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Editorials
Monday, November 27, 2000Feds to study medical
use of marijuanaThe issue: The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has approved a program to study the medical benefits of marijuana.
PERHAPS with reluctance, the Clinton administration has approved a program in California to study and assess the potential medical benefits of marijuana. Congress and the federal Food and Drug Administration have taken the position in the past that marijuana is unsafe, but that has not kept several states, including Hawaii, from legalizing marijuana for medical use. The study should provide some badly needed answers.
In 1996, California voters approved an initiative allowing the possession, cultivation and use of marijuana for medical purposes. The law allows patients to use marijuana, based on a doctor's recommendation, without risking state prosecution.
Federal drug policy chief Barry McCaffrey responded by saying that doctors prescribing or recommending marijuana would lose their federal licenses to prescribe drugs, would be excluded from Medicare and could be prosecuted criminally. A federal judge earlier this year ruled that the threat against doctors recommending marijuana violated their free-speech rights.
Hawaii and seven other states have enacted laws allowing medical use of marijuana. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of marijuana's medical use remains a matter of debate.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has approved a program that will allow San Mateo County, Calif., to give away government-grown marijuana to 60 HIV and AIDS patients who suffer from neurological disorders. The 12-week study could begin as early as January. The program also has the blessing of the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Drug Abuse.
It will not be the first such study. Dr. Donald Abrams of the University of California at San Francisco recently found that 20 AIDS patients who smoked marijuana for three weeks gained 7.7 pounds more than 22 others who smoked placebos. Promoters of marijuana for medical use say it also settles the stomach, steadies spastic muscles and relieves PMS, glaucoma, insomnia, arthritis, depression, childbirth and attention deficit disorder.
Government involvement in the study of the medical benefits of marijuana is proper for the FDA to decide whether to approve its use. Results of the study also should provide insight into whether state legalization of medical marijuana was justified.
Bookstore asserts right
to privacy of records
PUBLIC libraries are very protective of records of people checking out books, not wanting to invade their patrons' First Amendment right to keep their reading material private. A drug task force now wants to penetrate that shield in examining records of a suburban Denver bookstore to further a criminal investigation. If allowed to do so, the task force will be setting a bad precedent.
Two years ago, Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel investigating President Clinton, subpoenaed a Washington bookstore to learn what books Monica Lewinsky had bought. A federal judge blocked the subpoena, and Lewinsky's later cooperation rendered the issue moot, but the Starr attempt remained troubling to bookstore owners and book lovers.
In the Colorado case, the task force found two books on the subject of clandestine drug manufacturing in a trailer home that had been used as an illegal methamphetamine laboratory in the Denver suburb of Thornton. The agents found an envelope from Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore outside the trailer. The task force wants to find out from the bookstore records whether the two books found inside the trailer were sent to one of the drug suspects, whose name and address were on the envelope.
The store's owner, Joyce Meskis, refused to comply with the warrant for the records. "This is about access to private records of the book-buying public," Meskis said. "If buyers thought that their records would be turned over to the government, it would have a chilling effect on what they buy and what they read."
A Colorado District Court judge has ruled that investigators have a right to access of any bookstore records that would confirm that one of the suspects was the buyer of the two books. The ruling is now before the Colorado Court of Appeals and might end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Colorado drug task force access to bookstore records, if allowed, certainly would be cited in future courts to invade people's right to privacy in their selection of books that are not so sinister. The rights of all bookstores and their customers will be at risk.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
