Editorial

The drug czar softens

Judging just from the wire stories, we were almost ready to entertain the
hypothesis that "drug czar" Gen. Barry McCaffrey was showing signs of being
educable, perhaps even of adjusting views in response to evidence rather
than politics. After more investigation, it seems more likely that he is
simply reluctant to get out front on an issue where he thinks the
prohibitionists will continue to lose.

That's progress of a sort, perhaps, but of a modest sort.

What happened? At a hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee on crime,
Florida Republican Rep. Bill McCollum asked Gen. McCaffrey if he would come
to Florida to campaign against a medical marijuana initiative. Besides
Florida, Alaska, Washington, Arkansas, Massachusetts and the District of
Columbia are expected to consider laws to allow sick people legal access to
marijuana in the near future.

Gen. McCaffrey dodged the invitation, telling Rep. McCollum, "At the end of
the day, it seems to me, we'll give them the scientific fact and let the
American people make up their own minds."

Later, he was even more blunt with a Reuters reporter: "I am not in charge
of America. I'll provide information for the debate, leaning heavily on the
scientificmedical community. I'll inform them of the federal law. I'm not
America's nanny."

This is something of a turnabout. Back in January, when Prop. 215 in
California was a recent memory, Gen. McCaffrey was warning that he might
start busting doctors and promising a mighty crusade to correct the
opinions of the benighted voters of California and Arizona. He's had a
chance to study the issues in more depth since then, and several federal
scientific panels have affirmed that there is some evidence of efficacy for
some diseases. Could he be coming around to common sense?

Not exactly. We talked to Roger Pilon, the constitutional scholar at the
Cato Institute, who also testified at the hearing about how federal
determination to thwart state medical marijuana laws undermines the very
idea of federalism. He said Gen. McCaffrey spent most of his time renewing
his vow to expose medical marijuana reformers as evil deceivers who were
cloaking their legalization agenda in false promises to sick people. But he
won't campaign in person in Florida.

Perhaps Gen. McCaffrey is shrewd enough to have noted that for
prohibitionists medical marijuana is a losing issue. Most Americans don't
want to legalize drugs, but when given a voice, most Americans want doctors
to be able to prescribe marijuana, as they now can prescribe cocaine, when
they and their patients think it might help. Gen. McCaffrey and all the
scarescenario spinners he can muster haven't been able to shake this
reasonable and wellfounded conviction.

That wasn't hard to figure out. Now if Gen McCaffrey would view the
scientific evidence dispassionately, we might get somewhere.