Amidst the continuing furor of anti-drug polemics and hysterics, it's easy to make the casual observer forget one of the basic realities of this issue: Most people who use drugs are okay. For most of the people who use drugs, it's OK that they are using drugs. We may legitimately worry about those who truly have problems with their drug use, and the people they may affect; we legitimately worry about the consequences of the illicit trade in drugs -- which is to say, the consequences of prohibition. And we would like to see the drug trade made less accessible to children.

But when one faces facts straight on, they say a simple thing: Most people who use drugs are okay. If results are what count, in most cases it's okay that people are using drugs. Not in all cases, to be sure. But in most cases.

Certain types of civil disobedience can illustrate the pointlessness of criminalization of drug use in a vivid enough way to be both noticed and understood. Members of the European Parliament Marco Cappato of Italy and Chris Davies of Great Britain accomplished this three years ago when they presented themselves to police in the London suburb of Manchester with minute quantities of marijuana attached to the back of a couple of postage stamps, getting arrested in the process. Cappato and Davies weren't even using the marijuana, it wasn't even enough to be used, they clearly were not menacing society in any way, they are highly respectable citizens. Yet it was enough to get them sent to jail in handcuffs. That is an effective demonstration of the pointlessness of criminalization.

Drug reformers in the formerly Communist nation of Hungary are doing something similar right now. Roughly 30 of them have turned themselves in as drug users to Budapest and other city police headquarters since the beginning of April. Among them was a famous novelist who is also grandmother -- clearly not a threat to society. Police are being forced to arrest these people and make the law look ridiculous in the process. It is fueling discussion, not only about casual use of marijuana but also how society deals with the truly problematic drug users. It is raising the issue of the unlucky ones who get caught and might not get a lenient sentence. It may well help to change the country's drug laws.

The criminalization of responsible drug users is only one of the many pointless aspects of drug prohibition. Criminalization of the trade in drugs itself is also pointless, though for more complex reasons that involve economics, public health and many other factors. But criminalization of users is pointless on its face. People may miss that obvious point a lot of the time. But they are capable of grasping it, without a lot of effort, if it is pointed out in a clear and compelling manner.

I believe they can understand the rest of it too. As New Mexico's former governor, Gary Johnson, has put it, support for the drug war is a mile wide but an inch deep. Our drug policies are so far off-base, with such serious consequences, it isn't that hard to get a lot of people, perhaps most, to understand at a minimum that some things are wrong. Prohibition is pointless, but our efforts to end it need not be.

Last week witnessed the conclusion of a sad chapter in an ongoing saga; the sentencing of Dr. William Hurwitz, a well-known physician specializing in pain management, to 25 years in prison and a $2 million fine for purported drug dealing involvement.

Supporters of Dr. Hurwitz say that his decision to treat pain aggressively with opioids (narcotics), in the way he did, derived from an ethical principle applied to its logical conclusion. Physicians are obligated by their medical oath to properly treat pain, which in general means relieving to the best feasible extent. To deny a patient adequate pain treatment is "tantamount to torture," in Hurwitz' own words. If you treat pain, then some of the people seeking opioid prescriptions from you inevitably will turn out to be drug diverters or abusers. But it is unethical to punish actual pain patients -- to torture them by denying them medicine -- just because such people are out there. So Hurwitz chose to err on the side of prescribing for pain rather than not doing so. Because his ethics, and his interpretation of them, required him to do so, drug warriors notwithstanding.

I agree with those ethics. It may be that reasonable people can believe that some degree of non-treatment of real patients should be risked in order to "balance" that priority with the priority of diversion control. I don't agree with that -- partly because denial of pain treatment really is torture, in my opinion -- and partly because I understand that the economics of the drug trade and prohibition renders diversion control ineffective regardless. If we can get to a point where a debate on the issue is taking place at that level, I'm not going to call anyone unreasonable who is rationally and sincerely trying to sort it out. But I agree with Hurwitz on this point.

I also believe that Dr. Hurwitz is in fact innocent. No actual evidence was ever presented that he knew that any of his patients were diverting or abusing drugs. And as one of the few people in the world holding both a medical degree and a law degree, Hurwitz would have been readily able to earn millions of dollars per year; a financial motive for the crimes of which he was accused simply did not exist. But whether my faith in Dr. Hurwitz is on target or not, even that may ultimately only have secondary importance.

There are two primary issues at stake. One is that it should have been doctors who decided whether Hurwitz had acted properly, but was not. Russell Portenoy, one of the world's top pain specialists, moved the issued forward this week by saying as much to the Los Angeles Times.

The other is the sheer lack of ethics displayed by prosecutors, by their witnesses, and sadly even by the judge himself, Leonard Wexler. I have it on good authority that the prosecutor arguing for a life sentence yesterday lied repeatedly during his performance. The judge invoked a tape he claims he saw, but which was never entered into evidence, to justify harsh treatment of Hurwitz. For a variety of reasons this is not very plausible. But even if it turns out to be true, it would still conflict with the spirit (albeit not the letter, perhaps) of the Supreme Court's recent pronouncements on these issues.

A witness for the prosecution, an addict in recovery, told of how he squandered his whole inheritance on drugs, conjuring the image of hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions down the drain. He didn't mention, nor did anyone, that it was a mere $20,000, a lot to him perhaps but not a lot. Prosecutors leveraged their power to prosecute that individual and others, in order to get them to testify against Hurwitz in exchange for leniency -- a practice that courts have called bribery, though the Supreme Court ultimately did not uphold that. But the unreliability of testimony made under such duress is clear, and it is unethical to use it or allow it.

Most seriously, the prosecution's medical witness gave testimony that six of the leading experts on pain treatment characterized as "misleading" and even "absurd" in a letter they sent to the judge. But that letter was never shown to the jurors. How dare Judge Wexler withhold exculpatory information of fundamental importance to the case from the jurors? It may be that sharing the letter with the jurors would have been unusual and something that courts don't like to do. But given who that letter came from and the nature of its content, I can conceive of no moral justification for withholding such information from jurors regardless of usual procedures. There must have been some appropriate way for Judge Wexler to get them that information, and that's what he ethically had to do, but did not do.

The Hurwitz case is high profile. But such violations of decency occur all the time, in the countless more ordinary cases being thrust through the system every day. The courts have hence become institutions not to be respected, but rather feared and condemned. It is not good enough for the courts to do the right thing, to protect us from dangerous criminals and enact legitimate justice, but to do so only some of the time. The courts must make all reasonable efforts to maintain and enforce the highest moral and ethical standards at all times. But they lack the will, and perhaps the desire, to do so.

The courts are in a moral fog, unable to discern right and wrong in their own actions, while sitting in judgment on others. It is time not only to oppose and criticize injustice, but to stand against it. Ethics requires that of us too.

The Honorable Judge Leonard D. Wexler
United States District Court
Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division
401 Courthouse Square
Alexandria, VA 22314

Re: United States v. William Eliot Hurwitz, 03-CR-467-ALL (LDW)

Dear Judge Wexler:

I am writing to express concern about comments made by Ralph Craft, foreman of the Hurwitz case jury, which appeared in the Dec. 21, 2004 edition of the The Washington Post. Mr. Craft's remarks indicate the jurors fundamentally misconstrued both the legal and medical issues involved in the case. I have observed the pain issue and worked with pain patients, physicians and their advocates for 10 years and am well versed in the issue.

Mr. Craft told the Post that, "legitimate doctors out there don't prescribe anywhere close to what Hurwitz did."

However, the dosage which, according to the Post, "astounded" Craft, 1,600 5mg oxycodone pills, adds up to 8 grams daily, of a medication equivalent in its potency to morphine. According to Dr. Russell Portenoy, Chairman of the Department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at Beth Israel Medical Center, "[i]n clinical practice, the range of opioid doses required by patients is enormous" and "[d]oses equivalent to more than 35g morphine per day have been reported in highly tolerant patients. ..."

The 35 grams Dr. Portenoy, one of the world's leading pain specialists, finds appropriate in some cases, is more than four times the dosage Mr. Craft and presumably other jurors believed was impossibly large -- a serious misconception that appears to have played a major role in the convictions.

Mr. Craft also told the Post that Dr. Hurwitz "wasn't running a criminal enterprise." However, the charges of which he and other jurors voted to convict Dr. Hurwitz are clearly intended to apply to persons involved in major criminal enterprises. That Mr. Craft and perhaps other jurors could understand that Dr. Hurwitz did not run a criminal enterprise and yet convict him for running a criminal enterprise, suggests they were either unable, unwilling, or inadequately prepared to properly interpret the charges on which they were deciding.

Given the multiple, fundamental errors made by jurors, I believe your legal and moral obligation is to reverse the convictions and release Dr. Hurwitz immediately. Short of that, I urge you at least to use the discretion afforded by the recent Booker/Fanfan Supreme Court ruling to sentence reasonably, and sentence Dr. Hurwitz to time served when he appears before you this week. Since the jurors themselves did not believe Dr. Hurwitz ran a criminal enterprise, it would be unreasonable to hand down a sentence Congress intended for leaders of criminal enterprises.

Thank you for taking my points into consideration. I will be attending the April 14 sentencing hearing in support of Dr. Hurwitz, pain patients, and all enlightened physicians who wish to treat them. I believe this is a matter of the utmost moral gravity and that history will watch and remember the actions you take that day.

It was the talk of the airwaves today: Congress held hearings on steroid use in professional baseball, with sports stars like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa subpoenaed to be there. Is steroid use wrong? Can baseball police itself? Are congressmen seeking the public good or just grandstanding? Should the issue lie within Congress' purview at all? Numerous participants in the public debate have opined on the issue, and it will no doubt continue to be talked about for months or more likely years to come.

The most emotion-laden argument heard is that of the superstar athlete as role model for the nation's youth. One of the witnesses at the hearing was a grieving father whose son committed suicide, it is believed, as a result of withdrawal from anabolic steroid use. If kids get the idea that steroids can make them excel at sports, maybe even make the major leagues, more kids will use them and more such tragedies will be the result, is the idea. There may or may not be a lot of truth to the notion – it is notably difficult to sort fact from fiction on matters involving drugs and especially drugs and kids. But let's assume for the sake of argument that there is at least some truth to it. There probably is at least a little.

All the more reason Congress was wrong to do what it did this week. If there were any young people in America who didn't know that steroids can enhance one's athleticism, they almost certainly know it now. Along with thinking about the policy and social issues, some young people are now thinking, more than they were before, about whether or not to take steroids. It is an inevitable chain of events whenever politicians or the media draw attention to a drug. Though I do not know whether steroid use will increase as a result of the hearings, I would not be surprised by that. Whereas I would be surprised if the hearings directly or indirectly caused steroid use to drop. That's just not the way these things tend to work out.

Anyone interested in this issue should read "How To Launch a Nationwide Drug Menace", chapter 44 of the 1972 classic, The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs. The chapter traces the evolution of glue sniffing from an obscure habit in 1959 to a major national phenomenon by the early 1960s. Anyone hurt or concerned by the harms wrought by drugs on some of their users ought to be disheartened by that story's similarities to today's steroid brouhaha. Will publicity from Congress' unintended advertising of steroid use serve to drive use up?

Time will tell, but if history is any guide, the answer is probably yes. And I for one was not interested in yet another demonstration of what not to do. Unfortunately, history likes to repeat itself. One more nationwide drug menace in the making.

Years after candidate George Bush's non-answers to questions about his possible drug past fueled controversy and a sense that he indeed had such a past, proof for some of it at least has at last emerged. Taped excerpts from a conversation, released by the author of a new book, reveal the future president essentially admitting to past marijuana use and explaining why he would never acknowledge it in public.

On one level, the educated reaction to this news is something along the lines of, "So what?" Tens of millions of Americans have used marijuana during their lives. It wasn't a big deal for most of them. Even the more dangerous drugs aren't a problem for most of their users – that's not the strongest argument for legalization of them, but it's true. All the more so for marijuana. Bill Clinton used marijuana. Al Gore used marijuana. It did not and should not have disqualified them from the nation's top job. Nor does it disqualify George Bush.

On other levels, however, the information is troubling, for two reasons. One is that candidate Bush criticized his opponent, Al Gore, not for having used marijuana but for having admitted to it. "I want to lead," he explained on the tapes, and "I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." He couldn't criticize Gore for having used drugs because he had also used drugs. So instead he criticized him for being open and truthful.

There is a level on which one could legitimately hold that it is counterproductive for kids to be keenly focused on the drug use of famous role models; this is an area on which reasonable people can hold varying points of view. But the way to accomplish that would be through legalization and treating private drug use as not a big deal. And that is not what George Bush has advocated.

Which leads us to the second reason, one of hard policy. As governor, Mr. Bush escalated sentences for some drug offenses, putting other people in prison for longer time periods for things that he himself had done or supported. As president, under his authority the federal government has targeted medical marijuana cooperatives, escalated the war on pain doctors, campaigned against drug policy reform initiatives or legislation, promoted drug testing and vastly overreaching drugged-driving laws, gone to court against any reform to drug policy that it could no matter how modest.

So if marijuana use in the distant past is not relevant to judging the president, hypocrisy on the drug issue is very relevant. And if not being open or candid about one's own youth is not exactly the same as lying to children, it verges on that. Not to suggest that his predecessor and failed opponents have stellar records on the issue by any means; they most certainly don't. But they're not president right now.

So if it is unimportant that George Bush used marijuana, it is kind of sad that he opposes honesty about it. And it is very sad that he continues to support cruel and repressive drug policies – policies which could have ruined his life if they had been in place back then, but realistically only in theory.

I am glad, therefore, that now there is proof of George Bush's drug use. If only by providing one more bit of rhetorical ammunition, it will make it slightly harder for the drug warriors to continue to escalate their pogrom against the American people.

Not a day goes by in the drug war without something happening that shouldn't. This week an innocent and heroic doctor was convicted in a court, by a jury that wasn't afforded information they should have had, of charges that should never have been brought, under laws that shouldn't exist. Soon he will be given a prison sentence that any right-thinking person should regard as obscene.

He is William Hurwitz, the most prominent advocate, and at one time practitioner of, aggressive treatment for severe chronic pain for patients who suffer from it. I have written about Dr. Hurwitz since 1996, the year the Board of Medicine of Virginia yanked his license, to his patients' detriment, and I have met him on multiple occasions, including the day he received an award from the American Society for Action on Pain for the risks he took.

One of those patients was David Covillion, a former police officer who became disabled from a fight with a suspect. Covillion, like most of Hurwitz's patients, was not able to find another doctor willing to treat him. His pain was so great that he saw no way out but to end his life. He recorded a dramatic videotape the day before, explaining his decision, a tape that was played on 60 Minutes when it reported on the case.

The media, unfortunately, has not been clear in its more recent reporting on this history. Hurwitz, in fact, was essentially exonerated by the medical board, which restored his license, though not before much damage was done. He was able to return to practicing medicine and treating pain – until two years ago, when, knowing that the federal investigation was coming, he closed his practice. He wanted to give his patients a chance – whatever little they had of one – to find other doctors willing to treat them. Two and a half months after Hurwitz announced his decision, the feds raided his office and home.

It is a simple concept – one would think – that patients should get what they need for pain. But the drugs patients need for pain are also among the drugs that drug police make a living hunting down. The enforcement bureaus devoted to that nexus – anti-diversion bureaus – must draw blood to justify their existence and expand. The convictions they have now obtained against Dr. Hurwitz – which will put him in prison for life if the situation goes un-remedied – are bad news for pain patients. As one advocate told the media on getting the news, doctors are going to "run for the hills" whenever they meet a pain patient from now on. Who can blame them? Life in prison is a steep cost to risk for any cause, even the cause of obeying one's physician's oath.

It is that oath that Hurwitz was following. Frank Fisher, another pain doctor who had (relatively) better luck, has described Dr. Hurwitz as the most ethical of the pain doctors – the most ethical because he would always treat a pain patient for the pain, absent proof of the patient's misconduct. This included the patients other doctors most feared to treat – the patients with addictions, the poor, those with an unsavory look – those for whom the risk to the doctor of being fooled and ending up facing a prosecution is the greatest.

But as Dr. Hurwitz told the jury when he took the stand, to deny a patient pain treatment is tantamount to torture. If he had proof that patients were diverting the drugs, he would cut them off. But without proof, he was obligated to treat the pain they seemed to have, because to do otherwise would violate medical ethics. Dr. Hurwitz was unwilling to torture his patients by denying them medicine, even though that was what was needed to protect himself from the drug police.

This is the basic issue of the case, the issue that Hurwitz and his lawyers tried to convey to the jury, but there is more to it. Other issues are the misuse of the law by federal prosecutors, the lack of clarity in the law, the sheer length of the federal mandatory minimum sentences, and the willingness of the judge to aid and abet the prosecutors in their successful endeavor to obscure the issue for the jurors. Judge Wexler made a series of bad decisions that will probably constitute the basis for the appeal.

Wexler would not instruct the jury clearly, in response to their query, that it is legal to prescribe opiates to people with addictions to them, so long as the prescriptions are for pain control. Wexler did not communicate the "good faith" standard, that doctors who prescribe in good faith are innocent, even if the faith they showed some of their patients turns out to be misplaced. Both of these are errors of law which biased the jury's deliberations toward conviction.

Wexler also disallowed the defense from presenting a document published recently by DEA and pain treatment experts to the jury, because the DEA had withdrawn the document by that time. Would it not have been more in the spirit of truth – the "whole truth," as the witness oath goes – to show the jury the document, as well as the DEA's letter explaining their withdrawal of it, as well as the response by DEA's former physician partners which outlined how distorted and dishonest DEA's reasons really were, as well as the evidence that is suggestive that DEA withdrew the document to improve their chances of convicting Hurwitz himself? And there were other errors on Wexler's part.

I don't know whether Judge Wexler was biased or whether he meant well and was merely manipulated into his bad decisions by smart prosecutors. I also don't know whether prosecutors McNulty or Lytle or Rossi meant well but are merely misguided – truthfully I consider their motives deeply suspect, but that is only a speculation. Regardless, they are all participants in, and perpetrators of, a profoundly destructive attack on the rights and lives of pain patients everywhere. Some of the people reading this editorial are patients who may regard their hopes for relief from pain as having been dealt a blow yesterday in the courthouse. All of us could be in that situation one day and become the victims of McNulty and Lytle and Rossi and Wexler.

But they are also perpetrators of a travesty of justice against an individual – a lynching, in effect – of an innocent doctor whose only crime is that he would not torture his patients by denying them the medicine they needed. And that is not what the law is meant to achieve.

In 2004 we do not need or want martyrs, but we seem to have them. I am sure Dr. Hurwitz does not want to spend years in prison awaiting his appeal, nor spend the remainder of his life there if the appeal fails and no other relief is obtained. But if that is what happens, the reason may at least be some small source of comfort and large source of pride: He would not torture.

The District of Columbia saw a tragedy last week. Jonathan Magbie, a 27-year-old quadriplegic medical marijuana patient, died while under the care of the D.C. court and jail. Magbie had been arrested for marijuana possession, and Judge Judith Retchin sentenced him to 10 days in jail, despite recommendations from officials against it. Her reason? There was a loaded gun in the car with him.

But Magbie didn't use the gun on anyone. And now I've learned it wasn't even his.

Things went haywire immediately after Magbie entered custody. He wound up getting sent back and forth between the jail and the hospital. His mother was not allowed to bring him his ventilator in jail, for two days. By the time the jail finally agreed to it, it was too late.

I don't believe that any of the officials involved in this debacle wanted what happened to happen. Some combination of incompetence and/or overloading of the system and/or poorly crafted regulations or procedures all combined to end Jonathan Magbie's life. But that doesn't mean there's no one to blame.

Surely Judge Retchin shares the blame. According to the Washington Post article, she is known for harsh sentences. In a nation with two million prisoners, whose incarceration rate has been criticized by prominent human rights organizations, such an impulse is part of the problem. The attitude that drove her to send a helpless, wheelchair-bound young man, who had hurt no one, to jail, is a barbaric one that our society desperately needs to leave behind. And knowing how dangerous the jails can be, even for the healthy and strong, it was especially reckless. If she didn't understand that, it is to her discredit.

Others are to blame too. Why did the hospital send Magbie back to the jail and refuse to take him back? Where did the miscommunications take place in the court and jail? The more basic truth, though, is that gulags breed carelessness and error.

It is too late to save Jonathan Magbie – the decision-makers who needed to do that didn't try hard enough. But this sad episode must not be allowed to go gently into the night. Magbie and his family deserve a full accounting, and a reflection on the sad state of criminal justice in this country is long overdue. Let it start here.

The fledgling effort to get Congress to do something about the creeping crisis in pain management in the United States took another small step forward Sept. 17, when the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and more than 60 endorsing groups brought a briefing on pain issues to Capitol Hill. While according to the National Institutes of Health, more than 48 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, the actions of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are only exacerbating the problem, a panel of experts and activists told a crowd of staffers, lobbyists, doctors and patients.

Although there has been a rising public clamor over DEA overzealousness in pursuing its goal of preventing "drug diversion," most particularly around the prosecution of physicians engaged in opioid pain treatment therapies, Congress has yet to take much interest. In July, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) made the first attempt in Congress to deal with the issue by seeking to amend the Justice Department appropriations bill to bar the DEA from prosecuting doctors for prescribing legal drugs, but that amendment was ruled out of order the same day.

The same two representatives hosted the briefing, "The Politics of Pain and Painkillers: Drug Policy and Patient Access to Effective Pain Treatments," featuring presentations by doctors, pain treatment advocates and media critics. California physician Dr. Frank Fisher told a rapt audience his story of persecution at the hands of state authorities.

The head of a pain clinic, Fisher was arrested and charged with murder in the deaths of three people. After years of prosecution, all the charges melted away, but despite Fisher's eventual exoneration, the damage has been severe. Fisher remains unable to practice medicine as he fights a final battle with the state medical board, and his patients have been scattered to the wind in an all-too-often fruitless search for adequate pain treatment.

"Frank Fisher's presentation was very powerful," said the Rev. Ronald Myers, an Arkansas-based physician and founder of the American Pain Institute, who also addressed the briefing. "He has lost so much – his practice, his livelihood – because of an overzealous prosecution. It is really immoral that law enforcement went after that man," Myers said.

"But Frank Fisher was blessed because he had good legal representation. We've got other doctors who haven't fared so well. Down in Florida, Dr. Freddy Williams in serving a life sentence now. Hear what I said: Jailed for life! We've got a real struggle ahead," he said.

A key element of that struggle is getting Congress to pay attention to the problem, said Siobhan Reynolds, founder and president of the Pain Relief Network, an advocacy group for pain patients. "We want House and Senate judiciary committee and health committee hearings," she said. "We cannot begin to address this problem until we understand the scope of and the enormity of the impact on the sickest people in our society," she said. "We will not make progress until Congress really begins to grapple with this."

Part of that process is grappling with misconceptions and media distortions, as panelists Ronald Libby and Maia Szalavitz did on the Hill that afternoon. Libby, a political scientist from the University of North Florida, explained to the attentive audience how a poorly and sensationally reported series of articles about in the Orlando Sentinel painting Oxycontin abuse as a serious public health menace helped pave the way for February congressional hearings on "the national epidemic of Oxycontin addiction." The series seriously overstated the number of Oxycontin-related overdose deaths, Libby said, a charge which the newspaper has accepted, publishing a retraction of its reporting and firing the reporter this year.

Libby also drew an analogy to the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act, which early 20th century law enforcement used to arrest and prosecute thousands of doctors for the then-common practice of prescribing opiates for maintenance purposes to addicts. The law did not explicitly ban maintenance prescribing, but enforcement agencies claimed that such prescriptions went outside the realm of accepted medical practice and therefore violated the Act. Today's prosecutors are out of control in a similar fashion, reshaping the practice of medicine according to an agenda not determined by doctors or informed by medical realities, through prosecutions of physicians accompanied by draconian prison terms or the threat thereof.

(The late Rufus King detailed this history in a 1953 Yale Law Journal article, "The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick," an article which he considered the most important he ever wrote. King found, among other things, that the US Supreme Court had upheld the right of addicts to be prescribed opiates by doctors for maintenance in its Linder ruling, but enforcers simply ignored the ruling and continued the prosecutions.)

Szalavitz, a journalist and fellow with the media watchdog group STATS, described an atmosphere of fear pervading pain management as leading specialists like Virginia's William Hurwitz and Cecil Knox face prosecution and possible years in prison as drug dealers for trying to treat pain with opiates. Szalavitz, too, cited media sensationalism as contributing greatly to the problem.

"We are not going away," said Kathryn Serkes of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, who emceed the briefing. "We are approaching this issue methodically. If we have to keep coming back to educate people on the Hill 40 or 50 at a time, we'll do it," she said. "This issue is really just beginning to appear on congressional staffers' radar now, since Reps. Paul and Conyers made their bid to defund the DEA war on doctors in July. We didn't really expect any concrete action at this point; it is an educational process and we're in it for the long haul," she said.

One thing the briefing did accomplish, said Serkes, was to show that concern about the crisis in pain treatment is not an issue that belongs to one political party.

"We wanted to show that this is a bipartisan effort, and with Conyers and Paul, people are starting to understand that," she argued. "Our panel was another example. We had people who are very conservative and people on the left. The people on the panel put aside political differences on other issues to work together on this."

"This is an educational effort," concurred the Pain Relief Network's Reynolds. "And we were really encouraged by the receptivity of the audience. People's mouths were hanging open as they listened. People are just thunderstruck when they're confronted with the reality of what is going on, with doctors being hunted down, with pain patients like Richard Paey sitting in prison for 25 years. People just cannot believe it."

"We are getting more attention from members of Congress, but we need to have hearings," said the Rev. Myers, who will lead the second annual pain patients march on Washington in April. "The DEA is out of control, and Congress is the only body that can rein it in. To me, the DEA is like the IRS used to be. It was abusing people, and that didn't change until there were hearings in Congress. We need hearings."

"We have US attorneys saying they want to hunt down doctors 'like the Taliban'," said Serkes, "and the Justice Department is asking Congress for almost $25 million for DEA drug diversion initiatives in the current budget. "At the same time the DEA is hunting down doctors like the Taliban, it is having trouble finding real terrorists. Our spending priorities are out of whack."

The issue will only grow, said Reynolds. "This affects millions of Americans, it effects the elderly, it affects children with cancer. This is about the denial of ethical medical treatment to Americans because of government action against physicians, but to have the whole medical system driven by fear of a small number of addicts while millions of pain patients suffer is insane."

In a mass legal action on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 38 California medical marijuana patients filed simultaneous lawsuits demanding that state law enforcement entities return almost $1 million worth of pot seized by police in recent years. California voters approved the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes in 1996, but recalcitrant law enforcement organizations continue to seize marijuana from patients.

In all 38 cases, the plaintiffs had their medicine seized but were never charged with a crime or had the charges dropped. But they have been unable to get police to return their property – the marijuana. Now they are going to court in an effort to get their property back, or at least its cash value, and to try to shock California police into actually upholding and obeying the law.

Under California law, persons whose property was unlawfully seized may seek its return through a court order. If the property has been lost, damaged, or destroyed, plaintiffs are entitled to receive compensation. Each case must be filed separately, as was done Tuesday across the state.

According to a report issued this week by Americans for Safe Access, the group that coordinated the mass filing, illegal seizures of medical marijuana have occurred in more than half of the state's counties. The California Highway Patrol has also illegally seized marijuana from patients, the report found. Additionally, ASA found that eight years after the passage of Proposition 215, the state's Compassionate Use Act, most California law enforcement agencies have no procedures in place to determine who is a legal medical marijuana user.

In the report, which examined only the last three months, ASA found more than 100 cases of police violating patients' rights and seizing their medicine. ASA executive director Steph Sherer blamed the problem on a "culture of resistance" within law enforcement.

"There is more support for medical marijuana in California than ever before," said Sherer in a conference call. "But when we look at the implementation of Prop. 215, it is surprising that we see such a culture of resistance to it among law enforcement."

That reluctance to uphold the law will end up costing California taxpayers millions of dollars in arrest and prosecution costs, as well as millions more in compensation for seized or damaged property, Sherer said. "Patients are standing up for their rights and demanding their property back from the state," she said. "The Compassionate Use Act is not negotiable. Upholding the law is not negotiable. In addition to the return of property, we are asking for policies and regulations for law enforcement that will not only protect the rights of patients and monitor this culture of resistance, but also save money for taxpayers across the state."

Police have had long enough to adapt to the law, said Joe Elford, a constitutional law expert and ASA staff attorney.

"When a substance such as pot has been illegal for so long," he said, "law enforcement cannot be expected to change its attitudes overnight – but it's been eight years. Because police continue to view marijuana as contraband and seize people's medicine, patients have had to stand up for their rights, they have had to go to court to try to get their medicine back. If this works," Elford continued, "we will have won a broader recognition of our rights. If it doesn't, we will see more lawsuits down the line. We don't intend to wait another eight years."

Former California police officer and current medical marijuana patient Kevin Lewis said that even though he considers himself a responsible user, he "fears" the attitude of law enforcement if he is ever found with marijuana. But those attitudes could be changed, Lewis said, and it is up to law enforcement agencies to do so.

"Officer standards and training should make clear that if the person has a medical marijuana ID card and a doctor's recommendation, he should be treated like anyone else possessing a prescription drug. Officers need to review the documents, and if they are in order, let the patients go about their business," Lewis said. "I can't even understand what level of training these officers have or what orders they have to seize property."

Lisa Swartz is one of the patients who filed suit Tuesday. During the conference call, she told of being raided at gunpoint in 1999. "They came with a narc SWAT team, pointing semi-automatic weapons at my grandkids' heads," she said before breaking into tears. "It was a terrible experience and totally changed my view of everything. I used to believe the police were there to protect and defend us. It is just so bizarre that they do this to people," said Swartz. "Even if we get our property back, this still takes a terrible toll on our families."

Swartz spent 18 months and $50,000 defending herself before authorities dropped the charges. "They never apologized and they never gave me my medicine back," she said.

The law enforcement "culture of resistance" to implementing the state's medical marijuana law is centered in the California Narcotics Officers Association, whose 7,000 members make a living enforcing the drug laws. The association, which is the largest law enforcement training organization in the state, says flatly on its web site that "marijuana is not a medicine" and that a well-financed drug legalization lobby has duped the voters of California.

That's a big problem, said California Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). "I have only recently learned that the California Narcotics Officer Association says marijuana is not medicine," Leno said. "I would suggest they need to reread the wording of Prop. 215. That is the will of the voters, and it is not being respected. Prop. 215 clearly states seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes. That is what we are trying to implement."

Redneck justice in red dirt Alabama has Loretta Nall seeing red. Nall, a housewife from rural Alexandria City, was convicted Tuesday of possession of .87 of a gram of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia some 15 months after the Tallapoosa County Narcotics Task Force raided her home -- and 15 months and one week after Nall published a letter in the state's largest newspaper calling for the reform of the state's marijuana laws.

She told DRCNet she would immediately appeal the decision.

Nall, who is now president of the US Marijuana Party, began her career as a marijuana activist after her home was targeted by anti-drug helicopters in September 2002, two months before her arrest. That her arrest was at least in part politically motivated is evident in the fact that the search warrant leading to the bust cited as evidence her letter to the Birmingham News, where she wrote, "it is time to end cannabis prohibition." The only other evidence cited in the warrant was remarks Nall's five-year-old daughter was alleged to have made to either a teacher or a police officer assigned to her school and a supposed report from a "confidential informant" that unnamed persons were complaining of Nall's drug activity.

Nall's trial before Tallapoosa County District Court Judge Kim Taylor was a journey into Alice in Wonderland justice, Nall said. The search warrant was illegal and should never have been issued, she and her attorney argued, in a strong but ultimately futile effort to get the warrant thrown out and the charges dismissed. Judge Taylor, who issued the warrant in question, upheld himself, but testimony from the trial suggests that his ruling had little to do with the law.

Under the Constitution, which applies even in rural Alabama, police must present a judge with evidence they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed in order to secure a valid search warrant. But under cross-examination by Nall's attorney, that probable cause seemingly melted into air. Officer Eric McCain, the school resource officer who claimed that Nall's daughter ratted her out, offered varying versions of what the girl said, who she said it to, and who was present. First, McCain said that five-year-old Bell Nall spontaneously told him about green plants hanging from her ceiling. Then he testified that Bell's teacher approached him with the information. He also testified that he questioned Bell outside the classroom with no other adults present. Then he testified that her teacher was there. Then he testified that he might have questioned her in the classroom.

In the affidavit McCain submitted to support the search warrant, he said nothing about green plants hanging from the ceiling. Rather, he said that Bell told him some of the leaves she had brought from home for a school project were "illegal." Under cross-examination, McCain could not recall how many times he had obtained search warrants based on the testimony of a five-year-old, although he did concede that young children have vivid imaginations and have been known to make things up.

Officer McCain also testified that he included the letter to the editor Nall had published in the Birmingham News a week earlier as part of the affidavit supporting the issuance of a search warrant. But McCain contradicted himself moments later, saying that he didn't find the letter until the raid, which left hanging the question of how he could include it in the affidavit if he wasn't aware it existed until a week later. And in yet another bizarre twist, he could not produce the letter, which was Exhibit A in the case.

As for the "confidential informant" report on Nall, under cross-examination McCain conceded that local police had received no prior complaints about Nall or her residence, where she lives with her horticulturist husband and two children. McCain then said he had received complaints from concerned citizens, but under continued questioning, admitted that he did not document the alleged complaints and that no list of such complaints existed.

Testimony showed that the search warrant was based on protected political speech (Nall's letter to the editor), a very hazy allegation about what a 5-year-old said, and an even hazier set of anonymous complaints whose existence could not even be proven. It appeared an open and shut case of a bad search warrant. But not in the court of the judge who issued it. After hearing the evidence, Judge Kim Taylor upheld the warrant, virtually ensuring Nall's conviction on the marijuana and paraphernalia charges.

That happened later in the day, after more bizarre testimony from police and strange evidentiary decisions from Judge Taylor. Police misidentified the oversize envelope in which they found the leftover roach that constituted their drug seizure, repeatedly referring to it as a FedEx envelope even as courtroom spectators could see it was a USPS envelope. Taylor allowed prosecutors to enter into evidence a police videotape of the raid that did not show marijuana being seized, but did, Nall notes, "show some lovely pictures of the inside of my toilet bowls."

Officer Josh McCallister testified that he found rolling papers in a bedroom not near to where the pot was found. McCallister conceded that rolling papers could be used to roll tobacco cigarettes. He also testified that he found scales in the kitchen, but that there was no evidence of drug residue on them, they had not been tested and yes, scales have many common uses. Nall, who makes candles, said she used them in her work.

Police did not find any evidence of a marijuana grow, nor did they find any large quantities of marijuana. But the half-smoked roach, the rolling papers and the scales were enough to convict her on the two charges. She faces a suspended 30-day jail sentence, has to go to a court referral and must pay court costs for the possession charge, but not for the paraphernalia charge.

None of that matters because the case will be overturned on appeal, Nall believes. "The judge's rulings and his conduct were deplorable," she added. "He flirted with women during the proceedings, he laid his head back and closed his eyes for minutes at a time, and he did not appear to even pay attention to anything our side said. He cared nothing for the fact that he held my very life in his hands. It didn't matter to him that the cops were obviously lying and contradicting themselves time and time again."

Some 700,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges in the United States each year. The proceedings in the Nall case lead one to wonder just how crappy are the charges in the rest of these cases. In most cases, the police evidence is never put to the test because defendants opt to plead guilty, but perhaps more should fight. While the judge's rulings in the Nall trial are not encouraging, they do have a good chance of being overturned on appeal, and if police and prosecutors are forced to actually present real cases instead of merely intimidating their victims to cop a plea, perhaps their enthusiasm for persecuting drug users will diminish.

"This kind of thing is an education for the public," Nall said. "I hired a court reporter so I could post the complete trial transcripts -- they should be on the web site in a couple of weeks -- and she asked me after the trial if she really sat there and heard them say they things they had said and if they were really pursuing me for allegedly possessing 0.87 grams of marijuana. She was appalled and said she had never witnessed anything like it in her life."

Nall's enthusiasm for taking the war to the drug warriors has certainly not diminished, and she, too, is appalled. "I am appalled at what I witnessed yesterday. I sit here now and wonder just how many innocent people are in jail because of judges like this one? How many lives have been destroyed because people did not have the resources to fight on?"

One of the greatest but least-discussed problems in modern medicine is the under-treatment of patients living with severe, chronic pain. More than 30 million patients suffer from chronic pain, and seven million of them cannot relieve their pain without opiates (narcotics), but only 4,000 doctors in the country are willing to prescribe them, according to the National Chronic Pain Outreach Association. A New England Journal of Medicine editorial stated that 56 percent of cancer outpatients and 82 percent of AIDS outpatients were under-treated for pain, as were 50 percent of hospitalized patients with a range of conditions.

Today's massive denial of pain medication is a consequence of the social, regulatory and law enforcement climate created by the war on drugs. Doctors can suffer loss of license or even incarceration for the inevitable mistake of providing medicine to a real or pretend patient who may be misusing or diverting medication, or using it for non-sanctioned purposes. The climate has led to a situation in which most physicians are incorrectly trained in pain management and under- or non-treatment of pain is the norm. Doctors who treat pain correctly typically must exceed the usual prescribed dosages, and in so doing draw the scrutiny of state medical boards, the DEA and other agencies. Any overdose, any death of an ill or elderly patient, any billing of public health insurers (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid) to pay for opiates therapy, is a potential red flag, no matter how reasonable the prescription or how innocent the circumstances. And for the typical physician, the possible legal and financial ramifications, even if imposed only infrequently, tend to represent a greater legal and financial risk than they are willing or able to afford.

One of the most recent possible "witch-hunts" in this arena is that of Dr. Daniel Maynard, whose Dallas home, office and bank were raided by dozens of state and federal cops three weeks ago. The massive force of heavily armed anti-drug agents handcuffed 30-40 of Maynard's patients while running warrant checks on them and seized Maynard's records, and the state of Texas has frozen his ability to be reimbursed by Medicare. Maynard is of course being tried in the media for his supposed crimes, and his former patients are scrambling to find new doctors who will take their pain treatment needs seriously. I'd bet money at least one of them gets treated for handcuff bruises.

The reason for the raid? Eleven of Dr. Maynard's patients had died subsequent to receiving opiate prescriptions from him. But it is unclear what relation some of the reported causes of death would have to opiate use -- hypertensive cardiovascular disease and chronic alcoholism, for example -- and in those cases where drug overdose was a possible cause, it is unclear whether the fault or responsibility would lie with Dr. Maynard rather than the patients themselves. And this is only based on the limited information that came out in the press. The real facts, once they are presented, may tell a different story yet.

I don't know enough about Dr. Maynard's case to say with certainty whether he is being persecuted for nothing or whether his prescribing practices did have problems. My guess is the former, but only the medical evidence, interpreted correctly, with the benefit of medical experience and knowledge and free from the mind-numbing grip of opiophobia, can tell for sure. At least one of Dr. Maynard's patients has spoken out publicly in his defense.

What I don't need the evidence to be able to say, with substantial confidence, is what will happen -- or rather what is already happening -- to those of Dr. Maynard's patients who live with painful, long-term conditions, and who need narcotics in relatively strong doses to be able to manage.

Those patients will go to their new doctors, and those doctors, regardless of their professional opinions, will decide -- or rather, have already decided -- that they would be crazy to write the same kinds of prescriptions, that doing so would be equivalent to asking a District Attorney to investigate them and the medical board to suspend their right to practice, or for comparable assaults on their practices, reputations and freedom.

Those doctors will assume that some of the very seriously ill patients formerly treated by Dr. Maynard will die during the period of time for which they are those doctors' patients -- due to age or illness, in all likelihood, because they intend to be careful -- but they will assume that any such death will draw scrutiny with a greatly increased likelihood of prosecution, administrative sanctions or lawsuits, and that their colleagues as a group won't take a stand on their behalf.

I also don't need Dr. Maynard's records to determine what will happen -- or rather, has happened -- to doctors and patients in Dr. Maynard's county or state, indeed throughout all the United States. Cowboy drug enforcement isn't limited to Texas. Doctors will conclude -- long have concluded -- that prescribing narcotics beyond a certain dosage level, or to more than a certain number of patients, right as that may be, is far too risky an endeavor under the prevailing police state of medicine. Most won't write those prescriptions, and countless needless tragedies are taking place every day for the suffering people whose palliative is known and available, yet not truly available enough.

So be Dr. Maynard without fault, or have he fault, the state's approach to him is wrong and works great destructive effect against the welfare of patients everywhere. The police state of medicine is the enemy of health, not the friend. Dr. Maynard has the benefit of my doubt, at least, but the state does not.

It is a sort of obligatory obeisance before the malign power of controlled substances, those pills, powders, potions and puffables that, as one-time Republican presidential contender Steve Forbes, neatly summed up, "destroy the body, enslave the soul, and take away people's freedom to think and choose for themselves." No matter how ardent the reformer, all too often, when he stands up to call for an end to the drug war, his oration begins with some variation of "I don't condone drug use, but..."

Well, Jacob Sullum has had enough of that, thank you. With "Saying Yes," Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine, syndicated columnist, and author of "For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health," has penned a reasonable, easily readable, and well-researched response to decades of knee-jerk anti-drug sentiment -- which, in a memorable phrase, he refers to as "voodoo pharmacology." Instead, Sullum suggests, the public and the legalization movement would both be better served with a nuanced, realistic, and -- d.a.r.e. we say it? -- temperate response to drug use.

Voodoo pharmacology is that strange blend of hysteria, myth, and agenda-driven public pronouncements by self-interested parties that, unfortunately, passes for a reasoned discussion of the effects of different controlled substances these days. Voodoo pharmacology knows that alcohol is not a drug, that taking Prozac to feel better is a medical decision but taking Ecstasy to feel better is a crime, and that the first toke or the first pill is the first step on an inevitable path to chemically-induced hell. You know voodoo pharmacology. Your tax dollars support great gobs of it spewing forth from your television in those ridiculous, demented ads emanating from the Bush White House, where the drug czar plots his campaign against rape-inducing, ambition-draining, gun accident-causing marijuana.

But, as Sullum shows in several entertaining chapters, voodoo pharmacology -- the basis of our current prohibitionist drug policies -- has little to do with the reality of drug use patterns and more to do with enduring cultural fears encapsulated above by the paranoid Mr. Forbes. In passage after passage that will be uplifting to those drug users who never lost their jobs, their families, their health or their minds because they smoke pot today or snorted coke in the '80s or tripped on acid in the '60s or rolled on Ecstasy in the '90s, Sullum explores not only the unharmful but sometimes downright positive effects of drug use for many drug users.

And he finds that just as the wino drunk in the gutter does not represent most alcohol drinkers, neither does the thieving junky represent all heroin users, the twitching tweaker all amphetamine users, nor Cheech and Chong all pot smokers. Quite the opposite. "The silent majority of users," he writes, are "decent, respectable people who, despite their politically incorrect choice of intoxicants, earn a living and meet their responsibilities."

Sullum shouldn't have to tell us that. But in the face of decades of relentless demonization of drugs and drug users, it bears repeating. And repeating. And repeating. This is why campaigns to improve the image of drug users, like Mikki Norris's Pot Pride (http://www.cannabisconsumers.org) are necessary. It is pathetic that such a thing is necessary, but it is, and Sullum helps explain why.

Demonstrating an adroit touch with historical sources, Sullum shows how the evils ascribed to a particular drug at a particular time float without concrete reference to attach themselves to another drug at another time. "The cells of the brain may become poisoned. The will power may be weakened, and it may be an effort to do the routine duties of life... The memory may also be impaired... The mind of the habitual user is apt to lose its capacity for study or successful effort." John Walters describing the effects of marijuana in 2003? No, Albert Blaisdell, an earlier incarnation of the prohibitionist beast, describing the effects of tobacco cigarettes in 1904.

He also desconstructs the myths of addiction and the black propaganda about maniacal drug users that have filled the works of prohibitionists since Old Testament time. Sullum's passages on the dreaded speed freak are especially entertaining. Amphetamine use, once the province of truckers, students cramming for exams and overweight housewives, was transformed in the late 1960s into the domain of the tweaker. And in the 1990s, Sullum notes, "the speed freak returned to the public stage, angrier, meaner, crazier and better armed," as well as carrying culturally laden stereotypes about toothless hicks and trailer trash. Sullum looks at the oft-cited case of Eric Starr Smith, who in 1994 cut off his 14-year-old son's head and tossed it on an Arizona highway. Smith was allegedly on a speed bender, but he was also loaded on alcohol and had a history of bar fights, domestic violence, molestation allegation and protection orders. "Whatever else it is," Sullum writes, "the Smith case is not the story of a peaceful, law-abiding man turned into a monster by methamphetamine."

There has to be a better way than voodoo pharmacology, and Sullum has one. It will appear radical only in a society conditioned to yield its moral agency to the state, because what Sullum counsels is plain old personal responsibility and a government that respects its citizens enough to allow them to make their own choices. Moderation, or temperance, before the term was hijacked by the prohibitionists, is what Sullum advises, for both drug users and those with a hankering to restrain them. Most people use drugs responsibly, Sullum notes, and they should be left alone.

Doubtless many who read or hear about Sullum's book will assume, because he chose to focus on responsible users, that he is uninformed or insensitive to the harm caused to themselves or others by people with real drug problems. But that's not the case, and it's not Sullum's fault if they feel that way; it's an inevitable reaction from a society conditioned by a century of anti-drug demagoguery by governments and zealots reluctant to admit responsible drug use even exists, much less constitutes the norm, a conditioning Sullum hopes his book will help defuse. Sullum is a libertarian, and hence believes that people who engage in potentially risky behaviors bear responsibility for any harms they suffer as a result, and that those drug users who commit crimes against persons or property should be punished for those crimes, not for their drug use, and certainly not excused from responsibility because of it. It all seems so reasonable.

And it is. Sullum fittingly cites the great philosopher Frank Zappa, who once noted that, "A drug is neither moral nor immoral -- it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats its consumption as a license to act like an asshole." Now, if only drug users can somehow convince the government to not treat our consumption of some drug as a license to act like an asshole toward us.

Phil Smith is the editor of DRCnet's Week Online.

An effort by House Republicans, led by Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), to explicitly enable the Office of National Drug Control Policy to use its billion-dollar anti-drug advertising campaign to engage in partisan campaigns against political candidates or voter initiatives that favor drug legalization has run into a buzzsaw of opposition on Capitol Hill. The measure, part of the authorization bill for ONDCP spending, was supposed to have been voted on in the House Government Reform Committee Thursday, but has now been delayed at least until after the Memorial Day recess because GOP and Democratic members could not reach a compromise on the controversial language.

The authorization bill also contains language that would strip federal anti-drug funds from law enforcement in states with medical marijuana laws and transfer those funds to the DEA. That language may not survive, said reformers who are monitoring the legislation.

Lobbyists from the Marijuana Policy Project and the Drug Policy Alliance, who led the effort to defeat the propaganda measure, declared Thursday's action a victory -- of sorts. "We've headed off the evil empire for the moment," said MPP director of communications Bruce Mirken.

"This was an initial victory," said DPA director of legislative affairs Bill Piper. "That they postponed the vote was significant," he told DRCNet. "They had the bill on a fast track, but with all the noise we made, all the phone calls members got, they couldn't push it through, and now we think we will get a change in the language."

Under the propaganda provision, authored by incorrigible drug warrior Souder, the existing law that bars ONDCP from using its $195 million per year anti-drug media campaign for partisan political purposes would not apply when ONDCP is acting "to oppose an attempt to legalize the use" of any illegal drug. With open wording like that, the drug czar could legally campaign against sitting office-holders, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who has sponsored federal medical marijuana legislation or any candidate who campaigns on reforming the drug laws.

Stealthily tucked into the voluminous ONDCP authorization bill, the language went unnoticed until spotted by reformers. Some Democratic members felt "sandbagged," said DPA's Piper. "This has upset a lot of Democrats, who suddenly realized that if it passed, the Bush White House would have $195 million to use in partisan political campaigns next year," he said. "Any party would have a blank check to run taxpayer-funded ads against their opponents -- all they have to do is claim they're fighting drug legalization."

"While there were other issues at play here," said MPP director of government affairs Steve Fox, "the sticking point was the ad campaign and whether the drug czar could use those ads for political purposes. Thanks to the efforts of MPP and DPA, as well as a nicely-timed front page story yesterday in Roll Call, there is a strong and growing awareness of this issue among the members," he told DRCNet.

Feeling the heat, Souder earlier this week agreed to seek compromise language with committee Democrats, but that effort failed as the committee adjourned without a vote. The compromise language would have barred ONDCP from "expressly" advocating for or against a candidate or ballot measure, a move that would have allowed Walters to say "Candidate Smith supports making drugs available to children," but not "Vote against Candidate Smith because he supports making drugs available to children."

That wasn't enough to calm down the Democrats. "Some members felt there wasn't even anything to compromise on, this bill was so egregious," said DPA's Piper.

The propaganda provision's genesis presumably lies in last fall's initiative campaigns. Drug czar Walters campaigned against a Nevada initiative sponsored by MPP that would have legalized the possession of up to three ounces of marijuana by adults, prompting the group to file state and federal complaints alleging that Walters violated Nevada campaign finance laws and federal anti-electioneering laws. One GOP committee staffer told Roll Call the language merely sought to protect the drug czar. "What we are simply trying to clarify is that the regular operation of the media campaign, when it gets into things that some people want to claim and construe as political, is not political," the aide said.

"Because of this ongoing legal battle between MPP and the drug czar, there is real concern among the Republicans that the drug policy reformers will win in court somewhere -- maybe even in the court of public opinion -- and their campaigns will be crippled," said Piper. "They are also concerned that their regular anti-marijuana ads could be construed as campaign ads even if they're not talking about a specific candidate or initiative."

The battle will be rejoined within a matter of weeks, and reformers are increasingly confident they can block the propaganda provision. "We have a strong chance of removing this," said Piper, "although we may end up with language explicitly saying that the anti-marijuana ads are okay, they're not campaign ads."

"We're going to keep up the pressure," said MPP's Fox. "We'll be reaching out to other groups outside the drug reform community. When you're doing this sort of lobbying, step one is creating public awareness. That has happened now, especially with everyone on the Hill reading the Roll Call article. Now we have to keep on top of this and see what sort of new language they try. If it's more bad language, we'll fight that, too."

While the authorization bill provides funds for the anti-marijuana media campaign, there is little evidence the campaign is serving its stated purpose. The presidential budget submission for the 2004 fiscal year noted that "The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign has not demonstrated the results sought and does not yet have adequate performance measures and related goals." Walters himself admitted earlier this year that "this campaign isn't reducing drug use."

That's right, said DPA's Piper. "All they're really doing is stating explicitly that this campaign is not about reducing teen drug use but about advancing a political agenda. Interestingly, one provision that was stripped out of the bill was one that required local treatment and prevention contact information on the ads. Taking the two provisions together tells us they've given up on using the ads to reduce teen drug use and will turn the ads into a blatantly political operation."

Even as the government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien moves toward decriminalizing the possession of cannabis, government lawyers were in court in Ottawa Tuesday defending the current laws. The hearing before the Canadian Supreme Court came in a trio of cases that have the potential of scrapping the country's decades-old marijuana laws.

The hearing was originally set for last December, but the court postponed it given indications the government was about to move on the marijuana laws. Now, however, the court has decided to wait no longer. After Tuesday's hearings, the justices will review the case and issue a ruling sometime in coming months.

It is deciding the cases of three men, two activists and one unlucky marijuana smoker, who are challenging the constitutionality of Canada's marijuana possession laws under provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights. David Malmo-Levine, who was convicted of running the East Vancouver Harm Reduction Club, a nonprofit that provided medical marijuana to patients; Christopher Clay, who was convicted of selling marijuana seeds and seedlings at his London, Ontario-based Hemp Nation in a deliberate challenge to the law; and Victor Caine, who got caught smoking a joint in his van, all argue that jail sentences and criminal records for what is essentially a victimless crime violate the Charter's guarantees to life, liberty and security.

But although the federal government is moving toward decriminalization, government lawyers aggressively defended the current laws. "Simply put, there is no free-standing right to get stoned," said government lawyer David Frankel in a written brief filed with the court. He continued in the same vein during oral arguments Tuesday. "Whether you like them or not, the marijuana laws are an example of the democratic process," Frankel told the court. "By their very nature, some people do not like the laws. But it is not a popularity contest. Polling results may be a matter that politicians want to take into consideration, but they are not a matter for the courts."

That prompted Justice Ian Binnie to challenge Frankel's defense of the law. "You seem to be saying that short of being cruel and unusual punishment, all of this lies within Parliament's domain," the judge remarked.

"At the end of the day, it is for Parliament to weigh and assess the competing interests," Frankel replied. "There is a base line here. If the legislature takes what is regarded by this court as a rational decision, that is the end of it, [and] this is clearly rational legislation."

Not so fast, responded attorneys for the three men. "We must ask whether the state has any place in the living rooms of the nation," said Andrew Lokan, a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

A key question for the court is whether the government need demonstrate serious health risks to pot smokers or the general public in order to uphold the law. Debate over the relative risks of marijuana consumed some of the court's time, as lawyers for the two sides argued the dangers of cannabis.

Another key issue is whether the courts or parliament will ultimately decide the cannabis laws. Attorneys for the appellants told the justices they should follow the law, not political trends. "You can't simply say Parliament has the right to be wrong," said Paul Burstein, attorney for one of the trio. The court should draw a "constitutional line in the sand" beyond which parliament cannot intervene, he added.

Observers are taking no bets on how the court will rule, although many Canadian politicians would breathe a sigh of relief if a court ruling took the whole issue of marijuana law out of their hands.

In what local observers described as a "partial victory" and "relative triumph" for Peru's insurgent cocalero (coca farmer) movement, cocalero leaders met Wednesday with President Alejandro Toledo, who took some small steps to alleviate their plight and promised more. Since April 8, cocaleros from around the country had been marching on Lima to demand that the government redress their grievances and the president meet with them personally. When thousands of cocaleros began pouring into the heart of the capital Monday, pressure began mounting on Toledo to heed the demand for a meeting, and by Wednesday, after preliminary meetings between cocalero leaders, Prime Minister Luis Solari, and Peruvian drug agency head Nils Ericsson, the long-awaited event took place.

Peru is the world's second largest coca producer after Colombia, and Peruvian coca farmers, eyeing the success of their brethren in Bolivia, have increasingly mobilized to try to block eradication of the crops, to argue for a larger government-recognized crop, to seek an uncorrupted alternative development program, and to demand the release of leaders such as Nelson Palomino. Palomino, the head of the Peruvian Confederation of Coca Growers (Confederacion Nacional de Productores Agropecuarios de las Cuencas Cocaleras del Perú, or CONCPACCP), was jailed last month in Ayacucho on the charge of "support for terrorism" after he led mass protests in that city.

Palomino remains jailed, and the much hated drug law of 1978, which mandates the eradication of coca crops, remains in effect; but the government of President Toledo has promised to take steps to better the situation of the cocaleros. That was enough for cocalero leaders to call off the mass mobilization for the time being, according to Peruvian professor and coca expert Baldomero Cáceres Santa María (http://www.cocachasqui.org). "The peasants are returning to their lands," he told DRCNet, "but [federation sub-secretary] Nancy [Rufina] Obregón [Peralta] and other leaders are remaining in Lima for further negotiations with the government."

Although at this point the victory appears more symbolic than real, the cocaleros have already achieved important advances, according to Caceres and former Peruvian drug agency advisor Hugo Cabieses. "They won, even if not completely," said Cabieses. "The poor peasants with their women and children, the combative and beautiful women who spearheaded this important movement, have won over everyone. Those who opposed them at the beginning are now allies in their struggle for dignity," he told DRCNet. "The mass media, which was skeptical at first, has taken up the cause."

And they appear to have won over President Toledo, although how far and how fast the government will move to redress cocalero demands remains to be seen. Cocalero leader Nancy Obregón, who stepped forward to replace Palomino after his arrest, brought Toledo and his advisors to tears during the Wednesday meeting, Cabieses said.

"You, Mr. President, taught us to struggle against autocracy and for dialogue when you did your own marches," said Obregón, a mother of five. "You, Mr. President, who come from the same poverty as us, sit in the presidency because of us," she told Toledo in front of a crowd of thousands of peasants at a Lima soccer field. Then in a moment rife with emotion and symbolism, Obregón, along with fellow cocalero leaders Marisela Guillen, Elsa Malpartida, Diodora Espinoza and Lucy Macedo, handed Toledo a gift of coca leaves. Standing before the assembled multitude, Toledo took the leaves from their bag, held them aloft, and said, "These leaves are sacred and you cocaleros are not drug traffickers."

"This is a partial victory, an important first step," said Cabieses. "The cocaleros have been recognized as citizens, and the Confederation of Peruvian Coca Growers has been recognized as the legitimate interlocutor of the growers before the government -- much to the fury of the bureaucrats, aristocrats and the US Embassy."

The US Embassy is not just sitting idly by, said Cáceres. "Prime Minister Solari went from his meeting with the cocalero leaders to a meeting at the embassy," he told DRCNet. While details of that meeting are not known, US policy in the Andes has been steadfast in its insistence on eradication as the central component of any regional drug strategy. But US intransigence on the issue led Bolivian President Sanchez de Lozada into a bitter struggle with cocaleros there and helped push the cocaleros to political prominence. Peruvian President Toledo undoubtedly hopes to avoid that trap, and Caceres, for one, hopes the Americans will have learned a lesson from Bolivia. "We hope the Americans will be willing to allow an Andean solution to this problem," he said.

Also on Wednesday, President Toledo signed a decree acknowledging the legitimate grievances of the cocaleros and instituting a series of minor reforms. Although cocaleros have repeatedly said they are tired of promises from the government, Toledo's agreement to meet with them, his acknowledgement of their cause, and his initial moves to address grievances have convinced them to give the government more time to act. Obregón and other leaders remain in talks in Lima, but the peasant masses, with their signs saying "We are peasants, not terrorists," "Coca is protein and medicine" and "Liberty for Nelson Palomino," are heading back to the fields -- for now. If the government's action's this week are not followed up, the cocaleros vow to return.

Late Wednesday (4/16) the Ninth Circuit federal court granted the hemp industry's Motion to Stay the US Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA's) "Final Rule," which was issued March 21, 2003 and would have banned the sale of nutritious hemp foods containing harmless trace amounts of naturally-occurring THC under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970. This "Final Rule" is virtually identical to an "Interpretive Rule" issued on October 9, 2001 that never went into effect because of a Ninth Circuit Court Stay issued on March 7, 2002.

Both Motions to Stay were brought jointly by the Hemp Industries Association (HIA) and several major hemp food companies in the US and Canada. The court is currently hearing a substantive challenge to the Final Rule, and in light of today's ruling, the hemp industry is optimistic that the Court will ultimately invalidate the DEA's rule. One of the prime criteria in granting the Stay was whether the hemp industry is likely to ultimately prevail on the merits of the case.

Because trace infinitesimal THC in hemp seed is non-psychoactive and insignificant, the US Congress exempted non-viable hemp seed and oil from control under the CSA, just as Congress exempted poppy seeds from the CSA, although they contain trace opiates otherwise subject to control. The hemp industry is assuring retailers and consumers that hemp food products should continue to be stocked, sold and consumed. Joe Sandler, counsel for the HIA, stated: "The Court's order effectively prevents DEA from enforcing its 'Final Rule.' With this stay in effect, all those who sell, import, manufacture, distribute and retail edible hemp oil and seed, and oil and seed products, can continue those activities secure in the knowledge that such products remain perfectly lawful."

Hemp seed has a well-balanced protein content and the highest content of essential fatty acids (EFAs) of any oil in nature: EFAs are the "good fats" that, like vitamins, the body does not produce and requires for good health. Dr. Udo Erasmus, an internationally recognized nutritional authority on fats and oils, writes in Fats that Heal -- Fats that Kill: "Hemp seed oil may be nature's most perfectly balanced oil." Not surprisingly, shelled hemp seed and oil are increasingly used in natural food products, such as corn chips, nutrition bars, hummus, nondairy milks, breads and cereals. In the last few years, the hemp foods industry has grown from less than $1 million a year to over $5 million in retail sales.

North American hemp food companies voluntarily observe reasonable THC limits similar to those adopted by European nations as well as Canada and Australia. These limits protect consumers with a wide margin of safety from any psychoactive effects or workplace drug-testing interference. The DEA has hypocritically not targeted food manufacturers for using poppy seeds (in bagels and muffins, for example) even though they contain far higher levels of trace opiates. The recently-revived global hemp market, with retail sales of over $250 million worldwide, is a thriving commercial success. Unfortunately, because the DEA's drug war paranoia has confused non-psychoactive industrial hemp varieties of cannabis with psychoactive "marihuana" varieties, the US is the only major industrialized nation to prohibit the growing of industrial hemp.

View or download a PDF copy of the Court's order staying DEA's rule.

News release from Vote Hemp.

The Canadian House of Commons Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs recommended this week that Canada decriminalize the possession and cultivation of up to 30 grams of cannabis, that safe injection sites for intravenous drug users be allowed to open, and that heroin be made available by prescription. Combined with a September report from a Canadian Senate special committee that called for legalization of cannabis and recent pronouncements from Justice Minister Martin Cauchon (see following story), the House committee report provides the latest and clearest indication yet that Canada is on the verge of decriminalizing cannabis possession and cultivation -- at least on a small scale.

Although the committee found that "smoking any amount of marijuana is unhealthy, because of its high concentration of tar and benzopyrene," it also noted that "the consequences of conviction for possession of a small amount of cannabis for personal use are disproportionate to the potential harm associated with that behavior." Thus the committee recommended that "the possession of cannabis continue to be illegal and that trafficking in any amount of cannabis remain a crime," but also that "the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health establish a comprehensive strategy for decriminalizing the possession and cultivationof not more than 30 grams of cannabis for personal use." The committee added that such a scheme should also include prevention and education programs emphasizing the risks of cannabis use, especially for young people, and development of a means of enforcing laws against driving while impaired by a drug.

Under current Canadian law, small-time cannabis possessors face up to six months in prison. Under a proposal studied by the committee, that would be replaced by a ticket and escalating fines, with no criminal record.

The committee report on cannabis was not without dissent. The rightist Canadian Alliance, whose British Columbia Member of Parliament Randy White sat on the committee, denounced the 30 gram limit as too high, arguing that it would facilitate drug trafficking. A five gram limit would be more appropriate, White told reporters. At the same time, New Democrat MP Libby Davies said the recommendations did not go far enough. "It's still basically leaving the possession of cannabis as illegal," Davies told the Winnipeg Free Press. "Any trafficking would still be illegal, so it's still leaving in place all the harms from prohibition."

Eugene Oscapella of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy (http://www.cfdp.ca) also felt the committee didn't go far enough. "With the proposed decriminalization, it is not clear if the police will still be able to kick your door down, throw you up against the wall, arrest you, and then write you a traffic ticket," he told DRCNet. "Also, the 30 gram limit for cultivation seems unworkable, especially when the police weigh the entire plant. It's pretty hard to find a mature marijuana plant weighing less than 30 grams," he said.

"The recommendations on cannabis are better than nothing," Oscapella conceded. "It would absolve people from getting criminal records, but it may also widen the net. And it still doesn't address the fundamental issues of the role of prohibition in creating a black market, with all of its associated problems."

The House of Commons committee issued its report in two stages this week, citing fears that the recommendations on cannabis would detract attention from its recommendations on other drug issues. (The eruption of stories about decrim in the Canadian press this week certainly proved the committee right.) The committee delayed the cannabis recommendations until Thursday, while on Monday it released the sections of its report dealing with harder drugs. The committee was equally controversial on that subject. It called for the establishment of safe injection sites where intravenous drug users could shoot-up in a healthy, supervised environment. "People are using drugs," explained committee chair Paddy Torsney, MP of the ruling Liberal Party. "Let's deal with the health problem. They're somebody's brother or sister, and they're deserving of our care," she told Reuters.

Based on the principles of harm reduction, the proposal would allow drug users to bring their own drugs to a room where they can inject without fear of police persecution under the supervision of medical personnel. The committee found that such sites reduce the rates of hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS and overdose deaths. The Ministry of Health has already moved to create guidelines for pilot safe injection site programs, and indications are that Vancouver will have a government-approved site in place within a few months.

If the Canadian Alliance's Randy White didn't like decrim, he was even more appalled at safe injection sites. White told Reuters (and anyone else who would listen) that the sites constituted not harm reduction, but "harm extension." The Canadian Police Association also weighed in against the sites. "Our concern is we're sliding down a slippery slope to the point where it won't be long that we'll be hearing calls for dispensing drugs in those sites as well," association spokesman David Griffin complained to Reuters.

Maybe sooner than he fears. The committee also recommended that proposed clinical trials "in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal to test the effectiveness of heroin-assisted treatment for drug-dependent individuals resistant to other forms of treatment be implemented and that these trials incorporate protocols for rigorous scientific assessment and evaluation."

With the House of Commons committee report, Canada appears that much closer to enacting substantive harm reduction programs for hard drugs and decriminalization of marijuana. Now both houses of parliament have spoken clearly and eloquently for reform of the drug laws, and the governing Liberal Party appears ready to act.

The budget crisis gripping the states, widely described as the worst since World War II, is beginning to force some of the more punitive states to think about massive early releases of nonviolent prisoners, including drug offenders, as a way of trying to make fiscal ends meet. Other states, including Louisiana and Washington, have already moved to cut drug sentences, while California and Arizona embraced similar reforms by popular initiative before the budget crisis began to hit home. In the last 10 days, elected officials in three lock-'em-up states -- Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Virginia -- announced plans for or warned of the need for early releases of nonviolent prisoners. In Oklahoma, law-and-order Gov. Frank Keating (R), a former FBI agent, sent a letter to the state Pardon and Parole board on Monday asking it to quickly consider more than 1,000 inmates for special commutations in order to relieve the state's burgeoning budget deficit.

While all other state agencies have had to take across the board funding cuts, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) has twice asked for -- and received -- emergency spending allocations this fiscal year. Prison spending in Oklahoma has nearly doubled in the last ten years to more than $400 million annually, largely driven by the increase in drug offenders, who now make up a full third of all prisoners in the state (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/264.html#oklahomaprisons).

In his letter to the parole board, Keating warned that revenue shortfalls could force furloughs of prison personnel by the spring unless some prisoners are set free. But, carefully covering his right flank, Keating also vowed to carefully vet the commutations. "It is essential that we not fall into the trap of some past administrations, which sought to reduce prison populations without adequate safeguards to assure that any released inmates pose minimal threats to public safety," Keating wrote.

Keating told the parole board he had asked the DOC to screen commutation candidates according to "specific and narrow criteria." Eligible prisoners must have no convictions for violent crimes, no more than one prior felony conviction, sentences no longer than five years, and not be serving delayed sentences. Also, drug sellers are not included. Combined with the fact that persons convicted of offenses involving methamphetamine, the demon drug du jour, serve sentences averaging over nine years (compared to about two years for other drug offenders) thanks to tougher sentences enacted in 1999, that means a significant number of Oklahoma drug offenders will continue to languish behind bars.

Although releasing the thousand prisoners would save the DOC about $1.5 million, the department is facing a $25 million cut in its budget next fiscal year, so much pressure remains on the department. Keating wrote in his letter that diversion programs for nonviolent offenders will come into effect soon, reducing some of that pressure.

Those prisoners who receive a commutation would be free and clear, without having to serve time on probation or parole. "A sentence commutation means they have served their time," DOC spokesman Jerry Massie told the Daily Oklahoman.

In Kentucky, meanwhile, Gov. Paul Patton (D) announced on November 21 that he would entertain the early release of some prisoners in the Bluegrass State if the state cannot afford to keep them behind bars. Some Republican legislators responded by saying they would rather release nonviolent prisoners than increase taxes, the Lexington Herald Leader reported.

Patton told the newspaper he is caught between a booming prison population and $509 million in projected budget cuts over the next two years. Without more money, early release is a real possibility, he said. "We have our prisons just as full as they can be," Patton said. "And I think they're already stressed. They're already stretched in terms of staffing."

Kentucky houses more than 11,000 prisoners in state and private prisons, with an additional 4,000 serving time in local jails, halfway houses or other locations. Kentucky's prison population has increased by 41% in the past decade, driven mainly by drug prosecutions, the Herald Leader reported. Average sentences have also increased by more than three years in the past decade. The state plans to open an $88 million, 900-bed prison in 2004, but doesn't have the money to hire the staff to run it, Patton said.

Patton said the first class of prisoners to be released would be 3,200 Class D felons held in local jails, and would emphasize nonviolent offenders. The state pays $27.51 per day to local jails to hold state prisoners, the governor's office reported on November 20.

In response, legislators seemed more worried about raising taxes than releasing felons. "I am sure that there are people incarcerated that could be managed in a community setting more efficiently," Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly (R-Springfield) told the Herald Leader. "It's probably something we ought to look at. It's very expensive to warehouse someone who's not a threat to the community."

But there is also grumbling from those whose oxen may be gored. Local jails take in an average of more than $10,000 per prisoner per year from the state. "We built these big local jails at the specific request of the state, to help them house state inmates. They told us, 'You build 'em big, we'll fill 'em,'" said Davies County jailer Harold Taylor, president of the Kentucky Jailers Association.

And in Virginia, home of the modern day cotton-field slave dressed in prison whites, the prisons are full, with no money for more. It's time for Virginia to consider alternatives to prison, state budget officials told lawmakers at a retreat last weekend. While the state is wrestling with the largest revenue decline on record, said Senate Finance Committee staff budget analyst Dan Hickman, the state's parole authorities are sending nonviolent offenders back to prison at record levels for technical violations of their parole, including many for dirty drug tests or failing to keep an appointment. The state's 1994 law banning parole for violent or repeat offenders is also adding to the crisis, Hickman told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

As a result, even though the state spent $2 billion building new prisons in the 1980s and 1990s, there is no room at the inn. And there is no money for more prisons; instead, the state faces a $2 billion budget deficit this year.

Legislators need to take a long hard look at early releases for nonviolent offenders, and parole authorities need to find diversion programs for petty parole violators, Hickman said. Parolees who are able to work contribute a million dollars a year to the prison budget by paying a portion of their own incarceration costs, he said. If parolees continue to be re-incarcerated at a high rate, that means more prisons will be needed. "And right now, there are no additional funds to expand anything," Hickman said.

But even trying to save money costs money, Hickman said. More diversion programs will have to be funded, he said. "You will need additional funding for that and you will need to encourage judges to make greater use of these alternatives," Hickman said.