Pubdate: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 Source: Naples Daily News (FL) Section: Guest Editorial Copyright: 2002 Naples Daily News. Contact: http://www.naplesnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/284 Note: Note: Publisher prints several newspapers - please indicate which newspaper in LTEs. Author: Sacramento Bee FRIENDS OF METH? wit once defined a fanatic as a person who redoubles his effort just as he loses sight of his objective. That wit must have been thinking of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson. Their objective is supposed to be chasing drug traffickers who sell dangerous drugs such as methamphetamines and heroin to children. Instead, they are raiding plots that supply medical marijuana to grandmothers with cancer under the terms of California's Proposition 215. The state's growing anger over Ashcroft's fanaticism crystallized this month after DEA agents raided a medical marijuana cooperative in Santa Cruz that operates responsibly with the support of local officials and police. Santa Cruz city officials gathered the other day with doctors, lawyers and patients to openly distribute medical marijuana in defiance of federal officials. And they are right to be angry. As California Attorney General Bill Lockyer spelled out in a recent letter to Ashcroft and Hutchinson, the raids, conducted without consulting local and state authorities, are doubly outrageous. For one thing, they are unethical abuses of law enforcement power. Lockyer points out that the raids are being conducted without any expectation that the targets can or will be successfully prosecuted. There's not a jury anywhere in California that would convict someone operating a medical marijuana cooperative that state authorities have sanctioned under Proposition 215. The raids are punishment being meted out without conviction or trial. Even more important, every hour a federal agent spends chasing medical marijuana is an hour not available to California's more serious drug problems. Medical marijuana, Lockyer correctly noted, "represents little danger to the public and is certainly not a concern that would warrant diverting scarce federal resources away from the fight against domestic methamphetamine production, heroin distribution or international terrorism." Every time Ashcroft and the DEA go after medical marijuana users, life gets a little easier on traffickers in methamphetamines and heroin. That's something even a fanatic should be able to understand. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom