RAIDING CANNABIS CLUBS

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

"Get your hands up!" yelled one of them.

"Get out of bed!" yelled another.

She told them that she was sorry but that she couldn't, because 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 said, "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, like
something out of "The Silence of the Lambs"?

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. 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 naivete.

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.

"I have post-polio syndrome," Pfeil said. "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."

For most users like Pfeil, she went on, "that's the situation. We're not
getting high. We're trying to feel better. Isn't that what medicine is
supposed to be about?"

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 said.

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