Pubdate: Tue, 24 Sep 2002
Source: Daily Breeze (CA)
Copyright: 2002 The Copley Press Inc.
Contact:  http://www.dailybreeze.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/881
Author: Mitch Albom
Note: Mitch Albom is the author of the best-selling book Tuesdays With
Morrie and a syndicated columnist.

FEDERAL DRUG AGENTS DON'T FEEL THEIR PAIN

Her mornings are never that good anyhow, since she wakes up with a leg that 
is withered from polio. Still, this particular 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, 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, 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 she uses 
and grows 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.

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 naivety.

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," Pfeil 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."

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."

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 that the kid had to have his stomach 
pumped. But we sell beer openly.

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," Pfeil 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