It Can't Happen Here Part 1 Chapter 6

Dusty Costa, student
 at Calaveras High School
in the 1960's

   by Dustin Costa from a Colorado Prison where he is serving time for growing pot in California

   In 1998, then-Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey declared that there was "not one shred of evidence" that marijuana had medical uses, and said it was "Cheech and Chong Medicine."

   It was a statement that I would throw back in the government's face many times during my public advocacy.

   Later, my use of the phrase "it's time we embrace Cheech and Chong" would come back to haunt me in a big way.  More on that later.

   McCaffrey's aggressive assault on California's medical marijuana law included going after the doctors that recommend it.

   He was so certain that he could prove marijuana had no medical use that he sought - and succeeded in getting - yet another government study of marijuana to try to prove his vicious anti-marijuana rhetoric.

   This time the study was done by the National Institute of Health, which is no friend of marijuana.  The $900,000 study, conducted by an elite corps of medical professionals, published their findings in 1999.

   They contradicted McCaffrey, saying that marijuana did indeed have "well-established" medical applications.

   Their findings coincided with those of the earlier La Guardia and Schafer commissions.  Case
closed, right?  Well...no.

   (to be continued)