* Originally By: Bill Utterback 
 * Originally To: All
 * Originally Re: piml] More Tenth Amendment (Or Lack Thereof)
 * Original Area: LIST:  Patriot Information
 * Forwarded by : Blue Wave v2.12 OS/2
@MSGID: 1:270/615.77 1259b262
From: Bill Utterback 
Subject: piml] More Tenth Amendment (Or Lack Thereof)
McCaffrey sketches plan to fight medicinal marijuana
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Copyright 1996 Associated Press.
 WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has approved a plan to combat
 state laws legalizing marijuana for medical use through a variety of
 means that could include criminal charges against physicians who
 prescribe it.
 Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the president's anti-narcotics
 chief, said those who violate federal laws, including provisions
 forbidding doctors from prescribing illegal drugs, "lend themselves
 vulnerable to prosecution."
 Interviewed Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," McCaffrey said
 Clinton approved the plan last week, with details to be announced
 today. He headed a multiagency effort in the past several weeks to
 draw it up.
 McCaffrey said the plan would make clear that while federal law has
 not changed, government medical authorities will continue to examine
 the purported benefits of any drug, including marijuana.
 But he said doctors who prescribe illegal drugs would be prosecuted
 or removed from the federal registry that allows them to write
 prescriptions. He said the administration remains confident that
 American medicine offers better remedies for pain than prescribing
 illegal drugs.
 "Clearly if we had unscrupulous physicians who were using heroin to
 treat writer's block in Arizona, or if there were prescription mills in
 California, federal law will be upheld," McCaffrey said.
 Voters in the two states approved measures last month that would
 relax restrictions on the medical use of some illegal drugs, like
 marijuana.
 He said the administration is reminding anyone who receives
 government money or operates under federal jurisdiction that they're
 banned from using illegal drugs, whatever a doctor may recommend.
 "So if you're flying a Delta airliner, driving a school bus, operating a
 nuclear power plant, if you are a National Guard sergeant, you can't use
 Schedule I drugs" for medical purposes, McCaffrey said.
 Marijuana and heroin are Schedule I substances, and federal law
 recognizes no legitimate medical use for them. Under the new
 administration plan, doctors who prescribe marijuana could lose their
 Drug Enforcement Administration certification, even where state laws
 permit such prescriptions.
 McCaffrey said the resolutions California and Arizona voters
 approved amount to quasilegalization of drugs.
 "In essence we see them as a violation of the scientific process that
 has brought America the safest and most effective medicines in the
 world," McCaffrey said. "And we're enormously concerned because of
 the potential for increased drug abuse in these two states."
 Asked if by its actions the federal government is thwarting the will of
 the people, McCaffrey said many voters in California and Arizona
 "were asleep at the switch" in approving "hoax referendums" that didn't
 have serious medical backing.
 He said the administration mounted a rear-guard campaign against the
 measures, and "that's what we're going to do in the other 48 states --
 make sure that parents, educators, law enforcement officers, ministers
 and people who care about children get the point" about illegal drugs.
 A spokesman for a California organization that promoted the state's
 medical marijuana proposition said last week that any federal attempt to
 attack doctors who recommend marijuana for medical reasons could
 violate physicians' rights of free speech.
 Arizona officials are seeking ways to resolve the problem of
 marijuana being legal under state law but illegal under federal law. So
 far no consensus has emerged.
For Liberty,
Bill Utterback
butterb@connecti.com             (backup: butterb597@aol.com)
 
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen
from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to
keep the Government from falling into error."
U.S. Supreme Court in American Communications Association v.
Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442
Libertarian Party:  http://www.rahul.net/lp/
Fully Informed Jury Association:
http://www.primenet.com/~slack/fija/fija.html
Gun Owners of America:  http://www.gunowners.org/
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