What McCaffrey Didn't Say Here

When President Clinton's drug czar, General Barry R. McCaffrey, spoke at the Kennedy School last week, he said that the medical use of marijuana "ought to be looked at and will be looked at." Such sane sensibility, however, has been rare of late from both the General and the administration he represents. More in line with government rhetoric and, more importantly, action, has been the General's campaign against ballot initiatives in Arizona and California which legalized the medical prescription of marijuana. Consider these hostile remarks delivered by McCaffrey on Court TV after the passage of both measures: "A physician who tries to prescribe a Schedule I drug [i.e. marijuana, or any other drug considered by the federal government to be potentially addictive with no current medical use], with or without these referendums in California and Arizona, is subject to prosecution under federal law--and we will uphold the law."

Beside showing disrespect for voting majorities in two states, McCaffrey's take-prisoners approach to the marijuana initiatives--which he called a "tremendous tragedy" in Rolling Stone--reflects a hypocritical moralism of Reaganesque proportions. Similar to the First Lady of the '80s, who repeated her "Just Say No" mantra like a mentally disturbed parrot, McCaffrey has been pushing no-tolerance policy on drug use. The legitimation? As McCaffrey made clear in his speech, it is the "protection" of our nation's youth which underlies national drug policy, not any political weakness of our pot-smoking (but non-inhaling) President. McCaffrey empathizes with sixth graders who face that terrible choice whether to smoke weed. In order to prevent this oh-so-dismal decision-making, he wants America to spend $16 billion next year to prevent the shipment of drugs to white suburbia--which will have them anyway.

McCaffrey is right about one thing: the medical marijuana initiatives will complicate the national ban on marijuana because the feds are now left with three self-defeating options. One is to bust caring doctors who prescribe pot to sickly patients in the two states with successful referenda, a move sure to cause a democratic uprising at the polls--and one to be noticed in California. Second is to ignore the medical use of the drug, which in itself helpful in alleviating the legal burden. Third is for the federal government to step in as the only legitimate possessor of pot in the U.S. and make the drug available with a doctor's prescription.

The first option is ridiculous, not only because the people have spoken, but also because we believe doctors know more than legislators. Trained doctors, who have spent their lives studying medicine and who prescribe drugs harsher than pot such as methodone, prozac and morphine, have declared that marijuana can be the best medicine for diseases such as cancer. We trust them more than our self-interested representatives. The second option is fine, but leaves hypocrisy in the laws. The third option is best, within current federal policy, and would mesh the objectives of Washington, D.C. with those of Sacramento and Phoenix.

General McCaffrey ought to rethink his statements about invading Arizona and California on zero-tolerance missions to secure drug-free justice. The New England Journal of Medicine in its Jan. 30 issue editorialized on "Federal Foolishness and Marijuana," saying that marijuana's status as a Schedule I drug should be downgraded to Schedule II, reflecting the acceptable medical use of the drug. Many sick people have legitimate uses for it because they are in pain, and whatever can alleviate their pain should be legal simply because that's the medically correct and humane thing to do.