CONFLICT OVER POT: LET CONGRESS ACT

Marijuana advocates seem intent on making a test case out of the
unfortunate local pot seizure that hit the news this week. It is doubtful
they will get anywhere in court, but in a larger sense the episode may
prove useful anyway. This and similar cases should cause Congress to review
and change federal law.

VALIANT, the local anti-drug team, had received a tip that three
state-authorized marijuana users in the Lebanon area - paraplegic Leroy
Stubblefield and his two caretakers - were growing about 100 marijuana
plants, far more than Oregon allows. They were about to do "knock and talk"
to check this out, and they asked a federal DEA agent who happened to be in
the office if he wanted to go along.

When they got to the place, they found that the tip was wrong and the
number of plants, 12, was less than the law allowed. The DEA man, however,
pointing out that federal law does not recognize medical marijuana use,
seized the plants.

Stubblefield has not been charged with anything, and while the DEA says the
case is still under investigation, it is unlikely that the U.S. attorney
will waste time trying to prosecute a veteran in a wheelchair for something
the state says is perfectly legal.

Still, the matter cannot be allowed to rest there.

According to the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, the DEA man who took his
plants told Stubblefield: "You're lucky we don't seize your house."

According to another version, the agent was nicer, explaining that he had
no choice but to seize the plants and that under federal forfeiture laws,
if the man got caught with plants again, he ran the risk of losing not just
the plants but his house.

Under our Constitution, federal law trumps state law. But if federal law
gives a federal officer the authority to seize the house of an Oregon
resident who does what the state specifically has licensed him to do, there
is something wrong.

The DEA's assistant agent in charge in Oregon, Ken Magee, made one main
point: Seizing marijuana plants is not a matter of policy but of federal
law made by Congress.

It is Congress, therefore, that can resolve the conflict. It ought to undo
the change made in the 1930s when, against the advice of the American
Medical Association, it made marijuana illegal.

At the very least, Congress should amend the law so that the DEA would not
be required to seize plants in states where the voters have decided, as in
Oregon, that possession of marijuana for medical use is all right.