Medical Marijuana Patients' News & Views

Federal law enforcement agents served indictments to dozens of glass blowing manufacturers and headshops nationwide Monday in a series of raids, confiscating millions of dollars worth of drug- and tobacco-related paraphernalia. At least 55 people were indicted, including two Eugene businessmen that own a glass manufacturing company, a distributorship, a local retail shop and multiple Web sites. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Monday in a press conference that the Drug Enforcement Agency now considers glass pipes and other equipment "drug paraphernalia" that may be confiscated and used as grounds for arrests under federal law.

Higher Source, located several blocks west of campus at 135 E. 13th Ave., was one of six locations in Eugene served with a search-and-seizure warrant Monday morning. Higher Source is co-owned by Jason Harris and Saeed Mohtadi. Both were indicted for "knowingly, intentionally and unlawfully ( selling ) items for use with illegal narcotics," according to a DEA press release. Harris and Mohtadi are both in custody and will appear in federal court this morning, and friends of Harris say they have not been in contact with him for the past two days.

U.S. Marshals roped off the area around the store and started a long process of "bringing empty boxes in, and taking full ones out," said Tim Long, the owner of Eugene Jeans -- a store located across the street from the bust.

DEA Seattle field division spokesman Thomas O'Brien said businesses that sell tobacco-related products such as water pipes are in danger of breaking federal law under the DEA's new interpretation.

"If these bongs are being used to inhale controlled substances, they're illegal," said O'Brien, whose division encompasses Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Alaska. However, according to federal law, drug paraphernalia is equipment which is primarily intended for use with marijuana or other controlled substances. If a product is primarily intended for tobacco use, it would not be subject to the DEA under federal law.

O'Brien explained the DEA's decision was similar to confiscating ammunition so people could not use guns -- by depriving possible drug users of their equipment, agents will be able to curtail drug use nationwide.

The bust at Higher Source drew heavy criticism from onlookers, some of whom were store customers.

"This is bullshit," Lane Community College freshman Jonathan Carley said.

Higher Source sells glassware and glass blowing supplies, as well as 420 Gear, stickers, hats and room accessories.

A bong "can be a tobacco bong just as easily as it can be a marijuana bong," University student Mark Peck said.

According to Peck, Higher Source made a point of telling its customers any glassware bought was to be used for tobacco use only.

"Even on the bongs they sell, it says 'tobacco only,'" Peck said.

Jerome Baker Designs Inc., a glass blowing warehouse located off Highway 99 North owned by Harris and Mohtadi, was also raided by U.S. Marshals and undercover agents from several law enforcement agencies at the state and federal levels.

Neighbors said federal agents arrived at Jerome Baker Designs, one of the largest glass-pipe manufacturers on the West Coast, at 6:30 a.m. by the dozens. By around 2:30 p.m., at least eight officers were still in the area, including undercover agents wearing ski caps and dark clothing. At least six unmarked cars and pick-up trucks with Oregon and Nevada license plates guarded entrances near the barbed wire-encircled warehouse.

Robert, a local man who did not want his last name used, said he saw officers cart boxes of material out of his neighbor's office. He said some agents had bulletproof vests on. Robert added that he had often observed strange activity at the warehouse that never ceased, even late into the evening.

"I've always noticed there was a lot of cars over there -- but last month I noticed they weren't bringing any product in or out, only people," he said. "I try not to mess with my neighbor and they won't mess with me. ... They never looked like they were dealing (drugs), ever."

O'Brien said all 55 individuals, including Harris and Mohtadi, have been served with their indictments. The two are scheduled to appear in federal court today, according to a Monday KEZI-TV news broadcast.

The Eugene business partners also own Ghettoweb, Inc., Universal Glass, Inc., Jeromebaker.com, Ghettoweb.com and Smokelab.com.

Ashcroft said in a press conference Monday that the DEA was starting to focus on the Internet aspect of drug paraphernalia sales.

"With the advent of the Internet, the illegal drug paraphernalia has exploded," he said. "Quite simply, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without their knowledge."

Saturday, March 1, 2003

I'm convinced the people in charge of America's drug war are smoking crack.

If I ever had even the slightest doubt about how out of touch with reality our attorney general and Drug Enforcement Administration are, it was erased last week when Operation Pipe Dreams was revealed to the public.

This newest addition to the 30-year failure that is the war on drugs is a taxpayer-funded sting aimed at -- you ready for this -- Internet sales of pipes and bongs that might be used to smoke pot.

This is comically stupid, even by the standards of the DEA, whose stormtroopers have wasted three decades and tens of billions of your dollars on a war that hasn't dented America's drug problem. The war on drugs is the greatest social and economic failure -- bar none -- in recent American history largely because the dopes in charge of it never fail to come up with ideas like this.

Even if Operation Pipe Dreams were to achieve its mission of bong eradication, it would succeed only in maybe forcing college kids to temporarily go back to rolling joints again.

Marijuana is the low man on the totem poll. It's the jaywalking of narcotics. It isn't addictive, it doesn't make you steal your mama's pocketbook and the people who sell it and use it are generally not violent. Compared to half the poison you can buy at your local liquor store or pharmacy, it may as well be a Flintstones vitamin.

And don't give me that gateway drug crap. Yes, most heroin and cocaine addicts started with pot, but most people who smoke pot tried cigarettes or alcohol first. If cigarettes or alcohol were illegal, they would be the gateway drugs.

But none of that matters because, although it shouldn't be, pot is illegal. But even the police are smart enough to use their limited resources in order of priority. The people who sell drugs are prosecuted harder than the people who use them, because bottom-to-top drug enforcement would be a pretty silly endeavor.

But the federal government -- the guys in charge of our country -- have skipped the people who sell and distribute pot, skipped the people who smoke pot and used your nickel for a ridiculous sting operation targeting the Web sites that sell things people might use to smoke pot with.

I really admire that. With Abbott districts and sleeper cells and non-existent arts programs screaming for a home in the federal checkbook, these geniuses had the foresight to realize that water pipes are what's killing America.

If this doesn't work, I say we go after those lava lamps next.

Forget for a moment that alcohol and tobacco -- the most addictive and destructive poisons we've ever invented for ourselves -- are perfectly legal. Forget that in thousands of years of recorded usage, not one death has ever been attributed to marijuana. Forget that 80 million Americans who are otherwise law-abiding citizens admitted in the federal government's own survey that they have smoked pot.

If you need some insight into the senselessness of the bong patrol's priorities, look no further than the state of the union.

Out of the 20 most industrialized nations on Earth, America boasts the highest rate of firearm deaths, rapes, child firearm murders, child suicides, highway deaths and births to mothers under the age of 20. Of these nations, we consume the most oil and natural gas, we produce the largest amount of hazardous waste, we have the lowest voter turnout and produce the worst eighth-grade math scores.

The "compassionate" conservatives who rule this land have these same statistics on hand. They're the ones who gave them to me. Yet, they've thrown the full weight of the criminal justice system behind an effort to spoil late-night dorm room fun.

If you can sort through this mess and agree with John Ashcroft that Operation Pipe Dreams is anything but ridiculous, I have just two questions for you: What have you been smoking, and where can I get some?

Andrew Lisa is a copy editor at The Daily Journal. Respond to this column by sending an e-mail to alisa@vineland.gannett.com or mail comments to him at 891 E. Oak Road, Vineland, NJ 08360

Seven Canadians who use or distribute medical marijuana are asking the courts to strike down federal access regulations that are "a cruel hoax" and to order Ottawa to provide them with hundreds of kilograms of pot grown in an abandoned Manitoba mine.

The regulations, set up to provide sick people with legal access to marijuana, are unduly restrictive and have made obtaining the drug difficult because the government is demanding medical declarations that few doctors will sign, the group of seven told a Queen's Park news conference yesterday.

Catherine Devries, 43, of Kitchener said she uses marijuana to combat nausea and loss of appetite resulting from a condition known as arachnoiditis, which affects the nerve endings in her spinal column and has left her with loss of bowel function and hooked to an intravenous line 16 to 20 hours a day.

Unable to obtain the necessary declarations from a medical specialist, she has been forced to turn to black-market marijuana, which at times has been so contaminated she has ended up in hospital, she said.

"Seriously ill Canadians are going on safari looking for drug dealers in a black market to provide them with medicine," said Osgoode Hall law school professor Alan Young, one of four lawyers representing the group.

The government "will do nothing without a court breathing down their neck," so "we've decided to strike back," Young said.

In a notice of application filed with the Ontario Superior Court, the seven are asking that the federal government be ordered to distribute marijuana harvested from an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, where it was grown under a $5.7 million government contract for intended use in clinical trials. Health Minister Anne McLellan recently said the marijuana was too impure to use.

The government could not obtain standardized seeds from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, so it had to rely on seedlings culled from more than 185 strains seized in Canadian police raids.

Nevertheless, Young said the supply is probably among the safest his clients have known. They are asking the court to strike down the regulations on the basis that they violate guarantees of fundamental justice under the Charter of Rights.

If that happens, the law making it a criminal offence to possess marijuana would also be wiped off the books, Young said. That's because in July, 2000, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered the federal government to construct a viable regulatory system within a year or the possession offence would become invalid. The system that followed was "a cruel hoax," Young said.

The government came up with a set of rules that say that, unless a person wanting to use medical marijuana is terminally ill and expected to die within a year, he or she must supply declarations from as many as two medical specialists, who are required to state there are more benefits than risks in the patient using pot and to recommend a dosage.

The Canadian Medical Association, at least two of its provincial counterparts and the insurer for Canadian doctors have warned physicians against signing the declarations.

However, Andrew Swift, a health department spokesperson, said some doctors have signed.

Since the regulations were introduced last year, 255 people have been granted permission to use medical marijuana.

Some are terminally ill and needed no declarations, but others did, he said.

In an affidavit filed with the court, Dr. Philip Berger, a Toronto family physician who treats AIDS patients, said requiring declarations from specialists "makes little sense" for HIV patients, who tend to be treated by "a small cadre" of family doctors.

"I do not know what specialists I would refer my patients to," he said.

The requirement that doctors recommend a marijuana dosage "is impossible to comply with," Berger said, and it would be "reckless" to do so, given variations in cannabis strains and potency.

Whether marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes in California and several other Western states is about to be decided by a federal appeals court in San Francisco. The court is to rule on a challenge by doctors to a federal policy prohibiting them from recommending medical marijuana. The federal campaign, which is designed to block a California state referendum on the issue, is mean-spirited and unconstitutional. The appeals court should not delay in calling an end to it.

In 1996 California's voters adopted Proposition 215, also known as the Medical Marijuana Initiative, which holds that the state's criminal laws against marijuana do not apply to seriously ill patients who use the drug on the advice of their physicians. Shortly after it passed, the federal government announced that, as part of the war on drugs, it would use its authority under the Controlled Substances Act to revoke a doctor's license to prescribe drugs if he or she recommended marijuana to a patient.

A group of doctors and patients sued, arguing that the federal policy intrudes on the doctor-patient relationship and prevents them from honestly rendering and receiving medical advice. The lower court that heard the case took a dim view of the federal government's policy, and enjoined it from using its rules to take away the licensing power of doctors who recommend medical marijuana to their patients.

Medical marijuana can be a legitimate treatment for cancer patients who are nauseated by chemotherapy, AIDS patients who lose their appetites and other seriously ill people. In cases where a patient is considering stopping treatment because of the agony, or cannot keep food down, medical marijuana can be life-saving. The federal government's attempt to block its use flies in the face of mainstream medical opinion. One Harvard study of 2,000 oncologists found that 44 percent had recommended marijuana to patients undergoing chemotherapy.

The federal policy also clashes with the free-speech protections of the First Amendment. The federal government wants to punish physicians merely for advising a patient about the benefits of marijuana. That restriction infringes directly on the First Amendment right of doctors to speak freely and, no less important, the right of patients to receive the best possible medical information.

The court's ruling will affect not only California but six other Western states in the same judicial circuit that have medical marijuana laws. It is being closely watched by doctors and patients in those states, and nationwide, since this ruling is likely to be influential on other courts that take up the question. The California appeals court judges have an opportunity to strike an important blow for free speech and honesty in medicine by striking down the medical marijuana gag rule.

Thirty years ago the United States came to a critical juncture in the drug war. A Nixon-appointed presidential commission had recommended that marijuana use not be a criminal offense under state or federal law. But Nixon himself, based on his zealous personal preferences, overruled the commission's research and doomed marijuana to its current illegal status.

This newly revealed information comes from declassified tapes of Oval Office conversations from 1971 and 1972, which show Nixon's aggressive anti-drug stance putting him directly at odds against many of his close advisors. Transcripts of the tape, and a report based on them, are available at www.csdp.org.

Congress, when it passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, temporarily labeled marijuana a "Schedule I substance" -- a flatly illegal drug with no approved medical purposes. But Congress acknowledged that it did not know enough about marijuana to permanently relegate it to Schedule I, and so they created a presidential commission to review the research and recommend a long-term strategy. President Nixon got to appoint the bulk of the commissioners. Not surprisingly, he loaded it with drug warriors. Nixon appointed Raymond Shafer, former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, as Chairman. As a former prosecutor, Shafer had a "law and order," drug warrior reputation. Nixon also appointed nine Commissioners, including the dean of a law school, the head of a mental health hospital, and a retired Chicago police captain. Along with the Nixon appointees, two senators and two congressmen from each party served on the Commission.

The Shafer Commission -- officially known as the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse -- took its job seriously. They launched fifty research projects, polled the public and members of the criminal justice community, and took thousands of pages of testimony. Their work is still the most comprehensive review of marijuana ever conducted by the federal government.

After reviewing all the evidence, these drug warriors were forced to come to a different conclusion than they had at first expected. Rather than harshly condemning marijuana, they started talking about legalization. When Nixon heard such talk, he quickly denounced the Commission -- months before it issued its report.

As a result of Nixon's public rebuke, Shafer met with the President. The Commission was upset, and the purpose of the meeting was to reassure them. But Nixon didn't budge. Instead, he warned Shafer to get control of his commission and avoid looking like a "bunch of do-gooders" who are "soft on marijuana." He warned Shafer that the Commission would "look bad as hell" if it came out with recommendations different from the direction of Congress and the President.

During their meeting, Shafer reassured the President that he would not support "legalization," even though there were some on the Commission who did. He told Nixon they were looking for a unanimous recommendation. Nixon warned Shafer that he "had very strong feelings" on marijuana. Nixon and Shafer also discussed Shafer's potential appointment to a federal judgeship.

But in the end, the Shafer Commission issued a report that tried to correct the "extensive degree of misinformation," to "demythologize" and "desymbolize" marijuana. They reported finding that marijuana did not cause crime or aggression, lead to harder drug use or create significant biochemical, mental or physical abnormalities. They concluded: "Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it."

The most important recommendation of the Commission was the decriminalization of possession or non-profit transfer of marijuana. Decriminalization meant there would be no punishment -- criminal or civil -- under state or federal law.

Nixon reacted strongly to the report. In a recorded conversation on March 21, the day before the Commission released its report, Nixon said, "We need, and I use the word 'all out war,' on all fronts ... we have to attack on all fronts." Nixon and his advisors went on to plan a speech about why he opposed marijuana legalization, and proposed that he do "a drug thing every week" during the 1972 presidential election year. Nixon wanted a "Goddamn strong statement about marijuana ... that just tears the ass out of them."

Shafer was never appointed to the federal court.

Nixon's private comments about marijuana showed he was the epitome of misinformation and prejudice. He believed marijuana led to hard drugs, despite the evidence to the contrary. He saw marijuana as tied to "radical demonstrators." He believed that "the Jews," especially "Jewish psychiatrists" were behind advocacy for legalization, asking advisor Bob Haldeman, "What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?" He made a bizarre distinction between marijuana and alcohol, saying people use marijuana "to get high" while "a person drinks to have fun."

He also saw marijuana as part of the culture war that was destroying the United States, and claimed that Communists were using it as a weapon. "Homosexuality, dope, immorality in general," Nixon fumed. "These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they're trying to destroy us." His approach to drug education was just as simplistic: "Enforce the law. You've got to scare them."

Unfortunately, Nixon did more than just "scare them," whoever they were. His marijuana war rhetoric led to a dramatic increase in arrests. One year after his "all out war" comments, marijuana arrests jumped to 420,700 a year -- a full 128,000 more than the year before. Since then, nearly 15 million people have been arrested for marijuana offenses.

For thirty years, the United States has taken the path of Nixon's prejudice and ignored the experts. We now have the largest prison population in world history, and drug problems are no closer to solved. Indeed, plenty of evidence indicates that drug-related problems are worse than ever.

It did not have to be this way. At the same time that the Shafer Commission issued its report, the Bain Commission in Holland issued a report that made similar findings and recommendations. In Holland, they followed the advice of their experts. Thirty years later Holland has half the per-capita marijuana use as the U.S., far fewer drug-related problems and spends much less on drug enforcement. With statistics like that, it's no wonder that most of Europe is going Dutch. Just last week a British Commission issued a Shafer-like report, indicating that the U.K. is moving in the Dutch direction.

It is not too late for the U.S. to move to a more sensible path. We are approaching three quarters of a million marijuana arrests annually. Every year that the U.S. fails to adopt a policy based on research, science and facts we destroy millions of lives and tear apart millions of families.

Where will we be in another thirty years if we don't change course and make peace in the marijuana war? Now that we know the war's roots are rotten -- and after we've lived through the decades of damage and failure it has produced -- we should face the facts. The thirty-year- old recommendations of the Shafer Commission are a good place to start.

Kevin Zeese is the president of Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org)

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