Conservatives for Medical Marijuana

Citizens Against Government Waste has endorsed an amendment that would prohibit the Drug Enforcement Administration from using taxpayer money to interfere with the medical use of marijuana users in states that allow it. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the measure, sponsored by Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), any day now. (Last year it was defeated by a vote of 264 to 162, which was not as bad as the 268-to-148 margin in 2004, which in turn was better than the 273-to-152 score in 2003.) In a report issued Monday that praises the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, CAGW criticizes the federal government for "using valuable taxpayer dollars to track down and persecute medical marijuana patients that are using the drug legally in their state," calling those efforts "useless." Other conservative groups that have condemned the federal crackdown on medical marijuana include Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union.

The CAGW report also criticizes other aspects of the federal war on drugs, including the government's anti-drug ads. "Numerous studies done by public and private organizations revealing the failure of the campaign and the unearthing of scandals have proven the media campaign to be an abysmal failure," says CAGW.