MALICIOUS TACTICS

I am but one of many individuals caught-up in the legal conflict between
the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington D.C. and the right of a growing
number of sovereign states to implement voter-approved initiative statutes
that sanction the medical use of cannabis by seriously ill patients under
the direction of state-licensed physicians.

Other states with such legislative or voter-approved initiative statutes
are: Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and
Alaska--almost the entire nation west of the Rocky Mountains. These western
states comprise one quarter of the population of the entire United States.

At this very moment, tens of thousands of sick people across the nation are
using marijuana for medical purposes under the protection of these laws.
Additionally, other states in the nation, including Maryland and Vermont,
are expected to approve the medical use of cannabis by legislative action
shortly.

Rather than taking these states and their Attorneys General altogether into
court to challenge their combined medical marijuana laws on constitutional
grounds, the federal government adopted the tactic of avoiding a discussion
of states' rights entirely by prosecuting seriously ill patients and their
treating physicians directly.

The United States Justice Department's decision to bypass the proper course
of legal challenge comes after John Ashcroft lost his suit against the
state of Oregon's death with dignity law, which allows physicians there to
assist the terminally ill comfortably into the next life. In that case, the
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones ruled against Ashcroft, and in favor
of a state's right to determine proper accepted medical practice. A
three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering
the case again.

The U.S. Attorney's decision to federally prosecute individual patients who
are in compliance with California's medical marijuana law purposely ignores
the state as a proper defendant. Such wrongful prosecutions force
individuals, already in poor health and with limited financial resources
to, in effect, defend the state of California in federal court--an arena,
by the way, in which a medical marijuana defense is not even admissible.

If Ashcroft doesn't like our state law, he should take it up with the
Attorney General of California. Targeting those of us who trusted in the
sanctity of the law is wrongful, malicious and vindictive prosecution.

Steve McWilliams, Normal Heights

Editor's note: The letter writer was sentenced recently to six months in
prison for cultivating marijuana. He uses cannabis for various ailments and
has been an outspoken advocate for the use of medicinal marijuana.