Manhandled by Mrs.Taft?

By Daniel Forbes, DrugWar.com. Posted November 7, 2002.

Proponents of Issue 1, the Ohio treatment rather than jail initiative, know well the official opposition buzzsaw. Gov. Bob Taft's anti-initiative campaign has been furious and effective, though the measure may still squeak by. Following Friday's debate in Cleveland among Taft, the Republican incumbent, and his Democratic challenger, Tim Hagan (as well as Natural Law Party candidate, John Eastman), a prominent Ohio medical marijuana activist claims she now knows what it's like to be physically restrained by none other than Ohio First Lady Hope Taft herself.

Deirdre A. Zoretic, Director of Patient Advocacy for the Ohio Patient Network, who's afflicted with the devastating nerve disease, reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), claims that Hope Taft grabbed her by the shoulder and physically steered her away from the governor in the scrum of reporters and well-wishers at the conclusion of the debate. The governor then exiting the hotel ballroom where it was held, Zoretic charges that Taft held on to her blazer for several minutes, preventing her from leaving.

Rather than protest, Zoretic said she took the opportunity to try to reason with Taft about cannabis's absolute necessity for some patients. Besides, she was so stunned that the first lady - who would tower over the 5'5" Zoretic - had physically intervened that she could not muster a verbal protest. Zoretic said that in hindsight, she wished she had raised a ruckus, but, short of trying to rip her coat or wriggle out of it, she saw it instead as an opportunity to try to reason with Taft on drug policy, the first lady's primary policy interest.

A remarkable tale made the more plausible by the fact that Zoretic's face was known to the Taft camp. During the first debate, held in Dayton on October 15, she'd counted herself lucky to be picked by debate organizers to ask the candidates one of the questions videotaped in advance. These videotaped questions from the public inserted into the course of the televised debate, she'd asked about medical marijuana. Taft had voiced his opposition. Hagan - whose father has recently passed away from cancer - voiced his support. The Dayton Daily News noted that Hagan "said if one of his own family members were dying and in pain, he'd send someone out to buy marijuana."

During Friday's debate in Cleveland, audience members seeking to ask a question were invited to approach staffers on either side of the ballroom holding microphones. Zoretic edged her way though the seated crowd not once but twice after her promised opportunity was skipped the first time. (According to The Beacon Journal, more than 700 people jammed a Cleveland hotel ballroom for the debate sponsored by the City Club of Cleveland.)

No shrinking violet, on her second attempt, Zoretic got in to a bit of a wrangle with the man wielding the microphone, complaining over being skipped over in the 'question queue.' She told DrugWar.com she was "very visible" to Mrs. Taft and so was likely noticed by the Taft camp and presumably recognized as the medical-use questioner from the videotaped first debate. (The mid-October first debate featuring Zoretic's question was almost certainly watched in preparation for the two subsequent debates.) She wore no political button and carried nothing but a few sheets of paper.

Having, in effect, declared herself by getting up twice to seek the microphone, at the debate's conclusion, Zoretic used the brace on her arm - "People are afraid to touch it" - to burrow her way through the crowd to the front. Bob Taft had stepped down from the low riser the candidates had stood on, and a group of reporters and others surrounded him not far from the exit. Zoretic says their eyes met several times as Gov. Taft completed an answer. Then, peering over a reporter's shoulder, she formally addressed him "the moment his mouth stopped moving."

Her goal was to publicly present Gov. Taft with a summary of the definitive, White House-commissioned 1999 Institute of Medicine report on medical marijuana's efficacy.

Like a reporter competing for the governor's attention, she blurted out her salutation and, as she tells it: "An arm reached and grabbed my left shoulder. And I was face to chest with Taft's wife. I'm 5'5" and she's much taller. (A recent Cincinnati Enquirer profile of Mrs. Taft declared her a "tall, slender woman.")

Zoretic continued: "I looked up, and she said, 'Can I help you?' I said, I'd like to ask the governor a question. She kept her hand on me, and then she was squeezing my shoulder. I tried sidestepping her a second time. I was in dress slacks and a blazer, and she grabbed my coat by the shoulder and sleeve, and I couldn't move. I should have forced her to rip my coat. I was stunned. Then she made a motion with her hand to wave the governor out, and three security guys ushered him out, and the media followed him out the door. She had her hand on my shoulder the whole time. We spoke for ten minutes, and she held my coat for those ten minutes while we were talking. Yes, I was physically restrained. It was just the two of us over by the side of the room, then she turned on her heel and walked out." It's unknown how long the governor took to exit the public areas of the hotel for either a suite or a waiting car. During that ten minutes colloquy, Zoretic said, "I was forceful, but I never swore." By e-mail, Zoretic noted, "I gave her a copy of the IOM report, and explained the medicinal properties, etc. I ended it with asking her why I deserved to suffer until I die ... . She kept tripping over her words, saying she doesn't think I deserve [that]. Are there no medical options left ... we feel for you." Basically, Taft retreated to noncommittal rhetoric, said Zoretic, all the while clutching her coat.

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