December 26, 2001

By Daniel Forbes

Rolling Stone

Who Sent The Anthrax? Who Knows? The Feds Are Too Busy Cracking Down On Medical Marijuana And Physician-Assisted Suicides.

At a time when seventy-three percent of Americans support allowing doctors to recommend medical marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration is moving fast to shut down patient cooperatives in California. Only a month after ardent drug warrior Asa Hutchinson was confirmed as the agency's new chief, agents raided the office of a doctor and her lawyer husband in Cool, California, who focused their shared practice on advising medical-marijuana clients.

More than 6,000 confidential patient records were seized. In Lockwood Valley, near Los Angeles, two dozen agents tore up hundreds of plants on a ranch that supplied the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center. In October, hundreds of plants and thousands of patient files were removed, and bank accounts frozen, at the LACRC, a well-established club known for carefully selecting only very ill patients.

The no-notice raids followed last May's Supreme Court ruling that marijuana distribution for medical use is not exempt from federal law, and subsequent calls for action by members of Congress. The Clinton administration chose not to prosecute members of medical-marijuana cooperatives - John Coleman, a thirty-two-year DEA agent, says, "I don't think they had an interest in it, frankly." Bush nominee Hutchinson was ambiguous about medical-marijuana enforcement during pre-confirmation questioning by the Senate. But the day he assumed command, on August zest, he declared his intention to "send the right signal" regarding medical marijuana. "You're not going to tolerate a violation of law," he told the Associated Press. "Within thirty minutes of his confirmation," says Keith Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, "Hutchinson made it clear that the feds are not going to look the other way."

Even in the aftermath of September 11th, Attorney General John Ashcroft and DEA chief Hutchinson are not embarrassed to use precious resources to target such cooperatives as the LACRC, which is run by Scott Imler, who himself suffers from epilepsy. Their tough new policy is a direct attack on California's approved ballot initiative, Proposition 215, which permits the cultivation and use of small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes, and on similar laws in seven other states.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, says the local raid had "been in the works for a while." It may have been prompted, in part, by a letter to Ashcroft from Mark E. Souder, R-Ind., chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees federal drug policy, following the Supreme Court ruling. Souder wrote, "We urge you to now move swiftly to give effect to that ruling throughout the United States with respect to 'medical marijuana' provisions contrary to the court's unanimous decision."

Souder also requested that the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, determine how the eight states with medical-marijuana provisions are overseeing these new laws. Paul Jones, the GAO official in charge of the effort, says he received Souder's request in June and currently has "three or four" full-time staffers working on it.

Oddly enough, the GAO's first move was to visit the LACRC, purportedly to learn how the organization worked. Imler charges that the four analysts who came to the club took scant interest in his diligent records. Instead, they pressed him on where he got his pot. He showed them his grow room with its hundreds of plants and also mentioned his off-site suppliers, Lynn and Judy Osburn, who grew substantial amounts for the club at their home in Ventura County. Hearing this, Imler says, the GAO analysts left in a great hurry. Within an hour, a search warrant was signed for the Osburns, who were raided the next day. "It was strictly coincidental - to my knowledge, there was no connection," says Jones. Within weeks, the L.A. club was hit as well. Thirty armed agents carried out seizures of medicine, computers and equipment, despite opposition by members of the West Hollywood City Council, who protested outside. Since 1996, when the club was founded, the council and the sheriff's department have been supportive of the group.

No one connected with the LACRC has been charged to date; in a trial, the government would have to face California jurors' reluctance to convict medical-marijuana defendants. But the center is effectively out of business solely through the execution of a search warrant. Before the Supreme Court decision in May, the federal government sought injunctions to close down Bay Area clubs; now it just engages in what one club director refers to as "smash and grab" raids.

Speaking for the DEA, Mrozek defends the L.A. seizure as "a legitimate investigative technique," akin to gathering evidence from a stock-- fraud operation. But Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., objected, saying, "I'm surprised and concerned that the LACRC was a top priority for the DEA. I would think they should focus on more significant threats."

Cannabis-club operators throughout California are fearful. One government official says, "The Bay Area is next on the hit list, yes, at some point." The official adds, "It's my understanding the government is going to move against all the clubs."

California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer says that three or four Bay Area clubs have reported surveillance, with several cars with tinted windows repeatedly parked outside. One young arthritis patient, Jeff Horner, was recently visited by ten armed DEA agents at his Oakland home and pressured to go to a club one or two were mentioned as possible targets - to buy marijuana clones to turn over to the DEA. Despite Horner's refusal, Gieringer expects "a big sweep" any day now. In early November, a San Francisco cooperative that served 1,200 patients pre-emptively shut down.

Sick people aren't Hutchinson's only targets - so are drug-- test cheaters. On October 9th, the DEA issued a new rule outlawing all food - such as pasta or beer - made with hemp, which might contain trace elements of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. In the past few years, some people who have failed drug tests have kept their jobs by claiming they hadn't smoked pot but had eaten food such as cheese or a veggie burger made with hemp oil. This policy shift attempts to prevent such excuses. Clothing made with hemp is not affected - yet.

"The recent enforcement action is indicative that we have not lost our priorities in other areas since September 11th," said Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden. But the Bush administration's priorities on the issue of medical marijuana are completely at odds with those of the public.

Sidebar by Erika Casriel

The Attorney General Vs. The People of Oregon

On November 6th, during a week in which he announced a top-to-bottom "wartime reorganization and mobilization" of the Justice Department and law-enforcement agencies, Attorney General John Ashcroft found the time to issue a memo and a twenty-four-page brief threatening Oregon's doctors. His directive aims to override a law, passed twice by Oregon voters, that allows doctors to issue prescriptions that may hasten the deaths of the terminally ill.

His action is a radical move for a man who has been a devout advocate of states' rights for the past forty years. "Here is a person who defied court orders during his tenure as attorney general and governor of Missouri with respect to desegregation of the St. Louis schools, saying the federal government was exceeding its authority," says Ralph G. Neas, president of the civil-liberties group People for the American Way.

Under current law in Oregon, a doctor cannot administer a lethal dose; a patient must ingest the drug himself. The Death With Dignity Act has been operating for four years in the state, where about 29,000 people a year die but where only seventy people so far are recorded to have died through assisted suicide.

Coming in the midst of the anthrax scare, Ashcroft's attack on the physician-assisted-suicide law surprised people in Oregon. "It's almost touching that the attorney general found a moment for us," wrote a commentator in The Oregonian. But Ashcroft is only following up, at a higher level, on a crusade he launched years ago with other senators. He supported bills in 1998 and zooo that would have amended the Controlled Substances Act to criminalize assisted suicide. And last year, during a campaign appearance, George W. Bush vowed to challenge Oregon's law, saying, "Controlled substances to control pain are fine, to take a life is not fine." This year, both the National Right to Life Committee and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pressured Bush and Ashcroft on this issue. While Bush's decision to allow some stem-cell research disappointed the groups, the Oregon crackdown has encouraged them.

No one in Oregon's congressional delegation knew this decision was coming, not even Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, an enemy of the assistedsuicide law. But Scott Swenson, executive director of Oregon Death With Dignity, says that the administration's attempt at stealth has backfired. "They did this on Election Day, in the middle of a war - they wanted this thing buried, but it didn't work." Ashcroft's legal standing is uncertain: States have always had jurisdiction over the regulation of medical practice, and the Controlled Substances Act has yet to be amended to give new authority to the federal government. Now a brutal court battle looms between the Oregon attorney general and the Justice Department. "Given everything the country is going through right now," said Oregon's Gov. John Kitzhaber, "why John Ashcroft picked this moment to inject this divisive issue into the public debate is just beyond me."