POT GOT YOU CONFUSED. YOU MUST BE THE DEA

Raids On Medical Marijuana Are Reefer Madness.

The leaders of the federal war on drugs are upset. At the very moment
they were launching a multimillion-dollar media campaign to educate
parents and kids about the risks of marijuana, the city fathers of
Santa Cruz gathered on the steps of City Hall to witness the
distribution of marijuana to the patients of a medical marijuana collective.

A representative of the Drug Enforcement Administration decried the
confusion this will create among our adolescent population: The Santa
Cruz festivities sent "the wrong message."

That's the same phrase government officials used in 1992 when they
closed down the federal government's Compassionate Investigative New
Drug program to distribute government-grown marijuana to the sick and
dying. When the program was deluged with applications from AIDS
patients, federal authorities decided that compassion was going too
far and closed off new applications because the program was "sending
the wrong message." Distribution was continued for previously enrolled
patients, six of whom still survive.

One of the real ironies of the gathering in Santa Cruz was the
presence of one of those six patients, holding the canister of
marijuana cigarettes she received from the U.S. government, sitting
beside the hundreds of patients whose marijuana had just been taken
away by the U.S. government.

If kids are confused about marijuana, it's not because they can't
understand why sick people want to use a widely abused drug as
medicine. Even kids can understand the difference between recreational
abuse of a substance and therapeutic use under the care of a
physician. We make that distinction with cocaine and narcotics, both
of which are widely abused but can be prescribed by a physician.

The real confusion about marijuana for most kids is trying to figure
out why it's so different from alcohol. The government's "Open Letter
to Parents" published in American newspapers last week talked about
the havoc that marijuana can cause in high-pressure social situations,
leading to risky decision-making on such issues as sex, criminal
activity or riding with someone who is driving high.

Although marijuana certainly contributes to such risky behavior, it
accounts for a much smaller proportion of teenage sex, criminality and
driving high than does alcohol. Why is a multimillion-dollar
government ad campaign on drug education leaving out alcohol, the No.
1 killer of our teens. It's rather confusing.

The best message to send to young people is the simple truth. And the
simple truth about medical marijuana was with those patients who
limped across the steps of Santa Cruz City Hall. The simple truth has
been discovered by thousands of AIDS patients, wasting away from loss
of appetite, and thousands of cancer patients, vomiting away their
breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Marijuana helps many of these people when other drugs don't. Their
physicians agree but are prohibited from writing a prescription for
marijuana by federal law. Many of these patients are dying and aren't
particularly concerned whether marijuana is carcinogenic or addictive.
They are more concerned with keeping their breakfast down and their
weight up, so they can benefit from the other medical treatments their
doctors are prescribing.

During the last year, 40 of the patients served by the Santa Cruz
collective died, four of them during the week before the DEA raid. The
collective functioned as a hospice, and Valerie Corral, the director
of the Wo"Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, was holding the hands
of many of these patients when they passed on.

As a result of the federal raid, many patients in Santa Cruz have been
condemned to a more painful, agonizing death. If the leaders of the
U.S. drug war think that compassion for the sick and dying is the
"wrong message," they are badly confused. If they think that the
scarce resources available to suppress heroin trafficking and
methamphetamine production should be used to send 30 agents armed with
M-16s into the mountains of Santa Cruz to harass the sick and dying,
they are worse than confused.

They are demented.