U.S. IGNORING MARIJUANA RESEARCH

Early in the morning of Sept. 5, dozens of armed men stormed a respected
medical facility where nearly 300 people desperately ill from cancer, AIDS
and other illnesses got their medicine. Brandishing semiautomatic weapons
in the faces of terrified patients, including a woman paralyzed from
childhood polio, they destroyed all of the medicine and took prisoner the
facility's operators.

The work of Osama bin Laden? Hamas? Some other international terrorists?

No. This particular terrorist raid was carried out by the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration.

The facility they attacked was the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana
(WAMM) in Santa Cruz, Calif. A co-op run entirely by and for seriously ill
people - 80 percent of whom have terminal diagnoses - WAMM sold nothing.
All of the medical marijuana grown was given to members without charge.

The facility was supported by the community and worked closely with local
officials. According to County Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt, WAMM operated in
an "exemplary" fashion. After the raid - which had been planned and
executed with no warning to the local government - Wormhoudt told reporters
she was "appalled" by the DEA's action.

The patients WAMM served are desperately ill. For many with AIDS or cancer,
marijuana is the only thing that allows them to tolerate the horrendous
side effects of the harsh treatments that keep them alive. Others endure
excruciating pain that conventional medicines have failed to relieve, but
which marijuana helps.

Because of this raid, many of these people will die prematurely -
agonizing, horrible deaths - because the only medicine that helped them has
been taken away.

What could possibly motivate such cruelty?

Desperation.

All around the world, governments and scientific experts are coming to
believe that marijuana shouldn't be illegal - that it is simply not
dangerous enough to warrant arresting and jailing even social or
recreational users, much less people using it to relieve symptoms of cancer
or AIDS. The British government has already moved to make marijuana
possession a nonarrestable offense.

On Sept. 4, Canada's Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs released the
most exhaustive investigation of marijuana data and policy options ever
conducted by any government. The 650-page report declared that
criminalizing marijuana amounted to "throwing taxpayers' money down the
drain in a crusade that is not warranted by the danger posed by the substance."

But marijuana - which accounts for the vast majority of illegal drug use
and arrests - is the engine that drives the war on drugs and keeps massive
drug-control budgets pumped up.

So even as DEA agents were shoving machine guns in the faces of sick
people, White House drug czar John Walters and Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson stood in front of a Washington, D.C., press
conference, spouting long-discredited myths as if they were proven facts.

Marijuana, said Thompson, is "a clear and present danger to the health and
well-being of all its users" - a statement contradicted by reams of
scientific research.

Indeed, in 1995, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet stated flatly,
"The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health." This
year, the British government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and
the Canadian Senate committee came to similar conclusions after extensive
study.

But our government's drug war ideologues don't care about science. And they
don't care how many sick people they literally torture to death in their
desperate effort to pump up a collapsing policy.