PRIORITIES, PRIORITIES: TERRORISM, NOT POT

Two recent items in the news suggest that some people in positions of
authority still don't get it:

Last month in California, a state where voters legalized marijuana use for
people who are sick or dying, federal agents uprooted a marijuana garden
run by patients, seized the records of a doctor who recommended the drug
and raided a West Hollywood "cannabis club" that city officials had helped
set up.

The raids are "indicative that we have not lost our priorities in other
areas since Sept. 11," a U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman said.

No?

Then there's this item: Six Middle Eastern men carrying box cutters and
photographs of both a nuclear-power plant in Florida and the Trans-Alaska
Pipeline were stopped by police in the Midwest last week and then -
incredibly - released by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents.

FBI Director Robert Mueller was said to be furious. FBI agents are now
searching for the men.

These news stories are unrelated - except in this respect: This nation is
in a fight for its continued existence, and some people who should know
better still don't get it.

Yes, federal drug laws do supersede the pro-marijuana voter initiatives in
eight states - but certainly, the U.S. Justice Department has more
important things to do right now than bust sick people for smoking marijuana.

Furthermore, the simple fact that this nation has legions of dogs specially
trained to detect marijuana but only a fraction of the vaccine doses that
would be needed to protect the country in the event of a smallpox attack
speaks volumes about how skewed priorities have been for some time.

Our advice: Lay off the cannabis clubs for the moment and dispatch those
federal agents (and maybe the pot-sniffing dogs) to the search for the six
Middle Eastern men with box cutters and photographs of the nuclear power
plant and the Alaskan pipeline.

To borrow a phrase from a presidential campaign of yore: It's the
terrorism, stupid.