Pubdate: Thu, 11 Dec 2003
Source: Oakland Tribune, The (CA)
Copyright: 2003 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.oaklandtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/314
Author: Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER

NO FUNDS FOR BUSES THAT RUN POT ADS

House bill acts against transit agencies that allow medical-marijuana or 
drug-reform posters

Local transit agencies allowing medical-marijuana and other kinds of 
drug-reform advertisements would be denied federal funding under a bill 
passed Monday by the House of Representatives.

Deep within the $373 billion omnibus spending bill is a paragraph that says 
no money from the bill can go to any bus, train or subway agency "involved 
directly or indirectly in any activity that promotes the legal-ization or 
medical use of any substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the 
Controlled Substances Act."

That includes marijuana, which voters in California and nine other states 
have decided should be available for medical use.

Drug-reform advocates call the provision censorship, pure and simple. Bill 
Piper, associate director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, 
noted that the same bill gives the White House $145 million to run 
anti-marijuana ads in 2004.

"The government can't spend taxpayer money promoting one side of the drug 
policy debate while prohibiting taxpayers from using their own money to 
promote the other side," he said. "This is censorship and not the 
democratic way."

Some Bay Area lawmakers agreed.

"We don't believe it is appropriate for the federal government to use the 
federal purse string to stifle the free-speech interests of states and 
local jurisdictions with regard to this issue," said Daniel Weiss, chief of 
staff to Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, who did not vote on the spending bill.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who voted against the bill, said, "With 
federal funding for mass transit already abysmally low, this measure makes 
a bad situation even worse."

But Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who voted for the bill, said he has no 
problem with the provision.

"I'm familiar with arguments that some illegal substances provide 
therapeutic relief for individuals with certain ailments conventional 
treatments haven't cured," he said. "But it doesn't change the fact that 
the substances are illegal, and I don't see advertising illegal substances 
as a good use of taxpayers' money."

Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., inserted the provision into the catch-all 
spending bill after becoming irked at marijuana-de-criminalization ads 
placed in the Washington, D.C., Metro transit system by Change the Climate, 
a Massachusetts-based nonprofit.

Istook, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees 
transportation spending, also cut $92,500 from the Metro's budget 
appropriation -- twice the worth of the advertising space given to Change 
the Climate.

Change the Climate placed billboards throughout the Bay Area this year in 
response to the January conviction of Ed Rosenthal of Oakland on federal 
marijuana cultivation charges. The group has not placed transit ads in the 
Bay Area, but the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, 
or NORML, placed ads on San Francisco Muni bus shelters in 1999.

The omnibus spending bill passed 242-176. Opponents from both parties felt 
it contained too much pork-barrel spending.

Others voting against the bill included Pete Stark, D-Fremont; Ellen 
Tauscher, D-Alamo; Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco; Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma; 
Mike Honda, D-San Jose; Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose; Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto; 
and Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, did not cast a 
vote.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom