Pubdate: Mon, 29 Aug 2005
Source: Republican, The (Springfield, MA)
Copyright: 2005 The Republican
Contact:  http://www.masslive.com/republican/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3075
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (Ashcroft, John)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

U.S WAR ON DRUGS TAKES NO PRISONERS

The federal government says it won't approve the use of marijuana as a 
prescription medicine because it hasn't seen any scientific evidence to 
prove  that it has any health benefits.

So what happened when Lyle Craker, a plant and soil sciences professor at 
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, applied to the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Administration for a permit to grow high-grade marijuana for 
scientific research  in 2001?

The DEA lost his application. And then it said he had not filled out the 
forms correctly. And then it sent two DEA agents to the Amherst campus to 
discourage the university.

And finally the DEA rejected his application. Last week, Craker appealed 
the decision to an administrative law judge. When the DEA looks at Craker, 
it can't decide whether he's Cheech or Chong. He is neither. It's time the 
DEA stopped fighting the war on drugs in his plant  rooms on the Amherst 
campus and gave him an opportunity to grow high-grade marijuana for research.

For a federal government that has been waging a decades-long war on drugs 
with little measurable success, it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
admit that there might be some medical benefit to marijuana. This was 
demonstrated by John Ashcroft when he spent much of his tenure as attorney 
general threatening  to prosecute sick people in California for using 
medical marijuana while the  rest of the nation lived in fear of another 
terrorist attack. In a 6-3 decision in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 
that strict federal drug laws prevailed over the California law, but 
Justice John Paul Stevens suggested in his majority opinion that Congress 
has the authority to change the law that classifies marijuana as a 
dangerous drug.

The refusal of the DEA to give Craker permission to grow marijuana suggests 
that it doesn't want the drug to ever be available as a prescription 
medication.  Much of the government research being done today on marijuana 
asks scientists to  find its harmful effects, not its potential benefits. 
Congress should put an end to that reefer madness.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman