Pubdate: Thu, 09 Jun 2005
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2005 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Robert Charles
Note: Robert Charles, former assistant secretary of state for international 
narcotics and law enforcement, 2003-2005, is president of the Charles Group 
in Gaithersburg, Md. www.robertcharles.com
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Raich (Raich v. Gonzales)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

'MEDICAL' POT UP IN SMOKE

To those who have worked on federal narcotics legislation for decades, the 
notion of state referenda allowing "medical" marijuana, as an exception to 
federal drug trafficking laws, has always been an oxymoron.

There was nothing "medical" about smoking marijuana; the two words were 
mutually exclusive. The idea made no more sense than "medical glue 
sniffing, or free-lance "medical heroin injection." It was dangerous, 
indulgent nonsense at best, a cynical hoax at worst. Thanks to the U.S. 
Supreme Court's lucid ruling this week, the hoax is over.

The so-called "medical marijuana movement," led by cleaned-up former 
hippies and underwritten by three or four wealthy anti-establishment 
millionaires, including George Soros, seems to have been intended to find a 
back door into the federal legislative, federal law enforcing, and federal 
regulatory process -- one that logically, sensibly and thankfully forbids 
the production, sale and distribution of narcotics.

To the clever few, a possibility of tricking the vast majority of Americans 
into supporting a colossal change in society's approach to a substance that 
measurably lowers human immunities, thus leading to early death for those 
with AIDS; creates direct and polydrug addition; accounts for the greatest 
number of young people in drug treatment today; contributes to tens of 
thousands of emergency room incidents annually; and alters personalities 
and brain function -- seemed just too good to be true.

The motivation was always mixed. The leading aim was to dupe a coalition of 
former and present drug users, relatively inattentive libertarians, states' 
rights conservatives, and anti-establishment liberals into toppling 
existing laws. Never mind that those laws protect kids, stop polydrug 
trafficking, empower our local, state and federal law enforcement officers 
to exclude drug trafficking from our communities, reduce violent personal 
and property crime, and have helped prevent everything from domestic abuse 
to workplace accidents.

The idea was simple. They would execute a multiyear end-run on Congress, 
which tends to place special value on kids and community safety. They would 
politically seek to subvert the Food and Drug Administration's lengthy drug 
trials and science-based safety studies by claiming an urgent need, and a 
state's right to redefine what constitutes "medicine."

They would press for "administration" of the narcotic by a sophisticated 
process called "smoking." They would disparage and reduce proven pain 
relievers, from synthetic Marinol, based on similar elements, to hundreds 
of other pain-relief options.

Cynically, they would first recruit and roll onto radio and television a 
coalition of willing victims, especially those with terminal diseases, who 
could be poster folks for their movement. They would ignore, diminish, 
outspend and dismiss lifetime efforts by parents -- tens of thousands of 
them -- who lost kids or worked with kids suffering from drug abuse. They 
would vilify the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Office of 
National Drug Control Policy, nonprofits like DARE America and anyone who 
points out the lunacy in this campaign of disinformation. They would merge 
their movement into the United Nations, which would defend elements of it 
under the rubric of "harm reduction," work it across Europe, expand the 
"medical marijuana" notion into areas like giving away drugs and needles in 
European countries.

It was a good plan, from both a strategic and operations viewpoint. You can 
fool all the people some of the time. The strategy would catch off-guard 
overworked and underfunded U.S. legislators. Parent groups and nonprofits 
fighting to preserve kids' lives, from the Partnership for a Drug Free 
America to PRIDE, would be methodically, frenetically and geographically 
outspent. The messages of the 1980s -- such as Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" 
and that decade's success in lowering drug use of all kinds across all age 
groups and all drugs -- would be criticized, mocked, hopefully forgotten. 
The plan would leverage wide European anti-establishment drug distribution 
efforts, in places like Amsterdam and Switzerland, to shame America into 
"getting with the Euro program" and "coming along." It was a neatly 
packaged approach.

But Americans are not fools. Americans and the U.S. Congress are not about 
to choose the freedom to "smoke" a dangerous drug -- even one conveniently 
described as "medical" through the magic of open-ended state referenda -- 
over the safety and health of their kids, or the safety and health of the 
their nation. This is America, not Amsterdam or Switzerland; the United 
States, not the United Nations.

As a people, we have long respected those we elect to craft federal 
criminal laws, and we rightly revere those who defend us by enforcing them. 
Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court takes a similar view. Neither our 
reverence for the rule of law and medical science, nor the Supreme Court's, 
is likely to change. You cannot fool all the people all the time.

Accordingly, the "medical pot" hoax is over.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake