Subject: Drug Czar attacks Initiative 57
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:27:44 -0400 (EDT)

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
ACT UP Washington DC
409 H Street NE                              Washington, DC 20002
for more information call 202.547.9404
CZAR WARS?
Activists call on AIDS Czar to stand up to Drug Czar
Clinton's General continues frontal assault on people with AIDS and their
Physicians

Washington, DC -- Drug Czar General Barry McCaffery has denounced efforts by
local AIDS activists in the group ACT UP Washington who are gathering
signatures to place Initiative 57 on September '98 election ballot.  If
passed by the voters of the District of Columbia, the measure would protect
from criminal prosecution patients with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and other
serious illnesses, their physicians, and caregivers, in the use of marijuana
for medical treatment.  Activists have called upon President Clinton's AIDS
czar, Sandy Thurman, to support the protection of medical patients and
providers from marijuana prosecution, and defend the doctor/patient
relationship.  

 McCaffery's opposition to the ACT UP initiative is stated in a letter sent
to locally elected and appointed officials, including Mayor Marion Barry,
newly elected Council chair Linda Cropp, and Financial Control Board head
Andrew Brimmer.  Officials within McCaffery's Office of National Drug Control
Policy refused to provide ACT UP Washington or members of the press, with
copies of the letter, suggesting that the initiative sponsors in ACT UP
submit a Freedom of Information Act request.  

 Dave Shull, counsel for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, admitted
in a telephone conversation with ACT UP's Wayne Turner that McCaffery's
office had not yet reviewed the legislative text of Initiative 57, which was
approved by DC's Board of Elections and Ethics in June.  "Mr. Shull asked me
to fax him a copy of Initiative 57.  Maybe he should submit a FOIA request to
me." Turner reports.  

 Last week, billionaire publisher Malcolm 'Steve' Forbes, Jr. launched an
$150,000 media campaign against Initiative 57, calling the AIDS activists
circulating petitions "twisted drug predators."  William Bennett, former drug
czar in the Bush Administration, has galvanized his group 'Empower America'
against the DC ballot initiative, joining Gary Bauer, former domestic policy
Advisor to President Ronald Reagan.  

 Initiative 57's sponsor, ACT UP's Steve Michael, comments "Our local ballot
initiative is turning into the first Republican primary for the Presidential
election in the year 2000."

 AIDS activists charge that opponents are misrepresenting Initiative 57,
which is strictly limited to the medical use of marijuana under the
supervision and care of a licensed physician.  "We've got to put an end to
the current situation where seriously ill patients are forced to go to
dangerous open air drug markets to obtain marijuana for medical use." states
Michael, who is HIV+.  "If Steve Forbes and General McCaffery are so
concerned about the drug trade here in DC, they'd go after the steady flow of
crack cocaine into our neighborhoods.  Instead, they're targeting AIDS
patients, and cancer patients.  They're targeting doctors."

 Michael adds that a review marijuana's medical efficacy underway at the
National Institutes of Health is nothing more than "political science" noting
that the review is being conducted by the National Institute for Drug Abuse.
 "Marijuana can help cancer patients, so review the research at the National
Cancer Institute.  Marijuana helps glaucoma patients, so review the research
at the Eye Institute.  I have more faith in Dr. Tony Fauci at the National
Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases than I do General Barry
McCaffery."

 Activists have until December to gather approximately 16,700 signatures of
DC voters in order to place Initiative 57 on the September '98 ballot.  The
all-volunteer effort has gained the support of many prominent community
organizers, including Archbishop George Augustus Stallings of the African
American Catholic Congregation and NAACP/DC legislative Director Mark
Thompson, in addition to the organizations the Gay and Lesbian Activists
Alliance, the DC Green Party, the HIV Community Coalition, and the Ward Six
Democrats.   Several DC elected officials have signed Initiative 57.

for more information call ACT UP Washington at 202-547-9404
673-4153

following is the release from the Forbes group
note that they never mention AIDS or discuss the medical value of marijuana
once

AMERICANS FOR HOPE, GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY LAUNCHES RADIO CAMPAIGN OPPOSING
INITIATIVE TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA IN WASHINGTON, DC

CALLS ON PRESIDENT CLINTON, MAYOR BARRY, AND CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS TO LEAD
ANTI-DRUG LEGALIZATION EFFORTS IN NATION'S CAPITAL

"Where's the moral outrage?  Everyone in Washington seems obsessed with Joe
Camel - but D.C. children are being targeted by twisted drug predators and we
hear nothing but silence," says Steve Forbes

(Bedminster, New Jersey) - Americans for Hope, Growth and Opportunity - a
national issues advocacy organization - today announced a radio campaign in
Washington, D.C., to mobilize public opinion against Initiative Measure
Number 57.  The measure, which would legalize the "possession, use,
cultivation, and distribution" of marijuana in the District of Columbia,
needs 16,763 valid signatures by December 8, 1997, to qualify.

Steve Forbes, Honorary Chairman, called on President Bill Clinton, D.C. Mayor
Marion Barry, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott to take a bold lead against the initiative, which would make marijuana
available even to minors under the age of 18 without a doctor's prescription.

"Where's the moral outrage? Everyone in Washington seems obsessed with Joe
Camel.  But D.C. children are being targeted by twisted drug predators and we
hear nothing but silence," said Mr. Forbes  "This initiative has been in
process since April and almost no one knows anything about it.  "That's why
AHGO is launching this radio campaign issuing a memo to congressional
leaders, and working with local leaders and anti-drug coalitions to mobilize
public opinion against this very serious threat."

the following op-ed piece ran in the Washington Times
on Wed, July 23, 1997
note that the author is from the Bennett wing of Empower America (Bennett was
the first failed drug czar)
Does Marijuana really Cure?
By Manon McKinnon

Largely unnoticed, a catastrophe is developing under the noses of the
government guardians in Washington.  A signature petition is being circulated
to generate a ballot initiative legalizing marijuana for medical use in the
nation's capital.  The sponsor of the petition, Steve Michael, is founder of
the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), and that group is currently
gathering signatures to put the initiative on the next possible city-wide
ballot--perhaps as early as December.  The rationale behind the initiative
is, of course, compassion for AIDS sufferers .  The language of the
"Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1997" reads:
 "This initiative, if passed permits seriously ill individuals to legally use
marijuana for medical treatment when recommended by a licensed physician.
 This initiative would:
 * Allow marijuana to aid in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, muscle
spasms, cancer therapy, and other serious illnesses.
 * Legalize, for medical purposes, possession, use, cultivation and
distribution of marijuana for illnesses [for] which marijuana has a medical
benefit.
 * Require the Commissioner of Public Health  to propose to the D.C. Council
a plan providing for distribution of marijuana to qualified patients enrolled
in approved programs.  Use of marijuana without a physician's recommendation
would be prohibited."

Note the words "recommended by a licensed physician" -- no prescription
necessary.  The phenomenal irony!  Mexico and Colombia must be splitting
their sides.  Surely if those countries' combined drug cartels were to devise
a one-step plan to turn America's "National Drug Control Policy" into a
global laughing stock, they could hardly do better than this.  The
initiative, so clearly in opposition to the Clinton administration's
announced drug control plan, is brewing in the front yard of the drug czar,
the Congress and the president.  Yet in the brief window of opportunity
available to challenge the proposal, no challenge came from any quarter.  And
so the petitioners' signature gathering goes forward undisturbed.

The legalization of medical marijuana is a carefully chosen and important
step toward the end game of drug legalization , fostered by a long-active
network of drug legalizers, with international financial backing.  These
people cannot be taken lightly.  The voters of California bought the medical
marijuana message, and now that state is virtually unable to restrict
marijuana use by people of any age.  The same group of legalizers was
initially successful in Arizona, until the people of that state realized that
they had "medicalized" all Schedule I drugs (including heroin, LSD etc.) and
undid the harm they had been fooled into approving.  Now the drug legalizers
expect to succeed in the District of Columbia behind the same mask of medical
compassion.

But hold on--there is new information about marijuana.  Three new studies may
just render the medical use for pot null and void.

The first comes from a team of pioneering researchers in the field of
psychoneuroimmunology led by Dr. Thomas Klein at the University of South
Florida and published in the journal DNA and Cell Biology.  Studying the
distribution and function of cannabinoid (marijuana) receptors in the immune
system, Mr. Kleins research shows that medical marijuana alters the immune
system as well as the brain.  In those whose immune systems are already poor,
says Mr. Klein, marijuana may aggravate deteriorating health.  For AIDS
sufferers, the bad news is that marijuana may accelerate AIDS development by
increasing NF-kb which is known to rev up replications of the AIDS virus.  It
now appears Marijuana--that much sought after substance among the ACT UP
petitioners--will more likely make the HIV infected among them a lot sicker.

Second comes news from two independent studies reported in the journal
Science showing that marijuana may be far more insidious a drug than
previously thought, affecting the brain in the same ways that highly
addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine do, and that it may "prime the
brain" for serious addiction. Such a finding is illustrated by the fact that
90 percent of hard-core drug users begin with marijuana, and made frightening
by the fact that last year over 2 million teenagers started using pot.

So maybe marijuana isn't good medicine after all.  Nor is it benign.  It is a
poison that weakens and addicts the brain.  And right under the noses of the
health police, the olestra protectors, the tobacco sentinals, the particulate
matter watchmen and, of course, the government lookouts, it is slouching
uninhibited into Washington, D.C.