Pubdate: Sun, 08 Apr 2001
Source: Medford Mail Tribune (OR)
Copyright: 2001 The Mail Tribune
Contact:  http://www.mailtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/642
Author: Russell Sadler
Note: Veteran columnist Russell Sadler teaches journalism and environmental 
studies at Southern Oregon University in Ashland.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

COURT VS. VOTERS

Feds Have No Business Regulating Medical Marijuana

As Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden continues his valiant fight against efforts to 
weaken or abolish the state's physician-assisted-suicide law, another 
voter-approved law is headed for a showdown with an adversary more powerful 
than Congress.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a case that could 
overturn laws in Oregon and eight other states that allow seriously ill 
people to use marijuana as a medicine. The justices' remarks made it clear 
they will likely side with federal authorities who want to shut down 
California's "cannabis clubs" that were formed to distribute the drug to 
patients.

Oregon voters passed a medical marijuana initiative in 1998. We supported 
the concept of a workable law to allow medical use of marijuana, but 
opposed the initiative on the grounds that it contained too many flaws.

We now consider the federal government's attempts to overrule state medical 
marijuana laws in the same light as congressional moves against the 
assisted-suicide statute. This is an arena where the federal government has 
no business.

Opponents of medical marijuana laws call them the first step toward 
legalization of all illegal drugs, and argue that such laws fly in the face 
of federal anti-drug efforts on all levels.

Supporters point to scientific research concluding that marijuana can be 
effective in controlling the nausea brought on by chemotherapy and the pain 
associated with terminal illness.

We are not advocating the wholesale legalization of marijuana or any other 
illegal substance. We do respect the judgment of voters who decided that 
terminally ill people should have the right to end their own lives and the 
right to use a substance that eases the pain and suffering their illnesses 
cause.

The Clinton administration threatened to revoke the prescription licenses 
of California doctors who recommended marijuana. That was the same tactic 
threatened against Oregon physicians who prescribed lethal doses of 
medication under the assisted-suicide law. In either case, it was a 
heavy-handed use of federal power.

We now have an administration supposedly run by conservative Republicans.

A Supreme Court dominated by conservatives -- and a White House dedicated 
to Republican values -- should adhere to those principles, which include 
the rights of states to govern themselves without interference from 
Washington. But we are not confident that will happen in this case.

Bush Tries To Use Northwest To Repay Contributors

The haste with which the Bush administration is paying off its cronies and 
campaign contributors suggests the Bushmen and women have doubts the 
restoration will have a second term in the White House.

Now, some of the administration's recent efforts to reward its political 
friends and punish political enemies threatens new and established tourism 
assets in the Northwest.

Hiding behind the expedient fig leaf of "consulting local officials," the 
Bush administration says it is considering reducing the size of the new 
Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument southeast of Ashland. The Bush 
administration insists its motives are based on protecting "property 
rights," despite the fact the monument proclamation is limited to land 
management policies on federal public lands in the designated area.

The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced 
they will offer mining leases on thousands of acres in the Columbia Gorge 
owned by American Indians. Both federal agencies have ignored their legal 
duty to manage American Indian land for the economic benefit of the tribes 
for decades. The new administration's meretricious interest in tribal 
economic development interests reeks of political porkbarreling.

The administration's sudden attack on the Cascade-Siskiyou National 
Monument perpetuates the myth that its designation in June last year was a 
hasty, ill-considered decision made in Washington.

President Clinton's designation of the area as a national monument 
culminated 18 years of patient work by the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council 
to persuade the BLM to manage the area to reflect its unique botanical and 
geological characteristics. Its work was no secret to anyone in the area.

The Cascade-Siskiyou area is the northeast corner of the Klamath Knot. To 
geologists, a knot is a place where geological formations of different ages 
come together and overlap. The Klamath Knot is the meeting place of the 
ancient Klamath and Siskiyou mountains and the younger Cascade and Coast 
mountain ranges. This jumble of rocks creates the most diverse plant 
habitat in the American West. Habitats not normally near one another, 
including oak savannah, douglas fir, white pine and juniper, are just 
around the corner in the Klamath Knot. Some 70,000 acres around Soda 
Mountain are among the most biologically diverse in the entire Klamath 
Knot. Only 52,951 acres was designated as a national monument.

The highest and best use of the Soda Mountain area is as a laboratory for 
plant and wildlife observation and for ecosystem protection and 
rehabilitation experiments that can be tested for use in other damaged 
environments. It is unlikely to draw summer crowds like Crater Lake or 
Yosemite. But it is likely to attract organized tours, research groups and 
specialized tourist groups such as Elderhostel, whose members are 
interested in something more substantive than shopping and seeing the sights.

The Jackson County commissioners complain the decision to designate the 
monument was already made before they were consulted. The commissioners are 
guilty of backing the wrong horse. Historically, they backed a handful of 
people who bought property in the area to perpetuate the illusion they 
still lived in the Wild, Wild West. Now the commissioners have engaged 
former Congressman Bob Smith to oil his way around Washington and protect 
the interests of a handful of landowners who fear new management policies 
for the area will destroy their Wild West illusions.

The Bush BLM and BIA are not the first philistines to want to quarry the 
Columbia Gorge. When navigation interests wanted to build the South Jetty 
at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1896, they planned to quarry Beacon 
Rock. It is a spectacular haystack-shaped lava plug on the Washington side 
of the Columbia River just below what is now Bonneville Dam. Lewis and 
Clark named Beacon Rock in their journals. It was a waypoint on the Oregon 
Trail until Sam Barlow built his road from The Dalles to Oregon City over 
the south slopes of Mount Hood.

When the Washington Legislature in Olympia learned the Portland landowner 
might sell Beacon Rock to the state of Oregon for a state park to prevent 
quarrying, Washington lawmakers promptly made Beacon Rock a Washington 
state park.

Because the best quarrying sites are adjacent to freeways and 
transcontinental rail routes, the BLM and the BIA expect bids from the 
nation's largest aggregate suppliers.

Scars from more recent quarrying in the gorge have healed with time and 
restoration efforts. New quarries in the gorge will become running sores 
damaging the tourism industry on which both the tribes and the gorge 
communities now depend. It's the equivalent of siting a dump beside Old 
Faithful or a landfill at the base of Mount Rushmore.

An effort to make the gorge a major national supplier of basalt aggregate 
flies in the face of decades of local, state and federal efforts to 
preserve the considerable scenic value left in the gorge as a tourism asset.

The Columbia Gorge is a remarkable place. It has absorbed much 
environmental abuse. Despite the railroads and highways on both banks, dams 
and power lines, canneries, industrial plants, sawmills, resorts, 
subdivisions and native fishing sites, all outside the established cities, 
the gorge is still a spectacular sight from the highway overlooks or from 
the decks of the growing fleet of small cruise ships that now sail through 
the gorge between Astoria and Lewiston, Idaho. But there is a limit to the 
abuse the gorge can absorb and still remain a world-class attraction. There 
is no evidence the nation is so strapped for crushed rock that the federal 
government must sacrifice major tourism assets in the Northwest.

There are still people who remember when the Northwest was an economic 
backwater and a "plundered province" for the benefit of Eastern 
industrialists. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., should warn the Bush 
administration the Northwest is unwilling to become a national sacrifice 
area so Bush can plunder public land to pay back the folks who bought his 
way to the White House.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager