Pubdate: Wed, 31 Oct 2001
Source: The
Guardian, (UK)
Copyright: 2001 Guardian Newspapers
Limited
Contact: letters@guardian.co.ukWebsite: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/Details:
http://www.mapinc.org/media/175Author: Duncan
Campbell, Guardian Unlimited
Cited: Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Centre
http://www.lacbc.org/Referenced: The Common
Sense for Drug Policy ad at
http://www.csdp.org/ads/narcofund.htmRelated:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1842/a06.htmlhttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1844/a06.htmlBookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis -
Medicinal)
DRUG RAIDS ARE A WASTE OF
TIME
In Light Of The Terrorism Crisis, Surely Raiding A
Medical Marijuana
Centre Is Not The Best Use Of Federal Officers' Time, Asks
Duncan Campbell
This week, the United States attorney general, John
Ashcroft, has been
warning the country about the possibility of an imminent
terrorist
attack, a repeat of a warning issued a couple of weeks
ago.
In the light of this and the ongoing investigation into the
September
11 attacks one might imagine that federal law enforcement officers
in
the US would all be fairly busy.
But last week, 30 federal drug
enforcement agents found the time to
carry out a raid in West Hollywood on
the Los Angeles Cannabis
Resource Centre, the body which supplies medicinal
marijuana to a
variety of ill people in LA.
The centre was set up five
years ago in the wake of Proposition 215,
which the Californian electorate
had passed and which called for the
setting up of such clubs for people who
suffered from Aids, glaucoma,
cancer epilepsy and so on and who believed that
cannabis could help
relieve their pain or their appetite loss.
The
idea was that people could register with the clubs, which were to
be allowed
to cultivate small quantities of marijuana, after being
recommended by their
doctors. The sale price for the marijuana varied
slightly - at the LA centre
they charged $50 (UKP35) for an eighth of an
ounce.
The measure,
although passed handsomely, has been the subject of a
series of legal
challenges because it runs counter to federal drugs
laws. Earlier this year,
the US supreme court decided by an 8-0 vote
that the clubs had no legal basis
for existence.
The raid follows on from that decision. Around 400
marijuana plants
were seized in the raid as were computers containing the
names of
around 900 people who have made use of the centre, which
had,
incidentally, the backing of the local council and worked openly
with
the local sheriff's department.
The affidavit for the search
warrant on the premises stated however
that "illegal conduct permeates the
organisation's activities and ...
all documents, records and equipment
present at the site constitute
fruits, instrumentalities or evidence of
criminal offences".
Workers at the resource centre used some of the dirt
from their now
defunct marijuana farm to create a mock graveyard in which
the
tombstones were labelled "compassion" and "democracy".
Scott
Imler, the centre's president, said: "I think it's shameful the
justice
department would waste money going after medical marijuana
while the rest of
the world is falling apart. If they had been doing
what we pay them to do
then maybe we'd still have a World Trade Centre."
At one level, the
action could be seen as the federal officials merely
observing President
Bush's encouragement for life to go on as normal:
with 400,000 drug users now
in the prison system, drug raids, even if
only for some marijuana plants,
could be seen as a sign of healthy
normality.
On the other hand, it
might seem odd that, at the time when the UK is
relaxing the drugs laws,
reclassifying cannabis and exploring medical
uses of marijuana, its partner
in the war against terrorism is going
in the opposite direction.
The
British home secretary, David Blunkett, indicated last week that
one of the
main reasons for relaxing the cannabis laws was in order to
free the police
to tackle more serious matters.
How much more serious will things have to
become in the US, one might
wonder, before such raids as those on the LA
Cannabis Resource Centre
- hardly a secret hideout manned by violent
criminals - are deemed to
be not entirely the best use of 30 federal
officers' valuable time?
Meanwhile, the US drugs law reform organisation,
Common Sense for Drug
Policy, has also linked the events of September 11 and
drugs laws. In
advertisements in the national media, they quote House
speaker, Dennis
Hastert, as saying that "the illegal drug trade is the engine
that
fuels many terrorist organisations around the world, including
Osama
bin Laden".
The ad asks: "is the funding of terrorism another
unintended
consequence of drug
prohibition?"
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