Medicine for the Sick; D. Bandow

pose. Among the most tragic victims are the sick and terminally ill who desire marijuana to ease their pain. Consider Todd McCormick. Though only 26, he suffered through ten bouts with cancer, beginning at the age of two. He first smoked marijuana to relieve the dizziness and nausea caused by his treatment for a chest tumor. Now cancer-free, he still endures con stant back, hip, and neck pain. Without mar ijuana he couldn't even walk, he explains. But despite a prescription from a Dutch physician, he was arrested in 1995 for marijuana pos session and faced up to 30 years in prison before charges were dropped. The first petition to shift marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II drug, like mor phine, which would allow it to be prescribed, was filed in 1972. The Drug Enforcement Administration wouldn't consider the idea until a federal court order in 1986. Two years later an agency hearing examiner endorsed the proposal. The DEA again refused to act.

In its eyes, the desperately illwere no different than common criminals. At least then there was a small escape hatch: 30 patients received marijuana from the federal government. But in 1991 the Department of Health and Human Services canceled the program. "If it's perceived that the Public Health Service is going around Mr. Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. giving marijuana to folks, there would be a perception that. this stuff can't be so bad," explained one official. It's surprising the gov ernment tolerates the use of morphine in hospitals. HHS officials said they would instead pro vide Marinol, a synthetic form of marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. But those suffering from AIDS, cancer, and glaucoma say that Marinol isn't as effective. Explained Barbara Jencks, who before her death from AIDS was arrested for using marijuana to combat AZT induced nausea, "I've got to smoke mari juana. I've got to, or I'll die." Many others say essentially the same thing. Indeed, why else would people like Todd McCormick risk arrest?

Doctors also favor the medicinal use of marijuana. In one survey more than 70 per cent of American cancer specialists said they would prescribe marijuana if it were legal; 44 percent said they had urged patients to break the law if necessary to acquire the drug. The British Medical Association found that nearly 70 percent of physicians believed marijuana should be available for therapeutic use. Even President Bush's Office of Drug Con trol Policy criticized HHS when it closed the medicinal marijuana program. Deputy Direc tor Herbert Kleber termed the initiative a "compassionate" option for the very ill. An other senior staffer, Ingrid Kolb, complained that "for HHS to treat this matter as just another bureaucratic decision is unconscio nable and, to me, shows an intolerable lack of compassion." HHS remained unmoved. 604 Nothing changed when Pr~sident Bill Clinton took office,even though his Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, endorsed making marijuana available to the seriously ill.

Indeed, last fall the administration opposed ballot initiatives in Arizona and California to legalize medicinal use of marijuana. Voters ignored the President, so the administration is now working to block the laws. Only a recent court injunction currently prevents the DEA from prosecuting doctors who recommend pot and stripping them of their right to prescribe pharmaceuticals. Even more bi zarre are threats to block the nomination of Massachusetts Governor William Weld as ambassador to Mexico because he favors allowing the medicinal use of marijuana. The fact that so many officialsare working so hard to preempt such limited state initi atives demonstrates a hard truth: The Drug War has failed. The federal government has been fighting the drug war for decades. The result? Adolescent drug use is rising. In 1995 more than one-third of high school seniors said they had used pot the previous year, up from 22 percent in 1992.

So what does Washington want to do now? Escalate the drug war. Eric Holder, now Deputy Attorney General, advocated tougher penalties for marijuana offenses when he served as the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. "Marijuana violence is increasing. We need to nip it in the bud," claimed Mr. Holder. Illegal Markets Spawn Crime Unfortunately, new enforcement initiatives will only worsen the problem. The crime surrounding marijuana that Holder com plains of results not so much from drug use, but from drug prohibition. No one argues that pot is crimogenic. People don't smoke mari juana and then commit crimes. Rather, killings and robberies inevitably accompany illegal markets. Dealers fight over turf; sellers and customers rob one another. This was evident during Prohibition-the ban on alcohol could not have been better de signed to benefit organized crime. Similarly, marijuana and opium have been legal in America for more years than they have been 605 prohibited. Only after the government forbid their sale earlier this century did crime en velop them.

A different argument is made by the DEA's Peter Gruden. The marijuana being sold today, he warns, is far more potent than that available a decade or two ago. However, this, too, is a result of prohibition. It has always been easier to find and confiscate marijuana, a bulkier substance, than drugs like cocaine and heroin. Thus, dealers have had a con tinuing incentive to produce a more compact, easily concealable version of the drug. This incentive was intensified by the government's increasing interdiction of shipments from Mexico and discovery of outdoor plots in America. Production shifted indoors to hy droponic (water-based) cultivation, which yields more concentrated marijuana. Finally, Gruden complains that kids in creasingly deal pot, with lookouts as young as 11. This has nothing to do with marijuana as such, however: in the 1980s Washington, D.C., found itself not only arresting a far higher number of juveniles for drug offenses, but also arresting a far higher percentage for trafficking.This is also a result of drugs being illegal: drugs are marketed by criminals, who have no compunction about involving kids, who in turn know that they will receive lesser penalties if they are caught. Notably, children don't wear beepers around school selling cigarettes and beer. The drug laws are as dangerous as drugs to kids.

Upping the penalties for marijuana of fenses and imposing minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders would only increase the incentive to rely on kids. And it wouldn't end drug abuse. Nationally there were nearly 600,000arrests in 1995 for marijuana, over 80 percent of them-an incredible half million for possession alone. Pot arrests are up 50 percent over the Bush years. Someone is arrested for a marijuana offense every 54 seconds in America. Sending more people to jail would, how ever, further overwhelm a bulging prison system that already holds three times as many prisoners as in the early 1980s. The result would likely be rising pressure for the pre mature release of violent criminals around the 606 THE FREEMAN • OCTOBER 1997 nation. Today many rapists and murderers spend less time in prison than do drug of fenders. Turning drug use, at base a moral and spiritual problem, into a criminal crusade hasn't worked. Despite 10.5million arrests for ; pot offenses between 1965 and 1995, more than 60 million Americans have used mari juana. As the police have collared even more people during the 1990s,drug use by children has risen. Arresting and jailing even more people wouldn't yield better results.

It's time to change course. People shouldn't smoke marijuana, but then, they shouldn't smoke cigarettes either. That doesn't mean the answer is prohibition. Instead of reinforc ing the failed policies of the past, the federal government should end its misguided war on marijuana, starting with its attack on the suffering and dying. 0 BACK IN PRINT! Critique of Interventionism BY LUDWIG VON MISES New Introduction by Hans F. Sennholz T he economic principles that Ludwig von Mises expounded in these six essays during the 1920s have endured; they are as valid today as they were in the past. In this volume, Ludwig von Mises emphasizes again and again that soci ety must choose between two systems of social organization: either it can create a social order that is built on private property in the means of production, or it can establish a command system in which government owns or manages all production and distribution. There is no logical third system of a private property order subject to government regulations. The "middle of the road" leads to socialism because gov ernment intervention is not only superfluous and useless, but also harmful.

ISBN 1-57246-058-X • 136 pages • paperback $12.95 Published by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 To order,call (800) 452-3518 orfax (914) 591-8910 THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY A Centmyof Forest ServiceIneptitude by John A. Baden and Andrew C. St. Lawrence T his year marks the centennial of the National Forest System.This is America's best example of centralized government plan ning and management, our glorious experi ment in "sylvan socialism." In the FederalistPapers, the authors urged America to consider each law and policyas an experiment to be evaluated and perhaps mod ified. The end of a 100-yearexperiment is an appropriate time to review and evaluate the National Forest System. The end of the nineteenth century was marked by enthusiastic reformers, Progres sives who sought to harness the power of government to achieve positive ends. The Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation (1902), and the Park Service (19l6)-all Pro gressive Era creations-provided models for environmental management by bureaucrats.