Madison NORML

Source: Capital Times
Pubdate: January 23, 2007
Author: Gary Storck

CONGRESS SHOULD PROTECT AMERICANS LEGALLY USING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Dear Editor: Congress not only needs to enact sentencing reform, as Dave Zweifel says in "Sentencing laws should make sense," but also must protect medical marijuana patients and providers being targeted by federal agents in the 11 states that have legalized this therapy.

Not only are people acting legally under these state laws being arrested for federal offenses, they are then being sentenced to long federal prison terms. A prime example is Stephanie Landa, a 60-year-old medical cannabis patient and provider who on Jan. 4 turned herself in to federal authorities in San Francisco to begin a 41-month term for growing her medicine.

Just Wednesday, Drug Enforcement Administration agents simultaneously raided 11 medical cannabis dispensaries in the Los Angeles area. In West Hollywood, a city with a self-proclaimed "long-standing commitment" to the use of medical marijuana for patients with HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses, city officials were stunned when the raids took out five of the city's seven dispensaries.

For an administration constantly harping about spreading democracy, the Bush administration's continued subverting of state laws and states' rights is the height of hypocrisy. Making war on sick people for their choice of medicine is not only cruel and immoral, but a complete misallocation of federal resources.

Medical marijuana supporters in Congress, the bulk of them Democrats, unsuccessfully tried four times since 2003 to pass a budget amendment that would eliminate these wasteful raids. Now that Democrats are in the majority, with medical marijuana supporter Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, it's time to end this madness once and for all by not just ending the raids, but by passing legislation allowing all Americans equal and legal access to this valuable medicine.

Gary Storck
Madison