Pubdate: Fri, 31 Aug 2001
Source: WorldNetDaily (US Web)
Copyright:
2001 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Contact:
letters@worldnetdaily.comWebsite:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/Details:
http://www.mapinc.org/media/655Author:
Alan Bock
Note: Alan Bock is author of "Ambush at Ruby Ridge" and "Waiting to
Inhale:
The Politics of Medical Marijuana." Senior editorial writer and
columnist
at the Orange County Register, he is also a contributing editor at
Liberty
magazine.
IS ASA HUTCHINSON QUALIFIED TO
RUN DEA?
All right, it hardly qualifies
as big news that a Bush administration
appointee would be an embodiment of
the conventional political wisdom,
perhaps slightly to the right of the
Beltway consensus, but unlikely to
think outside the box. In the case of Asa
Hutchinson, who struck me as the
most capable of the ultimately doomed House
impeachment managers, however,
it seems something of a shame.
Ah,
well, he made the choice to take the job as head of the Drug
Enforcement
Administration. It's likely to end his political career and
make him
something of a laughingstock. Or, maybe, when he finishes the
years of
peddling disinformation which that job has to entail, unless one
is willing
to admit the obvious failure of the drug war, he can write a
book on morals
and become a wealthy eminence grise.
Still, it's disappointing that an
apparently able and intelligent person
would be so stubborn about
disseminating obvious falsehoods.
It's not so surprising that the
Arkansas Republican former congressman,
during his first week as head of the
Drug Enforcement Administration would
promise bravely that the federal
government will devise some method to
enforce the federal ban on use of
marijuana for medical purposes. His
position is, after all, a law enforcement
job and the U.S. Supreme Court
recently affirmed (albeit on narrow grounds)
the federal laws against sale
and use of marijuana, even for medical
purposes.
The most disappointing aspect of Mr. Hutchinson's comments on
taking office
was, as Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy told me,
"not just the
implicit disrespect for voters in the nine states that allow
medicinal
marijuana use, but his continuing peddling of the myth that there
is no
scientific evidence of marijuana's medical value." Hutchinson also
implied
that any slackening of enforcement efforts might "send the wrong
message"
to teenagers, a rhetorical flourish that should have been
discredited long
ago, quite recently by a report commissioned by the last
"drug czar," but
apparently lives on in certain peoples' mental
fantasies.
Mr. Hutchinson told reporters on his first official day in
office that the
scientific and medical communities have determined that there
is no
legitimate medical use for marijuana but "if they continue to study it
we
will listen to them." He said it is important to "send the right
signal"
when dealing with medical marijuana enforcement issues.
Those
statements suggest he is completely unfamiliar with the Institute of
Medicine
report commissioned by former "drug czar" Barry McCaffrey after
California
and Arizona passed initiatives in 1996 authorizing medical use
of marijuana
(and other drugs in Arizona's case) and issued in March 1999.
The Institute
of Medicine is a division of the National Academy of Sciences
convened to
provide accurate information when science, medicine and public
policy
intersect.
The IOM report ("Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science
Base") was
based on a thorough review of all the scientific papers extant on
the
subject as well as some investigations the panel undertook itself.
It
summarized its conclusions as follows:
Advances in cannabinoid
science of the past 16 years have given rise to a
wealth of new opportunities
for the development of medically useful
cannabinoid-based drugs. The
accumulated data suggest a variety of
indications, particularly for pain
relief, entiemesis, and appetite
stimulation. For patients such as those with
AIDS or who are undergoing
chemotherapy, and who suffer simultaneously from
severe pain, nausea and
appetite loss, cannabinoid drugs might offer
broad-spectrum relief not
found in any other single medication. The data are
weaker for muscle
spasticity but moderately promising.
While
contending that the future of medical marijuana does not lie in the
smoked
plant, the report acknowledged that "until a non-smoked
rapid-onset
cannabinoid drug-delivery system becomes available [which the
report
suggested might be 10 years], we acknowledge that there is no
clear
alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might
be
relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting." The
report
recommended that the federal government set up a program to allow such
use,
under tightly-controlled conditions for severe illnesses
only.
Barry McCaffrey, after the report was issued, found one sentence he
could
quote without giving up his self-image as a valiant drug warrior,
the
sentence about the future of medical marijuana not lying in smoked
raw
plant. He was fond of embellishing the sentence by going into a lame
laugh
line about a big doobie not being medicine in modern America.
Some
audiences laughed. Too few knew that, in so doing, he was ignoring the
rest
of the report completely -- and too few in the media knew enough to ask
him
the question. Considering his personal testiness, he might never
have
answered it if he had been asked anyway.
One might have hoped
that Asa Hutchinson would have approached the issues
with a little more
concern for accuracy. It is accurate, after all, that
marijuana is still on
Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act
(whether justifiably or not is
another question), which means that
possession, manufacture and use are all
prohibited. It is not accurate that
the "scientific and medical community"
agrees there are no medical uses.
Whether Hutchinson said so out of ignorance
or as a conscious deception I
don't know, but those are the only two logical
choices.
(A strict constructionist might wonder where the central
government got the
authority to enact such a prohibition since it isn't in
the Constitution
and it took an amendment to prohibit beverage alcohol. But
you don't find
many authentic strict constructionists or constitutionalists
in
conservative ranks these days, however promiscuously they may sling
the
rhetoric.)
The IOM report also addressed the "sending the wrong
message" issue. It
reported, after analyzing several cases of modest
liberalization, including
the state-level debate on medical marijuana, that
"there is no evidence
that the medical-marijuana debate has altered
adolescents' perceptions of
the risks associated with marijuana use." In
fact, it found a slightly
higher perception of risk among California
teenagers -- though, in truth,
probably not a statistically significant
difference -- than among teenagers
in other states in the year or two
following the campaign that led to the
passage of Prop. 215 in
1996.
So the "send the wrong message" argument -- even aside from the
question of
whether in a free society it is the government's job to
manipulate and
massage teenagers' attitudes -- is totally bogus. Asa
Hutchinson should
know it. If he doesn't, he's not qualified for the job he
holds.
(Self-serving suggestion time. All of this and a great deal more
is in my
current book, "Waiting to Inhale," available at your local bookstore
or at
Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.)
Later, in an interview with
Robert Novak and Al Hunt on CNN, Mr. Hutchinson
rebuffed a question about
whether, in a federalist system, state law should
trump federal law by saying
"that's not consistent with the supremacy
clause of the
Constitution."
But in the recent Supreme Court case, the government did
not make a
supremacy clause argument, an omission so striking that Justice
Ruth
Ginsburg asked about it. The government attorney responded that
the
supremacy clause was not at issue here, that in certain states the
federal
law and state laws were simply different.
Mr. Hutchinson, a
skilled and experienced attorney, should check the
transcripts. He should
also be aware that none of the state laws
authorizing medical use of
marijuana have been challenged in court on the
ground that they are in
conflict with federal law or for any other reason
-- for the simple reason
that the prohibitionists know they would lose.
All this means state
officials are bound to enforce state laws and it is up
to federal officials
to enforce federal law. Mr. Hutchinson has
acknowledged that this will be a
delicate problem.
Before he addresses it, he would do well to read the
Institute of Medicine
report (the summary, along with reports on other
scientific studies, is
available at www.csdp.org and at www.drugwarfacts.org; complete report
at
www.nas.edu) and research the legal
issues more thoroughly.
If he reads the IOM report he just might learn
one more item of interest.
The IOM team noted that the most predominant
argument for keeping marijuana
illegal that it encountered during its
hearings had to do not so much with
the inherent dangers of marijuana itself
-- for the simple reason that they
are few and mild and even prohibitionists
know this -- but the fear that
use of marijuana would lead to the use of
"harder" and more genuinely
dangerous drugs. So the IOM experts dealt with
the issue at length.
They noted that the theory can be viewed two ways.
There's the "stepping
stone" hypothesis, which suggests that there is
something about the
chemical or pharmacological qualities of marijuana that
leads users to be
more likely to try other illicit or dangerous drugs. After
reviewing the
available scientific studies, the IOM report concluded that
"There is no
evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone on the basis
of its
particular physiological effect."
No evidence. Zip. Zero.
Nada.
The other way to view the fear is as the "gateway" theory, for
which there
is some scientific evidence. The IOM report made it clear that
"the gateway
theory is a social theory. The latter does not suggest that
the
pharmacological qualities of marijuana make it a risk factor
for
progression to other drug use. Instead, the legal status of marijuana
makes
it a gateway drug."
Come again? You mean the only reason with
any credible scientific support
to suspect that people who use marijuana
might move on to other, more
dangerous drugs is that marijuana is illegal,
and people who seek to obtain
it are likely to come in contact with an
underground world in which other
drugs are available and dealers stand to
make bigger profits by saying "Why
don't you try something a bit more
interesting? I've got a sample right here"?
Yep.
You mean that
insofar as some teenagers who try marijuana do move on to
more dangerous
drugs, the reason is that our political leaders keep
marijuana illegal? That
the prohibitionists are ultimately responsible for
the suffering, devastation
and even deaths caused by people who move on
from marijuana to other
drugs?
At least partially so.
Time to learn the facts and face
them, Mr. Hutchinson. Then see if you can
look at yourself in the
mirror.
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included information for research and educational purposes.
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