Telling The Truth About Medical Marijuana Raids PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #250 Wed. September 18, 2002 The outrageous behavior of the DEA has shocked even the mainstream press. Many newspapers have covered the latest raid of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) in Santa Cruz, and many reporters seem startled by the brutality and inverted priorities displayed by the DEA. An excellent example was published in USA Today this week. The article, below, starts by describing the shock of a polio sufferer who was repeatedly ordered to stand up by DEA agents even after they saw her leg braces and crutches. The article goes on to paint a fair picture of the club which makes the attempts by the narcs to justify their raids sound even more absurd. Please write a letter to USA Today, or other newspapers that have covered this issue to encourage editors and reporters to keep reporting the truth about medical marijuana and the vicious actions of the DEA. NOTE: USA Today is the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S.Your letter, if published could be worth _$5,000_ or more in advertising value!! See the Target Analysis below. Thanks for your effort and support. WRITE A LETTER TODAY It's not what others do it's what YOU do PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID (Letter, Phone, fax etc.) Please post a copy your letter or report your action to the sent letter list () if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list with so others can learn from your efforts and be motivated to follow suit. Subscribing to the Sent LTE list () will help you to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing efforts. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm and/or http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form This is VERY IMPORTANT as it is one very effective way of gauging our impact and effectiveness. CONTACT INFO Source: USA Today (US) Contact: Find the email address of any other newspaper you care to send your letter to at: http://www.mapinc.org/resource/email.htm ARTICLE Pubdate: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 Source: USA Today (US) Webpage: http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020917/4453835s.htm Copyright: 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc Contact: Website: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466 Author: John Ritter Pot raid angers state, patients SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- Suzanne Pfeil understands why federal agents burst in just after dawn with guns drawn and handcuffed her. That's routine in drug busts. What she can't understand is why agents kept ordering her to stand up after they saw her crutches and leg braces next to the bed. Then when her blood pressure spiked and she felt chest pains, the agents refused to call an ambulance, says Pfeil, 42, disabled by polio. That she can't forgive. ''Totally unprofessional,'' she says. ''They were brutalizing us.'' Outrage over a Sept. 5 raid at a medical marijuana cooperative in the coastal hills north of here festers beyond the terminally ill patients who use marijuana to ease pain, which California law allows. The raid is the latest, perhaps most controversial collision of federal law and the nation's growing medical marijuana movement. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer condemned the bust as a waste of law enforcement resources, a cruel step against a group that presents slight danger to the public and a slap at the state's voters. The Santa Cruz County sheriff, whose deputies have worked closely with co-op managers to ensure that the operation is law-abiding, said he was ''disappointed'' by the raid. Today, the Santa Cruz City Council will permit the co-op to hand out marijuana publicly to its patients at City Hall. ''It's just absolutely loathsome to me that federal money, energy and staff time would be used to harass people like this,'' says Emily Reilly, Santa Cruz's vice mayor. A Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in San Francisco accused the council of ''flouting federal law'' prohibiting marijuana possession. In Washington, DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson defends the raid. ''What the DEA concentrates on is the investigation and prosecution of major trafficking cases,'' Hutchinson says. ''But the DEA's responsibility is to enforce our controlled substances laws, and one of them is marijuana. Someone could stand up and say one of these marijuana plants is designed for someone who is sick, but under federal law, there's no distinction.'' Other states follow Since California voters approved medical marijuana in 1996, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have enacted similar laws. Federal authorities say no conclusive scientific evidence proves marijuana's medicinal benefit, but advocates say a number of foreign studies do. ''My hope is this bust represents the federal government pushing too far, the overreach that shocks the conscience of a lot more people, especially those in Washington who have seemed so callous to date,'' says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. The group promotes alternatives to the drug war, such as treatment instead of jail for drug offenders. The DEA has raided eight medical marijuana operations in California, including one in Sonoma County three days after the Santa Cruz bust. But Hutchinson denies that California is being targeted. ''It's one of the things we're carrying out all across the country,'' he says. Chris Battle, a DEA spokesman in Washington, says enforcement has been active in California because the state's law is loosely worded and open to abuse. ''California doesn't say how much you can grow, how much you can have or what disease you can use it for,'' says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation, a pro-marijuana advocacy group. Laws in Oregon, Washington and Maine specify weight amounts, numbers of plants that can be possessed and specific diseases marijuana can treat. Oregon requires a doctor's recommendation and a photo ID card. Several bills that would set similar guidelines haven't been approved by the California Legislature. Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies closely monitored the co-op that was raided last week -- WAMM, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, founded and run by Valerie and Mike Corral. ''Valerie has been very open and very consistent in what she's doing up there and how the marijuana is handled,'' sheriff's spokesman Kim Allyn says. Valerie Corral is the movement's ''Mother Teresa,'' says Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance. She served on a task force Lockyer formed to write guidelines for the Legislature, and her group is seen as a model nationally. (snipped - to see the rest of the article go to http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020917/4453835s.htm) SAMPLE LETTER To the Editors: In Britain, marijuana has been removed from the government's list of most-dangerous "Class A" drugs, and possession is no longer an arrestable offense. The Canadian Senate has just recommended full legalization and government regulation of marijuana. In Portugal, anyone possessing less than ten days' supply of any illegal drug is sent to treatment, not jail. Meanwhile, in the Land of the Free, some 650,000 Americans are arrested every year for simple possession of marijuana. In the Home of the Brave, federal DEA agents toting chainsaws and machine guns roust polio patients from their beds for the "crime" of growing legal medicinal herbs for other sick and dying patients. When will we put a stop to this home-grown brand of state-sponsored terrorism? Keith Sanders IMPORTANT: Always include your address and telephone number Please note: If you choose to use this letter as a model please modify it at least somewhat so that the paper does not receive numerous copies of the same letter and so that the original author receives credit for his/her work. TARGET ANALYSIS With a U.S. circulation of over 2.3 million, the readership demographics are: Total Adult Readers 4.3 million. Male/Female 66/34%. Median Age 41 years. Attended College 80%. Median HH Income $71, 661. The average published letter would cost over $5,000 if purchased as an ad. The MAP published letter archive has more than 50 letters from USA Today. A recent sample shows they tend to be short - about 40% being under 100 words. The average published is 169 words, and the largest about 300 words. The published letters can be viewed here: http://www.mapinc.org/mapcgi/ltedex.pl?SOURCE=USA+Today TO SUBSCRIBE, DONATE, VOLUNTEER TO HELP, OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL SEE http://www.drugsense.org/hurry.htm TO UNSUBSCRIBE SEE http://www.drugsense.org/unsub.htm ADDITIONAL INFO to help you in your letter writing efforts 3 Tips for Letter Writers http://www.mapinc.org/3tips.htm Letter Writers Style Guide http://www.mapinc.org/style.htm Please help us help reform. Send drug-related news to

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