BAD TRIP

The Federal War On Drugs Expands.

At a time when federal officials should focus obsessively on crushing
terrorists, they are expanding the disastrous war on drugs into an even
more pointless war on substances. From old bogeymen like marijuana to new
"hazards" like Oxycontin, Washington busybodies are knocking themselves out
combating compounds that, by themselves, do not threaten public safety.

The Justice Department has appealed a December 2003 federal court decision
that barred Uncle Sam from impeding Californians who use personally grown,
locally cultivated, or charitably donated medical marijuana. In Raich v.
Ashcroft, the Ninth Circuit correctly disallowed the Constitution's
commerce-clause rationale for federal intervention. After all, how can
interstate commerce include intrastate, noncommercial activity?

Rather than accept defeat and confront genuine dangers, Attorney General
John Ashcroft seeks Supreme Court permission to keep raiding
medical-marijuana suppliers and harassing people such as Angel Raich who
has used medical marijuana to treat a brain tumor, wasting syndrome,
seizures, and more.

Among many others, the feds also are prosecuting, Gary and Anna Barrett.
This Victorville, California couple had state permission to grow marijuana
to address their respective ailments. He suffers Crohn's disease, a
potentially lethal digestive disease. She uses marijuana to relieve the
pain she has endured since surviving a five-story fall from a London hotel
balcony during their 1995 honeymoon.

"We are disappointed, but not surprised, that Attorney General Ashcroft has
chosen to ask the Supreme Court for what amounts to a license to attack the
sick," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Washington-based
Marijuana Policy Project. "Conservatives should be appalled that the
Justice Department is arguing that two patients and their caregivers,
growing and using medical marijuana within California -- using California
seeds, California soil, California water, and California equipment, and
engaging in no commercial activity whatsoever -- are somehow engaged in
'interstate commerce.'"

On April 12, the Bush administration became the first to prohibit a dietary
supplement, yet another GOP triumph. Ephedra, an herbal stimulant, helped
dieters lose weight -- a healthy objective -- and energized others, much as
does currently legal caffeine. Alas, Sidney Wolfe of the liberal Public
Citizen estimates that ephedra has contributed to some 155 deaths since
January 1993. But as Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum notes, "this number is
remarkably low given how many people have used ephedra. Until the recent
bad publicity cut into sales, the industry estimated that 12 million to 17
million Americans were taking around 3 billion doses a year."

Sullum compares these 155 possible ephedra deaths spanning 11 years with
the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network's survey of coroners' reports. In
1999 alone, DAWN found 811 multiple-drug overdose deaths that included
Valium ingestion, 427 fatalities that involved Tylenol, and 104 that
entailed aspirin. Why not ban those drugs, too?

The Justice Department led a federal grand jury to issue a 42-count
indictment against San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds's personal trainer, Greg
Anderson; track coach Remi Korchemny; and Victor Conte Jr. and James J.
Valente, executives of the Bay Area Lab Cooperative. They are accused of
giving professional athletes anabolic steroids.

"Illegal steroid use calls into question not only the integrity of the
athletes who use them, but also the integrity of the sports that those
athletes play," Ashcroft told reporters February 11. "Steroids are bad for
sports, they're bad for players, they're bad for young people who hold
athletes up as role models."

There you have it: Uncle Sam has seized the responsibility for policing
America's hallowed sports teams and athletes. Who needs the commissioners
of baseball and football? Even if steroids were Washington's business, must
the attorney general spend even three seconds on this? Surely Ashcroft has
more pressing items in his inbox. So does every other steroid cop. Ashcroft
should scrap this project.

Hydrocodone (Vicodin) is America's most widely prescribed drug. Doctors
prescribed it 100 million times in 2002, according to Patrick Michaels, a
senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

"Nowadays a physician can prescribe this drug and give patients multiple
refills," Michaels says. "Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration wants
you to see your doctor before every refill. Its proposal will require 300
million more doctor's office visits per year, assuming that one visit today
covers two refills. That equals 150 million worker days lost."

Michaels badly injured his neck in a softball mishap, leaving him in such
agony that he wanted to die.

"Unremitting and severe chronic pain creates a very logical decision on the
part of the patient not to want to live," Michaels recalls. "I remember
thinking it was stupid to be alive.... Along with 38 million other people,
my life was made a heck of a lot more livable with hydrocodone."

The DEA wants to make hydrocodone a Schedule II drug, track how much of it
doctors prescribe, and monitor the amount each patient receives.

"I can assure you," Michaels warns, "this is going to make doctors
reluctant to prescribe the world's most popular pain reliever."

"The sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship is being destroyed by
federal bureaucrats, who have turned the drug war into a war on pain
relief," Rep. Ron Paul, M.D. (R., Tex.) lamented in an April 19 commentary.
The feds have threatened prosecution and loss of medical licenses for
physicians who prescribe strong painkillers such as Oxycontin. While some
abuse these pharmaceuticals, many more rely on them to ease pain.
Nonetheless, Rep. Paul wrote, some doctors no longer prescribe these
pharmaceuticals while others "have even posted signs in their waiting rooms
advising patients not to ask for Oxycontin and similar drugs."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gene Rossi encapsulated Justice's profound disdain
for pain specialists when he declared: "Our office will try our best to
root out certain doctors like the Taliban."

Adults should be free to stimulate, fortify, or medicate themselves however
they wish, so long as they simultaneously respect the rights and safety of
others. As al Qaeda prepares bloody surprises, it is simply surreal for
federal officials to exert even one calorie of collective energy to battle
American citizens who trim their waistlines, boost their batting averages,
or soothe their pounding nerve endings.