Activist Enlists Ally in Bid to Legalize Pot

By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
Source: Los Angeles Times

\t\tWashington, D.C. -- He is an unabashed Big Business conservative. She's \t\ta liberal who favors the little guy. He's a Washington insider dating \t\tback to the days of Nixon. She's all of 29 yet has landed in jail plenty \t\tof times for underdog acts of civil disobedience.
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\t\tNow Beltway lobbyist Jim Tozzi and bicoastal activist Steph Sherer have \t\tteamed up for an uphill cause: They aim to legalize medical marijuana in \t\tall 50 states.
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\t\tSherer's stake is personal and professional. She uses cannabis daily for \t\ta spinal injury suffered during her arrest at a Washington protest five \t\tyears ago. Sherer also runs Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access, a \t\tnonprofit bent on making marijuana available to any patient in need.
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\t\tTozzi, graying and dark-suited at 67, has come to her aid with a federal \t\tlaw spawned at the behest of corporate America. In 2000, Tozzi helped \t\tcraft legislation that lets the private sector challenge the scientific \t\treliability of government regulations.
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\t\tMedical marijuana activists like Sherer consider Tozzi's handiwork a \t\tpotential boon for a movement thwarted by cops and the courts, most \t\trecently a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declined to protect cannabis \t\tpatients from federal prosecution.
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\t\tSherer, an energetic new combatant in a battle that's raged for \t\tgenerations, said she believes medical marijuana activists now have the \t\tscientific goods to counter government assertions that pot has no proven \t\tmedical efficacy.
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\t\tIf U.S. health officials fess up that marijuana is good medicine, she \t\tsays, the government won't be able to continue blocking the 33-year \t\teffort by activists to have cannabis dropped from the restrictive list \t\tof illicit drugs, which includes heroin and LSD. That, in turn, could \t\tstoke research into prescription forms of cannabis, as well as wider and \t\tless contentious medical use.
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\t\t"There's no way the statement that marijuana has no accepted medical \t\tvalue is true anymore," Sherer said, citing 6,500 scientific articles \t\tfrom around the world on medical cannabis, as well as the thousands of \t\tdoctor recommendations in California and nine other states still defying \t\tfederal prohibitions.
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\t\tSo far, federal officials have rebuffed the pleas of Americans for Safe \t\tAccess.
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\t\tArthur J. Lawrence, the assistant U.S. surgeon general, wrote in an \t\tApril 20 rejection letter that the federal government already has \t\tundertaken an exhaustive review of marijuana's medicinal merits. That \t\teffort began in 2002 when medical marijuana supporters petitioned U.S. \t\tregulators to yank cannabis from Schedule 1, which is reserved for \t\tabused drugs devoid of medical value. Lawrence reasoned that Scherer's \t\tData Quality Act request amounted to a duplication of effort.
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\t\tScherer countered that Lawrence is ignoring mounting evidence that pot \t\tis good medicine and the act's intent: to quickly correct mistakes in \t\tthe government record. Americans for Safe Access, which claims 12,000 \t\tpatients on its rolls, has appealed. U.S. Health and Human Services \t\tofficials have until Tuesday to respond.
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\t\tThe Bush administration gives no indication of bending.
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\t\tAlthough there have been "suggestions" that some elements of the herb \t\tmight be developed into prescription drugs, potential benefits are \t\toutweighed by a "manifest risk" of widespread abuse, said David Murray, \t\ta White House Office of National Drug Control Policy analyst.
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\t\tEven if new marijuana-based drugs were approved, Murray said, they would \t\tnot likely have "the character of the raw crude leaf."
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\t\tFor Sherer, relief comes with a dropper of liquid cannabis extract six \t\ttimes a day.
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\t\tThe drug, she says, doesn't make her high but eases otherwise unyielding \t\tpain and spasms at the base of her neck.
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\t\tGrowing up in Austin, Texas, Sherer always preferred microbrew beer to \t\tmarijuana. But that relationship with cannabis changed in 2000, she \t\tsaid, after a U.S. marshal hit her from behind during an International \t\tMonetary Fund protest. Scherer's civil lawsuit against the U.S. is \t\twinding toward trial.
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\t\tThe blow caused a ligament in her neck to snap. After a year of \t\ttreatment with heavy pain medications, Sherer said, her kidneys began to \t\tshut down.
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\t\tWhen her doctor asked if she knew anyone who smoked pot or how to get \t\tit, Sherer wondered if he had gone off the deep end.
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\t\tThe recommendation that she use pot as a painkiller changed both \t\tSherer's medical status and her career path. Instead of focusing her \t\tbudding organizational skills on world trade issues, she made medical \t\tmarijuana her prime cause.
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\t\tAmericans for Safe Access has since has blossomed into one of the most \t\tactive medical marijuana groups in the nation.
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\t\tLast summer, Sherer discovered Tozzi's law and got an idea. She would \t\tturn the pro-business act on its head and apply it to medical marijuana, \t\targuably one of America's most quixotic consumer causes.
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\t\tShe had never met Tozzi, but the godfather of data quality showed up \t\tuninvited when Sherer held a news conference last October in Washington \t\tto announce her scheme.
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\t\tSherer fretted that Tozzi was up to no good. Instead, he said he wanted \t\tto help.
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\t\t"I figured a little shot of support from me, from someone they'd never \t\texpect, would help a group that has been battered around quite a bit," \t\the said.
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\t\tTozzi, having spent a lifetime working Washington's back corridors, \t\tcalls himself "a regulatory nerd." He started in the Office of \t\tManagement and Budget during the 1960s, after a military tour in Vietnam \t\tand a failed attempt to make it as a jazz trumpet player in New Orleans. \t\tBy the Reagan era, Tozzi had climbed to a top spot at OMB.
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\t\tHe promptly shifted to the private sector, got a big office near Dupont \t\tCircle in Washington and, the ultimate insider, forged a reputation as a \t\tlobbyist who can massage the Washington work product for clients like \t\tthe tobacco industry and chemical companies.
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\t\tTozzi played a key role in 1996 in establishing the Center for \t\tRegulatory Effectiveness, a business advocacy group that runs a website \t\tdevoted to monitoring the wind shifts of government regulations. Out of \t\tthat he launched the Data Quality Act.
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\t\tJust a few lines tucked into a 712-page omnibus bill, the act has had \t\tfar-reaching fallout.
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\t\tEnvironmental and consumer groups consider Tozzi a sort of regulatory \t\tDr. Evil, a stealthy genius whose little tweak of federal rules has hurt \t\tattempts to tame exploitation of the wilderness and workplace. \t\tBusinesses view it as a way to check unwarranted government regulation.
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\t\tSalt companies used the act to challenge government pronouncements about \t\tnegative health effects. Builders fought claims about polluted runoff \t\tfrom construction sites. Chemical companies battled rules that \t\tthreatened top-selling products.
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\t\tDespite her liberal credentials, Sherer has developed an effective \t\tworking relationship with Tozzi. And mutual admiration.
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\t\t"I was expecting someone from the shadow government, like the cancer man \t\tfrom the 'X-Files,' " Scherer said. Instead she got "this charismatic \t\tcharacter who fills every corner of the room with his personality."
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\t\tTozzi, meanwhile, thinks Scherer is underemployed. "She's doing God's \t\twork at great personal sacrifice," he said. "But when she gets this \t\tissue straightened out, she can go anywhere."
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\t\tSherer introduced Tozzi to medical marijuana patients. One in particular \t\tstruck him.
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\t\tShe was a schoolteacher in her early 60s who looked "just like Betty \t\tCrocker," Tozzi recalled. The woman said she had always been a \t\tlaw-abiding citizen but had been forced to buy pot on the streets to \t\ttreat her multiple sclerosis.
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\t\t"I don't know if she was more bothered by the pain of her illness or the \t\tpain of her actions," he said.
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\t\tBut this master of the regulatory chessboard had more than just \t\taltruistic motives. Since its inception, the Data Quality Act has been \t\tunder attack as a weapon of big business, a stealthy way to keep federal \t\tagencies tied in knots over what constitutes sound science.
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\t\tEager to blunt such criticism and dash attempts to thwart his law in \t\tCongress, Tozzi has pushed public interest groups to start deploying the \t\tact against the bureaucrats. Legalization of medical marijuana, he said, \t\tcould prove a powerful court test of government resistance to his \t\tbeloved Data Quality Act.
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\t\tBut does this bid by Scherer and Tozzi stand a chance?
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\t\tPeter Meyers, a George Washington University law professor who in the \t\t1970s fought for removal of cannabis from the federal government list of \t\tdangerous drugs, doesn't hold out much hope. He considers marijuana \t\tprohibition a part of a broader moral crusade being waged by the Bush \t\tadministration.
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\t\t"This has nothing to do with the medical debate," he said. "I think it's \t\tsimply politics."
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\t\tJon Gettman, a George Mason School of Public Policy senior fellow who is \t\tleading the current bid to get marijuana removed from that list, \t\tbelieves the Data Quality Act challenge puts extra pressure on federal \t\tregulators.
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\t\tAnd he welcomes the oddball pairing of Tozzi the conservative and Sherer \t\tthe activist.
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\t\t"The idea of overlapping interests and strange bedfellows is a sign of a \t\tvery healthy political system," he said. "I think James Madison would be \t\tdelighted."
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\t\tNote: Steph Sherer teams up with a Beltway lobbyist in fight to lift the \t\tban on medical marijuana.

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Author: Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
Published: July 18, 2005
Copyright: 2005 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Link to article: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/bid.htm