STATED INTENTIONS

From Medical-marijuana Legalization On Down, The White House Has An Ironic
Habit Of Meddling In State Affairs.

On Tuesday voters in Columbia, Mo., rejected a decriminalization measure on
marijuana by roughly 60 percent to 40 percent. The fact that the statute
failed was hardly surprising; voters in other states defeated similar
measures last year. What was unusual was the appearance of a high-ranking
White House official in Columbia before the vote on the initiative, which
would have allowed patients using medical marijuana to carry up to 35 grams
of the drug with no penalty and make others caught carrying the same amount
pay a municipal fine.

"I'm not here to tell anybody how to vote," Scott Burns told a local
columnist during his daylong visit there last week. At an anti-initiative
news conference organized by Columbia's Phoenix Programs rehabilitation
center, he declared he was in town to "help those who have been caught up
in the lie" that marijuana is not harmful. Burns, a George W. Bush
appointee, is deputy director for state and local affairs in the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

Legalization activists charge that the White House was trying to influence
the vote's outcome. Not surprisingly, a spokesman for the drug czar's
office told me that Burns' visit, because it was "advocacy," was "part of
the mission of the agency." Any allegations of impropriety about Burns'
appearance were just part of an ongoing effort toward "silencing" the
office, the spokesman added.

The problem is that the Bush administration claims to favor smaller
bureaucracy, more local autonomy and decentralized control of government --
until states or local municipalities do something the White House doesn't like.

Burns is following the lead of his boss, ONDCP Director John Walters.
Before the 2002 election in Nevada, Walters toured the state offering
"information," as his spokesman puts it, about marijuana in an obvious
attempt to influence a statewide referendum that would have legalized
possession of up to 3 ounces of marijuana for adults. In the end the
question failed by a 30 percent margin.

On television and in newspaper interviews, Walters repeatedly railed
against the information being distributed in favor of the measure. He also
insisted that he wasn't breaking election laws that forbid federal
officials from involvement in certain election procedures.

But Walters hasn't been shy about taking credit when the measures came up
short. "These failed initiatives represent the high-water mark of the drug
legalization movement ... from now on, the tide turns our way," he said in
November. (In addition to the failure of the Nevada referendum, voters
defeated pro-legalization measures in Arizona, Ohio and South Dakota.)

Walters' actions have led the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project to
file a federal complaint against him, alleging that he violated the Hatch
Act, which bans the use of "official authority or influence for the purpose
of interfering with or affecting the result of an election." Whether or not
the complaint will fly is a tricky matter: The Hatch Act allows federal
officials to express political opinions as long as they don't use their
"official title while participating in political activity." Whether
referenda constitute "political activity" under the law is also up for debate.

Burns, however, may be more clearly in violation than Walters. A week
before election day last year, he wrote an open letter addressed to the
nation's prosecutors, asking them to "take a stand publicly" and help fight
the threat of "well-financed and deceptive campaigns" to legalize
marijuana. (Though ballot initiatives in specific states were not
mentioned, the intention and timing of the letter were unambiguous: Speak
out when ballot initiatives come your way, it essentially said. "No drug
matches the threat of marijuana," Burns wrote.) That led longtime drug-war
opponent Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a libertarian, to ask the General
Accounting Office last week for an investigation. Others are also
questioning Burns' actions. "This defiles the principles that define us as
a nation," CATO Institute Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon told me.

Of course, meddling in state elections is not the sole providence of the
Bush White House. House Republicans were incensed when Clinton
administration officials campaigned against a National Rifle
Association-supported 1999 state initiative that would have allowed the
"concealed carry" of handguns. (The measure, which is found in state law in
several states, eventually lost.)

But even if administration attorneys can prove that their way of
influencing state ballot initiatives is legal, that doesn't make it
tasteful or particularly healthy for a thriving democracy. And in Bush's
case, drug decriminalization measures are only one of several areas in
which the White House has dispatched deputies to squash state efforts with
which it disagrees. Sometimes the hammer comes down even after an
initiative has become law.

In 1994 Oregon voters passed the Death With Dignity Act, under which adult
patients may receive a prescription of lethal drugs provided that two
doctors agree that the patient has less than half a year to live and is
capable of making a health-care decision. In 1997 state voters again passed
the measure, the first of its kind nationwide and, according to the New
England Journal of Medicine, 38 patients in the state took their own lives
in 2002 with help from doctors.

But last April, declaring the Department of Justice's right to determine
"legitimate medical practice," Attorney General John Ashcroft challenged
the Oregon law in a directive. A federal judge in Portland, Ore., ruled
against Ashcroft, who has appealed the decision. Along the same lines,
federal agents continue to hound California pot users who say the drug is
their only medical refuge, despite a 1996 initiative-passed law that
legalized medical marijuana in the state.

The fact is, when lobbyists come calling with complaints about state ballot
initiatives, the White House snaps to attention. In October the Food and
Drug Administration wrote Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-Ore.) to warn against
Measure 27, a state initiative that would have mandated labeling for foods
containing genetically modified ingredients. Why? The law "would
impermissibly interfere with manufacturers' ability to market their
products on a nationwide basis," said the letter, which was signed by the
FDA's deputy commissioner. (After facing opposition from industry-supported
groups, the effort failed.)

I, for one, happen to hate the idea of mandatory labeling of genetically
modified food, and I question the motives of marijuana-legalization
advocates. Still, regardless of the issue, it's a disturbing trend to watch
the White House handpick which state initiatives it chooses to get involved
in -- especially when it shouldn't be meddling in them at all.