Pubdate: Thu, 11 Dec 2003
Source: Alameda Times-Star, The (CA)
Copyright: 2003 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact: http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125%257E1524%257E,00.html
Website: http://www.timesstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/731
Author: Josh Richman, Staff Writer
Cited: Change the Climate www.changetheclimate.org
Cited: Drug Policy Alliance  www.drugpolicy.org 
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

HOUSE BANS TRANSIT DRUG-REFORM ADS

Local transit agencies allowing medical-marijuana and other kinds of
drug-reform advertisements would be denied federal funding under a
bill passed Monday by the House of Representatives.

Deep within the $373 billion omnibus spending bill is a paragraph that
says no money from the bill can go to any bus, train or subway agency
"involved directly or indirectly in any activity that promotes the
legalization or medical use of any substance listed in schedule I of
section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act."

That includes marijuana, which voters in California and nine other
states have decided should be available for medical use.

Drug reform advocates call the provision censorship, pure and simple.
Bill Piper, associate director of national affairs for the Drug Policy
Alliance, noted the same bill gives the White House $145 million to
run anti-marijuana ads in 2004.

"The government can't spend taxpayer money promoting one side of the
drug policy debate while prohibiting taxpayers from using their own
money to promote the other side," he said. "This is censorship and not
the democratic way."

Some Bay Area lawmakers agreed.

"We don't believe it is appropriate for the federal government to use
the federal purse string to stifle the free-speech interests of states
and local jurisdictions with regard to this issue," said Daniel Weiss,
chief of staff to Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, who didn't vote on
the spending bill.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who voted against the bill, said, "With
federal funding for mass transit already abysmally low, this measure
makes a bad situation even worse."

But Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who voted for the bill, had no
problem with the provision.

"I'm familiar with arguments that some illegal substances provide
therapeutic relief for individuals with certain ailments conventional
treatments haven't cured," he said. "But it doesn't change the fact
that the substances are illegal ."

Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., inserted the provision into the catch-all
spending bill after growing irked at marijuana-decriminalization ads
placed in the Washington, D.C., Metro transit system by Change the
Climate, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin