FEDERAL AGENTS' ACTIONS REVEAL THE REAL DOPE

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!" one of them yelled. "Get out of bed!" yelled another.
She told them she was sorry, but 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 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 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 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.

It's Not About Getting High

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 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. Any minute.

"I have post-polio syndrome," Pfiel 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.

"For most us, 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?"

Helping The Less Fortunate

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-a-blazing.

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 the kid had to have his stomach pumped.
But we sell beer openly. I know of people who sneak cigarettes to lung
cancer patients. Nobody stops them.

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," Pfiel says.

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