She is terrified the police will return and
arrest her as they threatened to do. She is terrified because she has no money
for a lawyer. She is terrified because they took her pain relief medicine and
she has no way to get more. She is terrified they will move to have her evicted
from the federally-sponsored housing where she lives. I hope I never get another
call like that.
From nationalreview.com:
November 26,
2001 2:20 p.m.
Wasted
Can't the DEA or Congress find a better way to use the
DEA's resources?
By Mike Krause and Dave Kopel. Kopel
is of the Independence Institute.
Krause is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran who
served as boat coxswain for drug
patrols in the Caribbean
Sea.
Throughout the federal government, agency after agency is
shifting
priorities in order to fight the war on terrorism. Except,
apparently, the
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). If you go to the "What's New"
page on the DEA
website, you'll find a lot of what's old. Almost nothing on
the site relates
to counterterrorism, other than a country report on
Afghanistan.
Yet testifying before Congress on October 17, 2001,
Administrator Asa
Hutchinson said:
I recently testified before
Congress regarding the connection between
international drug trafficking and
terrorism. This connection defines the
deadly, symbiotic relationship between
the illegal drug trade and
international terrorism. The degree to which
profits from the drug trade are
directed to finance terrorist activities is
of paramount concern to our
nation and the DEA.
Given this "paramount
concern," one might expect the website to tout
announcements from the DEA
that the agency's new top priority would be
attacking drug-trafficking
networks with ties to terrorist organizations.
Opium from Afghanistan, long
tolerated by the Taliban in exchange for "tax"
payments from opium
distributors, would seem to be a logical number-one
target.
Yet
amazingly, the biggest news out of the DEA since September 11 has been
a
massive new crackdown on drug users whom we know not to be associated
with
terrorist suppliers: medical-marijuana users.
In California, the
DEA has been seizing the medical records of
medical-marijuana patients and
destroying the marijuana gardens of AIDS and
cancer victims. Since September,
the DEA has raided and uprooted a marijuana
garden in Ventura County, raided
and seized the patient records of a medical
research facility in El Dorado
County, and shut down the Los Angeles
Cannabis Resource Center in West
Hollywood. (There, DEA agents seized some
400 marijuana plants, and the
medical files of several thousand current and
former patients. They even took
the mix the center used to make marijuana
brownies.)
The issue isn't
whether the DEA has the legal power to act against
medical-marijuana
distribution centers. In United States v. Oakland Cannabis
Buyers
Cooperative, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Controlled
Substances Act
of 1970 does not allow marijuana cooperatives to raise a
"necessity" defense
in federal court, at least not in a context in which no
individual's medical
needs were before the court.
Rather, the issue is whether going after
medical marijuana is a wise use of
limited resources, especially in a
Republican administration ‹ and very
especially when we're in a real war,
rather than just trying to reduce some
domestic problem like poverty or
inflation or drugs and calling it a "war."
Nine states have passed
medical-marijuana initiatives allowing the
possession and use of marijuana
for medical purposes. The laws were passed
by voter initiative in Alaska,
California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona,
Oregon, Maine, and Washington, and by
the legislature in Hawaii. These state
laws certainly do not legalize the
sale of marijuana across state lines, or
even sale within the state to people
without medical needs.
Republican Bob Dole ran for President in 1996
carrying the Tenth Amendment
in his pocket; Republican President Bush won the
2000 election with similar
promises to respect federalism. Candidate Bush, in
keeping with his campaign
themes of "compassionate conservatism" and
"trusting the people more than
the government," stated that while he opposes
the use of medical marijuana,
he believed that states ought to be able to
decide differently. Speaking in
Seattle in October 1999, the future president
said, "I believe each state
can choose that decision as they so
choose."
Indeed, the medical-marijuana issue should be a poster child for
federalism.
In California, Prop. 215, the Compassionate Use Act, was openly
and hotly
debated, voted on in a statewide referendum, and passed by a
landslide. In
fact, more Californians voted in favor of medical marijuana
than voted for
Bill Clinton (who would later threaten to prosecute any doctor
who
prescribed it). In West Hollywood, where the recent raid took place,
close
relationships were established between the cannabis-club operators and
state
and local government officials, to ensure the integrity of the program
and
that the law was obeyed. State supervision included quarterly reviews
of
doctors' prescriptions, and the issuance of patient ID cards in
cooperation
with the sheriff's office.
Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.)
has introduced the States Rights for Medical
Marijuana Act, which would
simply allow the states to implement medical
marijuana policy, without
interference from the federal government. Not too
long ago, northeastern
liberal Democrats were claiming that "states' rights"
was a code word for
racism. Now that an impeccably liberal Democrat, with
many Democratic (and a
few Republican) cosponsors, is pushing a bill with
"states' rights" in its
very title, astute Republican leaders would seize
the chance to move the bill
through committee and onto the floor ‹ thus
ending Democrats' ability to rail
against "states' rights" Republicans.
Pushing the "States Rights" bill would
also give Republicans a chance to
demonstrate their compassion on health care
‹ without having to spend a
cent, write a word of new regulations, or hire a
single additional
bureaucrat. But foolishly, the Republican leadership has
let the States
Rights bill languish in committee without a hearing.
In
any rational assessment of federal drug-enforcement
priorities,
doctor-supervised use of medical marijuana would land at the
bottom of the
list. There are no international or interstate sales, thus
making the issue
inappropriate for federal control under Congress's power to
regulate
international or interstate commerce. There are no sales to
children. The
only people who get the marijuana are adults with a
demonstrated medical
need. Even if one believes all claims of drug "warriors"
about the harms of
marijuana, the drug remains much less harmful than other,
widely used
illegal drugs, particularly cocaine and opiates. In contrast to,
say,
crackheads and junkies who rob in order to support their
habit,
medical-marijuana users are about the least dangerous demographic in
America
consisting of people in wheelchairs, multiple sclerosis patients, and
the
like. The distribution of medical marijuana does not involve organized
crime
and has absolutely no connection to terrorism.
In August, Mr.
Hutchinson told the Washington Post he would enforce the
federal ban because
he wanted to "send the right signal" on medical
marijuana. In other words,
the best explanation of the DEA's war on medical
marijuana is
symbolism.
Consider House Speaker Dennis Hastert's Speaker
News:
The recent dialogue on so-called 'medical marijuana' sends an
ambivalent
message to our kids about the dangers of marijuana. The continued
public
debate over what, if any, medical benefits some compounds found in
marijuana
may have makes it harder to convince our kids that drug use ends
dreams and
ruins lives. The way some have constructed this debate sends the
wrong
signal to our kids about drug use.
In other words, they're doing
it for the children. But the claim that we
have to take medical marijuana
away from adult cancer patients in order to
frighten healthy 17-year-olds
into abstinence is nonsense. Current federal
laws allows medical use of
morphine with a doctor's prescription; neither
the DEA nor the seeker claim
that this limited medical exception prevents
society from convincing children
not to use morphine or other opiates
recreationally. Indeed, the Controlled
Substances Act contains (on schedules
II, III, and IV) literally hundreds of
drugs for which medical use is
allowed, with a prescription, but for which
non-medical use is banned.
Moreover, even if, for some reason, it is
impossible to communicate the same
message (medical use is all right;
recreational use is not) about medical
marijuana that is communicated about
hundreds of other drugs, it is wrong to
kill people simply for the sake of
better communications. In Afghanistan,
the U.S. government has been so
humanitarian in trying to avoid "collateral
damage" civilian casualties that
the U.S. has foregone many opportunities to
bomb buildings known to contain
al Qaeda or Taliban leaders.
If we're that careful not to kill foreign
civilians, even for the supremely
important objective of killing enemy
leaders, then surely we ought not to
kill American citizens who are AIDS or
cancer patients, and who can't keep
their medicine down without the
anti-nausea effect of medical marijuana ‹
even if such deaths would improve
the "message" that the federal government
sends to teenagers. (For the story
of one death caused by federal
prosecutors stopping a patient from being able
to stop vomiting, see William
F. Buckley's obituary of Peter McWilliams in
the July 17, 2000, National
Review.)
Moreover, the seizure of the
medical records of thousands of patients ‹ who
registered themselves in
compliance with state law, in good faith ‹ is an
act of intimidation, meant
to strike fear in the hearts of the sick that
they will be targeted next for
enforcement action. (The feds had better
start looking for some prisons that
are wheelchair-accessible.) In addition,
according to John Duran, legal
counsel for the Cannabis Club, the records of
the club's donors and Prop. 215
supporters were also seized ‹ a pure act of
political bullying.
What
reason would any of the patients have to trust the government again?
Their
alternatives now consist of either foregoing the use of marijuana
and
suffering the health consequences ‹ or else skirting the law entirely
and
becoming criminals by growing their own, or finding a street
dealer.
President Bush has asked all Americans to be eyes and ears for
the federal
government, keeping watch for suspicious activity related to
terrorism. Yet
when the federal government deliberately frightens sick
people, or people
who have lawfully participated in a political campaign, how
can these people
be expected to trust the government?
On November 8,
the Bush administration announced a dramatic restructuring of
federal law
enforcement. According to Attorney General Ashcroft, "We cannot
do everything
we once did because lives depend on us doing a few things very
well."
Pursuant to this change, FBI agents once assigned to drug cases have
been
reassigned to counterterrorism.
Similarly, Coast Guard boats that were
once used in the drug war have now
been assigned to protecting our coasts
from terrorists.
According to DEA Administrator Hutchinson, "We've tried
to make up the
slack." Does making up slack mean less attention to complex
cases, and more
enforcement against easy marks like medical-marijuana
providers, who operate
out in the open and in cooperation with local
authorities? Why were 30 DEA
agents used on the October 25 "raid" on the Los
Angeles Cannabis Resource
Center (whose nearly 1,000 patients are mostly AIDS
victims)? Wouldn't those
30 agents be better employed in going after heroin
rings connected to al
Qaeda and the Taliban? A Justice Department
spokesperson said: "The recent
enforcement is indicative that we have not
lost our priorities in other
areas since September 11." Perhaps it's time to
reallocate some DEA
resources, and prioritize counterterrorism.
In the
last decade, the number of FBI agents has remained relatively stable,
at
around 11,000. Yet in addition to being having the lead on
counterterrorism
and organized crime, along with substantial
responsibilities on the related
issue of money laundering, the FBI has been
tasked with chasing deadbeat
dads, carjackings, student-loan fraud, housing
discrimination, and guarding
access to abortion clinics. These latter
matters are not unimportant, but all
could easily be left in the hands of
state or local law
enforcement.
Over the last decade, the DEA's budget has nearly doubled to
$1.66 billion
and its manpower has increased by roughly 75 percent, to over
4,600 special
agents and over 9,000 total employees, with 78 offices in 56
different
countries
There is no doubt that many DEA agents out there
are placing themselves in
harm's way by chasing real criminals. But in the
midst of the largest
criminal investigation in American history, and of the
drastic restructuring
of the priorities of Justice Department agencies, the
DEA finds itself in
the comfortable position of being able to allocate highly
trained,
well-armed federal agents to targeting the sick and their
medical-marijuana
providers. Can't the DEA or Congress find a better way to
use the DEA's
resources, for instance, to fight
terrorism?