THE FEDS DON'T FEEL THEIR PAIN

Her mornings are never that good anyhow, since she wakes up with a leg that
is withered from polio. Still, this particular morning was truly bad. She
opened her eyes and saw five federal agents pointing rifles at her head.

"Get your hands up!" one yelled.

"Get out of bed!" yelled another.

She told them she was sorry, but she couldn't, she was crippled. They put
her in handcuffs and again told her to "get up!" Again, she said she
couldn't, because she used leg braces and crutches, and she needed her
hands for those.

"Eventually," Suzanne Pfeil says, "they went after the others. They left me
lying there, handcuffed in the bed, for an hour."

This was in Santa Cruz, Calif., earlier this month, at a hospice/co-op
facility where 80 percent of the people are terminally ill. Does it sound
like a place that federal agents need to burst into and raid?

This is our war on drugs.

Pfeil's "offense," and that of the others in her hospice, is that they use
and grow marijuana for medical purposes. This is perfectly legal in Santa
Cruz, and it is perfectly legal in the state of California. But under
federal law, marijuana is still considered a controlled substance.

So you have dying patients who are pitied by their city and state, and
outlawed by their country.

Maybe that's why they call it dope.

Now, let me say this. I don't smoke marijuana. I never have. I was one of
those "square" kids in high school who caused my cooler friends to
occasionally lower their voices or disappear to the bathroom for 15 minutes.

So I have no personal agenda - except one. Compassion. Patients sick enough
to need marijuana deserve such compassion. They are trying to relieve their
pain. To ease their nausea. To win a few precious minutes from cancer or
AIDS or epilepsy or arthritis. Would you not want that for your ailing
mother? For your terminally ill child?

Yet there is a notion among critics that these patients are locking the
doors and throwing a Cheech and Chong party, mocking the government's naivete.

Nothing could be dumber - or further from the truth. I have spent time with
sick people whose only relief is what marijuana gives them. Believe me,
they would gladly trade their disease for your sobriety. Any day. Any minute.

"I have post-polio syndrome," Pfeil says. "It involves an incredible amount
of muscle and nerve pain. I'm allergic to most pharmaceutical drugs. The
marijuana relieves my pain and helps me cope. We're not getting high. We're
trying to feel better. Isn't that what medicine is supposed to be about?"

The mayor of Santa Cruz was appalled at the federal agents who busted the
co-op. So was the California attorney general. But the Drug Enforcement
Administration clung stubbornly to its credo. "(Our) responsibility is to
enforce our controlled-substances laws," said Asa Hutchinson, the DEA
administrator, "and one of those is marijuana."

So despite the state's blessing, and the obvious non-threat of this small,
compassionate place, here came the feds, guns held high. And you thought it
was the stoners who couldn't think clearly.

When the sick and dying seek relief through marijuana, they are "dopers,"
"potheads" or, even worse, criminals.

"It's strange to me that our government does not want to see people who are
suffering take care of themselves and do better," Pfeil says.

Right. Mornings, when you're sick and dying, are tough enough. You don't
need guns pointed at your head.