editorial comment What's with the "czar" thing anyway? Don't they know what happened to the last one???

By CLAIR JOHNSON
Of The Gazette Staff

Scott Burns, a top federal official in the war on drugs, visited Montana this week intending to discuss methamphetamine. But Burns found himself talking instead mostly about marijuana, as Montanans prepare to vote Nov. 2 on a ballot measure that would allow use of the illegal plant for medical purposes.

“I cannot tell anyone how to vote,'' Burns said - but his anti-marijuana message was clear.

“This is a con by people who want people to legalize marijuana in this state,'' Burns said. “They always start with the medical marijuana issue.''


Burns, who is deputy director for state and local affairs in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, held a news conference Thursday in Billings at Rimrock Foundation, a private, nonprofit treatment center. He also met with local law enforcement and treatment center officials. Burns, formerly the county attorney of Iron County, Utah, made similar visits earlier this week to Helena and Missoula.

Initiative 148 would legalize the cultivation and possession of marijuana for medical use in Montana. Patients could use marijuana under medical supervision to relieve symptoms of cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and other conditions defined by the state.

Proponents, Burns said, typically use the example of someone suffering from a disease and say that smoking marijuana offers relief.

“It's not about that,'' Burns said. “It's about our children.”

There are alternatives besides marijuana for sick people, he said. For example, Marinol, which is a pill containing THC, an active component of marijuana, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and may be prescribed by doctors.

The FDA, the American Medical Association and other medical groups have said that “smoking this weed is not a medicine,'' Burns said.

Missoula resident Paul Befumo, a spokesperson for I-148, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he didn't think Burns had read the initiative.

“It's really really narrowly confined,'' Befumo said. The measure covers only people with the diseases specified and closes anything that could be viewed as a loophole, he said.

Befumo also said Marinol has only one component of the many active ingredients in marijuana. “That's why when Marinol doesn't work, medical marijuana does,'' he said.

Befumo said studies and research papers support the therapeutic potential of marijuana.

Backers of the measure point to the results of a California study that showed marijuana use by high school students declined after voters there approved the medial use of marijuana in 1996.

Befumo stated earlier that the study did not indicate that the medical marijuana law was the cause of the reduced marijuana use but that “the law did not cause an increase in use as predicted by opponents.''

Burns said marijuana is considered by treatment experts to be a progressive drug, which leads to use of other illegal drugs. More youths under age 18 are in treatment for marijuana dependency than for any other drug, he said.

“The marijuana problem is a national problem,'' Burns said. Of the approximately 19.5 million people using illegal drugs, 77 percent use marijuana or marijuana and another drug, he said.

Marijuana used to be a rite-of-passage drug for youths in their late teens. “It's now a middle school rite-of-passage drug'' with children aged 12 or 13 and even younger, he said.

“That's unacceptable. We don't need more marijuana available to our children,'' he said.

Burns also said marijuana use still is illegal under federal law. There is “no safe harbor'' for marijuana users even if voters approve it for medical use, he said.

Information from the Office of National Drug Control Policy shows that marijuana use among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders has been declining in recent years.

“We are pushing back,'' Burns said. He credited the declining use in part to parents getting involved.

The least deserving of credit for declining use are those who support medical use of marijuana, Burns said.

And while marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug, methamphetamine, used by an estimated 1.5 million of the county's 19.5 million drug users, is a serious problem across the country, he said. Meth is highly addictive and can be manufactured in clandestine labs using commonly available ingredients, like pseudoephedrine, which is found in over-the-counter cold medication.

“This is a bad drug,'' Burns said.

On a national level, Burns said, the United States has clamped down on large shipments of pseudoephedrine from Canada and is helping local communities through federal funding of law enforcement programs like the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Yellowstone County and four other Montana counties are in the Rocky Mountain HIDTA.

Law enforcement, prevention, education and treatment are needed to fight meth use, he said. Communities have to become involved and people have to intervene, he said.

People are so polite in this society they are reluctant to intervene.

“If you want to save someone's life, step in and intervene,'' he said.

Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

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