FIGHTING DRUGS A WASTED EFFORT

Our newly urgent need for collective security has revealed deficiencies in
many of our public institutions. The U.S. Postal Service, our woeful system
of public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service and many other agencies charged with
serving public needs are themselves in need of assistance. The FBI has even
asked the public for help in tracking down the anthrax terrorists.

Despite the need to better utilize our national resources for this new war
on terrorism, we still are squandering them in the old war on drugs.

Last month, agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration raided
the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center, a source of marijuana for AIDS
patients, cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis sufferers, or any other
patient with a doctor's prescription for medicinal marijuana. Californians
voted overwhelmingly to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes in
1996.

And California wasn't the only state to take such a stance in favor of
medical marijuana. Since 1996, eight other states (Alaska, Arizona,
Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) and the District of
Columbia have passed laws allowing marijuana to be used medicinally.
Congress has prevented D.C.'s initiative from taking effect and Arizona's
attempt has stalled. In a poll taken by the Pew Research Center in March,
73 percent of Americans said they favored medical use of marijuana with a
doctor's prescription.

But all of those efforts were called into question this spring when the
U.S. Supreme Court struck down the argument of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers
Club that medical necessity trumped a federal injunction that had shut it
down. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas declared federal
laws prohibiting the manufacture and distribution of marijuana take
precedence over a patient's medical need for the drug.

While the top court's ruling didn't exactly render the states' measures
moot, it did provide federal prosecutors with potent legal ammunition to
use against the marijuana centers that were beginning to proliferate.

According to The Sacramento Bee in Sacramento, Calif., the feds began their
assault on medical marijuana by uprooting a marijuana garden run by the Los
Angeles club and seizing 342 plants. Buyers' clubs typically cultivate
their own marijuana crops to avoid purchasing the drug on the black market.
Federal agents then raided the club and confiscated the records of the
doctors who recommended marijuana treatment.

What makes this federal action even more perplexing is the claim by DEA
chief Asa Hutchinson that his agency is being stretched thin by the war on
terrorism. In a Nov. 6 news conference, Hutchinson said the war against
terrorism is diverting agents, patrol boats and other resources from the
war on drugs. "It's a battle of resources right now," he told the assembled
journalists.

Hutchinson apparently is doing that by deploying DEA agents to prevent
nearly 1,000 people with serious illnesses from seeking relief from a drug
they insist provides it.

And there is a growing body of evidence that suggests marijuana effectively
reduces the nausea of chemotherapy and reverses the "wasting syndrome" of
people with AIDS. For example, clinical trials in England, where the
British parliament currently is considering legalizing cannabis, have
revealed that "80 percent of those taking part [in the study] have derived
more benefit from cannabis than from any other drug, with many describing
it as `miraculous'," reported the Nov. 4 edition of The (London) Observer.

Hutchinson's action is strongly supported, perhaps even prodded, by U.S.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who promised during his confirmation hearings to
hold his ideological zeal in abeyance and apply the law objectively after
assuming office. Instead, Ashcroft is betraying California's voters with
heavy-handed federal attacks on relief- seeking AIDS patients and multiple
sclerosis victims. He also has gone after Oregon's citizens, who passed a
physician-assisted suicide initiative not once, but twice.

By disregarding both the wishes of the public and the wisdom of science,
Hutchinson and Ashcroft are fulfilling the worst predictions of the Bush
administration's critics. These two appointees of our compassionate
conservative president are showing very little compassion to those seeking
hard-won relief from pain and torment.

Moreover, the crusade against medical marijuana is the least justifiable
aspect of an already ridiculous war on drugs. Diverting resources from the
real war just to stop people from getting prescriptions of marijuana adds a
bit of irony to the absurdity.