ASHCROFT'S OTHER WAR

Who Sent The Anthrax? Who Knows? The Feds Are Too Busy Cracking Down On
Medical Marijuana And Physician-Assisted Suicides.

AT A TIME when seventy-three percent of Americans support allowing doctors
to recommend medical marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration is
moving fast to shut down patient cooperatives in California. Only a month
after ardent drug warrior Asa Hutchinson was confirmed as the agency's new
chief, agents raided the office of a doctor and her lawyer husband in Cool,
California, who focused their shared practice on advising medical-marijuana
clients. More than 6,000 confidential patient records were seized. In
Lockwood Valley, near Los Angeles, two dozen agents tore up hundreds of
plants on a ranch that supplied the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center.
In Octoher, hundreds of plants and thousands of patient files were removed,
and bank accounts frozen, at the LACRC, a well-established club known for
carefully selecting only very ill patients.

The no-notice raids followed last May's Supreme Court ruling that marijuana
distribution for medical use is not exempt from federal law, and subsequent
calls for action by members of Congress. The Clinton administration chose
not to prosecute members of medical-marijuana cooperatives - John Coleman,
a thirty-two-year DEA agent, says, "I don't think they had an interest in
it, frankly." Bush nominee Hutchinson was ambiguous about medical-marijuana
enforcement during pre-confirmation questioning by the Senate. But the day
he assumed command, on August zest, he declared his intention to "send the
right signal" regarding medical marijuana. "You're not going to tolerate a
violation of law," he told the Associated Press. "Within thirty minutes of
his confirmation," says Keith Stroup, executive director of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, "Hutchinson made it clear
that the feds are not going to look the other way."

Even in the aftermath of September 11th, Attorney General John Ashcroft and
DEA chief Hutchinson are not embarrassed to use precious resources to
target such cooperatives as the LACRC, which is run by Scott Imler, who
himself suffers from epilepsy. Their tough new policy is a direct attack on
California's approved ballot initiative, Proposition 215, which permits the
cultivation and use of small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes, and
on similar laws in seven other states.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, says
the local raid had "been in the works for a while." It may have been
prompted, in part, by a letter to Ashcroft from Mark E. Souder, R-Ind.,
chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees federal drug policy,
following the Supreme Court ruling. Souder wrote, "We urge you to now move
swiftly to give effect to that ruling throughout the United States with
respect to 'medical marijuana' provisions contrary to the court's unanimous
decision."

Souder also requested that the General Accounting Office, the investigative
arm of Congress, determine how the eight states with medical-marijuana
provisions are overseeing these new laws. Paul Jones, the GAO official in
charge of the effort, says he received Souder's request in June and
currently has "three or four" full-time staffers working on it.

Oddly enough, the GAO's first move was to visit the LACRC, purportedly to
learn how the organization worked. Imler charges that the four analysts who
came to the club took scant interest in his diligent records. Instead, they
pressed him on where he got his pot. He showed them his grow room with its
hundreds of plants and also mentioned his off-site suppliers, Lynn and Judy
Osburn, who grew substantial amounts for the club at their home in Ventura
County. Hearing this, Imler says, the GAO analysts left in a great hurry.
Within an hour, a search warrant was signed for the Osburns, who were
raided the next day. "It was strictly coincidental - to my knowledge, there
was no connection," says Jones. Within weeks, the L.A. club was hit as
well. Thirty armed agents carried out seizures of medicine, computers and
equipment, despite opposition by members of the West Hollywood City
Council, who protested outside. Since 1996, when the club was founded, the
council and the sheriff's department have been supportive of the group.

No one connected with the LACRC has been charged to date; in a trial, the
government would have to face California jurors' reluctance to convict
medical-marijuana defendants. But the center is effectively out of business
solely through the execution of a search warrant. Before the Supreme Court
decision in May, the federal government sought injunctions to close down
Bay Area clubs; now it just engages in what one club director refers to as
"smash and grab" raids.

Speaking for the DEA, Mrozek defends the L.A. seizure as "a legitimate
investigative technique," akin to gathering evidence from a stock-- fraud
operation. But Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., objected, saying, "I'm
surprised and concerned that the LACRC was a top priority for the DEA. I
would think they should focus on more significant threats."

Cannabis-club operators throughout California are fearful. One government
official says, "The Bay Area is next on the hit list, yes, at some point."
The official adds, "It's my understanding the government is going to move
against all the clubs."

California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer says that three or four Bay
Area clubs have reported surveillance, with several cars with tinted
windows repeatedly parked outside. One young arthritis patient, Jeff
Horner, was recently visited by ten armed DEA agents at his Oakland home
and pressured to go to a club one or two were mentioned as possible targets
- - to buy marijuana clones to turn over to the DEA. Despite Horner's
refusal, Gieringer expects "a big sweep" any day now. In early November, a
San Francisco cooperative that served 1,200 patients pre-emptively shut down.

SICK PEOPLE AREN'T HUTCHINSON'S only targets - so are drug-- test cheaters.
On October 9th, the DEA issued a new rule outlawing all food - such as
pasta or beer - made with hemp, which might contain trace elements of THC,
the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. In the past few years, some
people who have failed drug tests have kept their jobs by claiming they
hadn't smoked pot but had eaten food such as cheese or a veggie burger made
with hemp oil. This policy shift attempts to prevent such excuses. Clothing
made with hemp is not affected - yet.

"The recent enforcement action is indicative that we have not lost our
priorities in other areas since September uth," said Justice Department
spokeswoman Susan Dryden. But the Bush administration's priorities on the
issue of medical marijuana are completely at odds with those of the public.

[sidebar by Erika Casriel]

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL VS. THE PEOPLE OF OREGON

ON NOVEMBER 6TH, DURING a week in which he announced a top-to-bottom
"wartime reorganization and mobilization" of the Justice Department and
law-enforcement agencies, Attorney General John Ashcroft found the time to
issue a memo and a twenty-four-page brief threatening Oregon's doctors. His
directive aims to override a law, passed twice by Oregon voters, that
allows doctors to issue prescriptions that may hasten the deaths of the
terminally ill.

His action is a radical move for a man who has been a devout advocate of
states' rights for the past forty years. "Here is a person who defied court
orders during his tenure as attorney general and governor of Missouri with
respect to desegregation of the St. Louis schools, saying the federal
government was exceeding its authority," says Ralph G. Neas, president of
the civil-liberties group People for the American Way.

Under current law in Oregon, a doctor cannot administer a lethal dose; a
patient must ingest the drug himself. The Death With Dignity Act has been
operating for four years in the state, where about 29,000 people a year die
but where only seventy people so far are recorded to have died through
assisted suicide.

Coming in the midst of the anthrax scare, Ashcroft's attack on the
physician-assisted-suicide law surprised people in Oregon. "It's almost
touching that the attorney general found a moment for us," wrote a
commentator in The Oregonian. But Ashcroft is only following up, at a
higher level, on a crusade he launched years ago with other senators. He
supported bills in 1998 and zooo that would have amended the Controlled
Substances Act to criminalize assisted suicide. And last year, during a
campaign appearance, George W. Bush vowed to challenge Oregon's law,
saying, "Controlled substances to control pain are fine, to take a life is
not fine." This year, both the National Right to Life Committee and the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pressured Bush and Ashcroft on this
issue. While Bush's decision to allow some stem-cell research disappointed
the groups, the Oregon crackdown has encouraged them.

No one in Oregon's congressional delegation knew this decision was coming,
not even Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, an enemy of the assistedsuicide law.
But Scott Swenson, executive director of Oregon Death With Dignity, says
that the administration's attempt at stealth has backfired. "They did this
on Election Day, in the middle of a war - they wanted this thing buried,
but it didn't work." Ashcroft's legal standing is uncertain: States have
always had jurisdiction over the regulation of medical practice, and the
Controlled Substances Act has yet to be amended to give new authority to
the federal government. Now a brutal court battle looms between the Oregon
attorney general and the Justice Department. "Given everything the country
is going through right now," said Oregon's Gov. John Kitzhaber, "why John
Ashcroft picked this moment to inject this divisive issue into the public
debate is just beyond me."