For the fourth year in a row, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted down a measure that would prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from spending taxpayer money to raid, arrest, and prosecute ill people using medical marijuana in compliance with state law. The so-called Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment – a bipartisan measure penned by Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., attached to the annual DOJ appropriations bill – was defeated in a record vote, 163-259. “This amendment has to do with two simple things: being compassionate for people who are suffering and dying … and the right of states to govern medical practice, not this Congress,” Hinchey told his colleagues from the House floor. Although the measure has yet to earn a majority vote, it has, since its introduction in 2002, continued to gain steady support from both sides of the aisle – on June 28 the measure nabbed a record 18 Republican votes (up four from last year). While that’s a promising harbinger – signaling that perhaps, with steady pressure, the measure will eventually pass – the defeat nonetheless reinforces a status quo that allows the feds to intervene in intrastate affairs in order to affirm the losing proposition of pot prohibition. “For the fourth year in a row, Congress had an opportunity to stop wasting taxpayers’ dollars arresting seriously ill patients who possess and use medical cannabis in compliance with state law,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML. “Instead, 259 members of Congress chose … to prosecute patients.”
Speaking of wasting taxpayer money, the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Citizens Against Government Waste last week released its latest pork report, aiming its guns at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, home base for the nation’s drug czar, and administrator of the useless National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign – known for its many winning ad campaigns such as the pot-smokers-fund-Middle-East-terrorists spots. Although numerous studies (including at least one conducted by the Government Accountability Office) have found that the ONDCP’s media campaign – which trains its guns most prominently on a futile attempt to squash marijuana use – has no effect on reducing drug use, and that claims made in ONDCP ads have been proven false (like that whole marijuana-as-gateway-drug theory), Congress nonetheless has decided to toss $120 million to the ad campaign for FY 2007. While that’s a $30 million cut, CAGW’s recent report chastises Congress for continuing to support the losing operation, and for its focus on vilifying marijuana – while generally ignoring other drugs, such as methamphetamine, whose use has continued to rise. “The government also exhibits its obsession with containing marijuana use by continuing to throw unnecessary funding and unavailable resources toward tracking down and persecuting patients using medicinal marijuana in states that have legalized the substance for medical use,” reads the CAGW report. “Not only does this undermine federalism, it also proves that the government is incapable of exercising any kind of fiscal restraint.” Ain’t that the truth – but fiscal restraint, at least where the so-called war on drugs is concerned, isn’t exactly a priority with the ONDCP. In closing, the CAGW notes that enacting legislation, such as Hinchey-Rohrabacher, would be a step in the right direction toward reigning in the spend-crazy ONDCP: “If passed, the Hinchey/Rohrabacher amendment would free up federal dollars for more important priorities and help to restore a proper division of power between the federal and state governments,” concludes the report. Better luck next year.
This article appears in July 7 • 2006.