
an individual who has gone on the record with a program to legalize
marijuana."

Barthwell's comments were made at the Asian-American Recovery Services
treatment center in the Western Addition, which she praised as the
sort of culturally sensitive drug treatment center the Bush
administration favors.

She also outlined Bush's $600 million "Access To Recovery" program, a
voucher system that would give recovering addicts the freedom to
choose the suitable program most suitable for their addiction.

The presentation was preceded by accounts of several San Franciscans
who had found sobriety at AARS.

Graduate Melvin Kon said he was living in Tenderloin hotels and was
addicted to a gamut of drugs - from weed to coke to speed - when a
judge gave him a choice between jail and a residential treatment
program. He had been arrested between 20 and 30 times.

"I definitely made the right move," he said. "I'm so grateful for this
place."

As a Japanese-American Kon said he basically ignored his family during
20 years of addiction.

"I choose to hide out rather than deal with it," he said. "It's an
Asian thing, you feel you have to keep quiet about it because the
family name is at stake."

Stated 17 years ago, AARS was the first recovery program to target
Asian and Pacific Islander communities, long stereotyped as "model
minorities" unencumbered by the sort of a serious drug addiction
problems other groups wrestle with. AARS has both residential
treatment programs and outpatient services as well as youth
intervention programs.