VOTERS HAVE THEIR SAY ON DRUGS

After several years of riding high, so to speak, the movement to relax drug
laws in the nation lost some of its momentum in the November election.

In general, voters opposed the recreational use of marijuana, but had mixed
views on the medicinal use of the drug and on whether offenders should be
directed to treatment rather than punishment.

By a 61 percent to 39 percent vote, Nevada residents defeated a proposal to
legalize possession of up to three ounces of marijuana. In Arizona, the
vote was 57-43 against a proposal to allow the medicinal use of marijuana.

A measure that would have mandated treatment instead of jail time for
nonviolent drug offenders lost by a landslide in Ohio.

The opinion of marijuana was different, however, in the District of
Columbia, where voters passed a "treatment instead of jail" measure for
minor drug offenders and voted for a second time to legalize medicinal
marijuana. An earlier vote on medicinal marijuana was quashed by Congress.

San Francisco voters approved a proposition that directs the city to
explore growing and distributing marijuana for medicinal purposes.

And so, the debate on whether to ease drug laws around the country goes on
in an appropriate place, in the legislatures and at the local ballot box.
This is a local law enforcement issue, and that's where it should be handled.

That means criminal laws will be suited for local mores and local values.
In elections before this one, voters in 10 states approved 17 out of 19
drug measures such as the ones on the ballot last week. Now the marijuana
`reform' movement has suffered a setback. It's not clear whether that's a
sign that national sentiment is changing. It may be simply that voters in
Ohio and Arizona are more conservative than those in California and
Washington, D.C., and voted accordingly.

Local decisions and local laws, however, are not being given much credence
by the U.S. Justice Department.

California and several other states have legalized the use of medicinal
marijuana under a doctor's recommendation, but federal law enforcement
still intervenes in some regions, cracking down on people even when they
are abiding by state laws.

Asa Hutchinson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has rebuffed
California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's plea to stop raids on state-sanctioned
cannabis growers and treatment facilities. Bryan James Epis, whose
medicinal use and distribution of marijuana was sanctioned under
California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act, was sentenced last month to a
mandatory 10 years in prison on federal drug charges.

As Epis told U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr., he probably made a
mistake in not growing marijuana in the more tolerant San Francisco-based
Northern District of California, "where I would not have been charged."

The federal activity in California brings to mind the Justice Department's
effort to overturn the will of Oregon voters, who voted in 1994 to permit
physician-assisted suicide. The Justice Department has vowed to sanction
and possibly hold doctors criminally liable if they prescribe lethal
medication under the Oregon law. The law has been upheld in federal
district court, but the Justice Department has appealed.

It's hard to fathom why the Justice Department puts such an emphasis on
these matters--there's a domestic war on terror going on, remember? The
federal pursuit of Epis and the mandated 10-year sentence amounted to gross
overkill.