FEDERAL DRUG AGENTS 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 of them 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, 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, like something out
of "Silence of the Lambs"?

This is our war on drugs.

Pfeil's "offense," and that of the others in her hospice, is that she uses
and grows 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. They are trying 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 naivety.

Nothing could be dumber - or further from the truth. I have spent a lot of
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."

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."

And you thought it was the stoners who couldn't think clearly.

Look. This is hypocrisy. Last week at a football game, a father got his
14-year-old son so drunk on beer that the kid had to have his stomach
pumped. But we sell beer openly.

But for some reason, 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.