Pubdate: Tue, 24 Sep 2002
Source: Capital Times, The  (WI)
Copyright: 2002 The Capital Times
Contact:  http://www.captimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/73
Author: Mitch Albom

FEDERAL AGENTS' ACTIONS REVEAL THE REAL DOPE

Her mornings are never that good anyhow because she wakes up with a leg 
that is withered from polio. Still, this morning was truly bad. She opened 
her eyes and saw five federal agents pointing rifles at her head.

"Get your hands up!" one of them yelled. "Get out of bed!" yelled another. 
She told them she was sorry, but she couldn't because she was crippled. 
They put her in handcuffs and again told her to get up.

Again, she said she couldn't because she used leg braces and crutches and 
she needed her hands for those.

"Eventually," Suzanne Pfeil says, "they went after the others. They left me 
lying there, handcuffed in the bed, for an hour."

This was in Santa Cruz, Calif., earlier this month, at a hospice-co-op 
facility where 80 percent of the people are terminally ill. Does it sound 
like a place that federal agents need to burst into and raid like something 
out of "Silence of the Lambs"?

This is our war on drugs.

Pfeil's offense -- and that of the others in her hospice -- is that they 
use and grow marijuana for medical purposes. This is perfectly legal in 
Santa Cruz, and it is perfectly legal in the state of California. But under 
federal law, marijuana is still considered a controlled substance.

So you have dying patients who are pitied by their city and state and 
outlawed by their country.

Maybe that's why they call it dope.

It's Not About Getting High

Now, let me say this. I don't smoke marijuana. I never have. I was one of 
those square kids in high school who caused my cooler friends to 
occasionally lower their voices or disappear to the bathroom for 15 minutes.

So I have no personal agenda -- except one. Compassion. Patients sick 
enough to need marijuana deserve such compassion. They are trying to 
relieve their pain. To ease their nausea. They are trying to win a few 
precious minutes from cancer or AIDS or epilepsy or arthritis. Would you 
not want that for your ailing mother? For your terminally ill child?

Yet there is a notion among critics that these patients are locking the 
doors and throwing a Cheech and Chong party, mocking the government's naivete.

Nothing could be dumber -- or further from the truth. I have spent a lot of 
time with sick people whose only relief is what marijuana gives them. 
Believe me, they would gladly trade their disease for your sobriety. Any 
day. Any minute.

"I have post-polio syndrome," Pfiel says. "It involves an incredible amount 
of muscle and nerve pain. I'm allergic to most pharmaceutical drugs. The 
marijuana relieves my pain and helps me cope.

"For most us, that's the situation. We're not getting high. We're trying to 
feel better. Isn't that what medicine is supposed to be about?"

Helping The Less Fortunate

The mayor of Santa Cruz was appalled at the federal agents who busted the 
co-op. So was the California attorney general. But the Drug Enforcement 
Administration clung stubbornly to its credo. "Our responsibility is to 
enforce our controlled substances laws," said Asa Hutchinson, the DEA 
administrator, "and one of those is marijuana."

So despite the state's blessing and the obvious non-threat of this small, 
compassionate place, here came the feds, guns-a-blazing.

And you thought it was the stoners who couldn't think clearly.

Look. This is hypocrisy. Last week at a football game, a father got his 
14-year-old son so drunk on beer the kid had to have his stomach pumped. 
But we sell beer openly. I know of people who sneak cigarettes to lung 
cancer patients. Nobody stops them.

But for some reason, when the sick and dying seek relief through marijuana, 
they are dopers, potheads or, even worse, criminals.

"It's strange to me that our government does not want to see people who are 
suffering take care of themselves and do better," Pfiel says.

Right. Mornings, when you're sick and dying, are tough enough. You don't 
need guns pointed at your head.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens