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9/18/98
Over 230 of you have responded to our Free Will Foster alert last week. Thank you for doing your part! It's important that the pressure be maintained until Will Foster goes free. If you haven't contacted Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating on Will Foster's behalf, please do so today! Complete information is included in the next article (below). This past week we asked our readers to contact their U.S. Representatives in opposition to two bills: H.J. Res. 117, a "Sense of the House" resolution against medical marijuana, and H.R. 4300, the "Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act," increasing the militarization of the U.S.-led war on drugs in the Andes. Unfortunately both bills passed, but the news is not all bad. While H.J. Res. 117 passed 310 to 93, it is encouraging that 93 members of the House would vote in favor of medical marijuana during a contentious election year, and in fact that number is higher than was expected in this first-ever Congressional vote on medical marijuana -- six Republicans even voted our way. Furthermore, the language of the resolution was very much diluted relative to its former incarnation, H.J. Res. 372 (as discussed in our article below). Keep those letters going in, and someday Congress will turn our way! You can find out how your Rep. voted by visiting http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=1998&rollnumber=435 on the web. H.R. 4300 was a harder vote for us, and that passed by a wider margin, 384-39. Most people simply don't understand that supply reduction is not partially but totally ineffective, and that Andean militarization is closely connected with serious human rights abuses. Those 39 representatives, then, deserve to be congratulated for taking a tough vote and doing the right thing. You can read who voted for and who voted against by visiting http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=1998&rollnumber=442. Some reps, however, are willing to do the wrong thing, whether or not they understand the issue. One of our members has informed us that he got in a heated debate with a staffer at the office of Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA), culminating with his being information that Bliley thinks that fighting drug abuse in our own country is more important that human rights in other countries. Perhaps the staffer exaggerated in the heat of the moment, but even if so, the episode shows how warped a perspective some policymakers have developed in the war on drugs. Can Rep. Bliley truly believe it is moral for the U.S. government to indirectly fund torture and death squad executions, to supposedly save some Americans from the consequences of their own choices? If this makes you as angry as it makes us, give Tom Bliley a call at (202)225-2815 and ask if he really believes this. The second issue is whether the 384 reps who voted for this bill actually believe it will help. Report after report from the U.S. General Accounting Office, for example, have found these strategies to be ineffective. (Check out http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/GOVPUBS/gao/gaomen1.htm to read many of them online.) Many members of Congress undoubtedly have bought into the party line and think this militarization bill will help. But the problem isn't that Andean peasants are growing coca. The problem is the ignorance of our public officials who haven't read even the government's own evidence on the subject. (See our alert at http://www.drcnet.org/wol/058.html#andes to learn more about this important topic.) Another of our members caught H.J. Res. 117's sponsor, Bill McCollum, in what can charitably be characterized as a factual error on the House floor during the debate. McCollum remarked, "According to the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, HIV positive smokers of marijuana progress to full blown AIDS twice as fast as non-smokers and have increased incidences of bacterial pneumonia." But in private correspondence, a researcher at that agency wrote "I am unaware of any study that shows that marijuana smoking speeds HIV progression. A number of studies, conducted both by NIAID-sponsored investigators and others, have concluded that cannabis and other psychoactive substances are not co-factors in HIV disease progression." The letter went on to list several relevant studies. Any member of the House or Senate can be reached through the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
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