July 30, 2002

Read Transcript of Monday's Show

MSNBC

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think marijuana is illegal and I don't think that it should be done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know people who can definitely use it, who are sick or have cancer. I don't know, I think it would be very beneficial. I think the government should be OK with it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's effective, but I think that many people are going to end up abusing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DONAHUE: It seems everybody has an opinion about the legalization of marijuana. We're talking about this issue tonight. First, with retired Army General Barry McCaffrey. As you know, he was the nation's drug czar from 1996 to 2001. He doesn't think pot should be legal for any reason.

Also joining us is Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico. You can hear me, Governor?

GOV. GARY JOHNSON ®, NEW MEXICO: I can hear you, Phil.

DONAHUE: Very good. Well, Governor, I'm in New Jersey with the son my mother wanted to have. I say this very respectfully to you, General. Not only that, you look like all my younger relatives.

Listen to this, Governor. At his retirement from active duty, he was the most highly-decorated and youngest four-star general in the United States Army. This man, United States Military Academy at West Point, 1964. And has received decorations from France, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.

I'm going to tell you honestly, General, it makes it all the more painful. What a wonderful career you have. My hat is off to you, sir. But the drug war is not working. We're spending billions. The price of drugs is going up. We're-God knows what we're doing to Colombia and other supplying nations.

We buy helicopters instead of rehab. We arrested, in 2000, almost a million people for marijuana in one year. Eighty-eight percent of these arrests were for possession. I heard you say that we cannot arrest ourselves out of this problem. That seems to be exactly what you're trying to do.

GEN. BARRY MCCAFFREY, RET., FORMER DRUG CZAR: Phil, one of the challenges we have in the drug issue is we've got to stick with facts. Now, here are the facts. 1979, 14 percent of the country were (UNINTELLIGIBLE) drug users. It's down to 6 percent today.

The use of drugs by adolescents is the lowest in eight years. The treatment programs have never been more robust. The international cooperation is working fine. So a lot of what you're saying, factually, just doesn't match up. And most people in this country in jail are simply not there for simple possession of drugs.

DONAHUE: Most of them are not there for violent offenses. And we have more than two million people in jail. I mean, that alone...

MCCAFFREY: The facts of the matter are, if you're behind bars in a federal prison right now for possession of marijuana, you had more than 200 kilograms on you when we arrested you. Some of these assertions are just clever, but not true.

What is true is that we are extremely concerned that marijuana and other drugs, particularly alcohol, when used in excess by younger people, particularly from the sixth grade through 12th grade, produce a higher proportion of the population that are chronic abusers. That's actually what we care about.

DONAHUE: Yes. Governor, you're listening in on this. May we have your thoughts, please?

JOHNSON: Phil, I think you kind of hit it on the head. First off, let me say, as somebody who has smoked marijuana and doesn't smoke it anymore, marijuana is a handicap. Don't smoke marijuana.

I would also like to say, not having had a drink in 15 years, to quit drinking alcohol. It's a terrible handicap. And until you quit, you realize what a handicap it is.

But that said, should we continue to make it criminal for the use of marijuana? And the statistics you cite are correct. About 800,000 people a year now are being arrested for marijuana. About half-about 90 percent of those arrests are for possession only. So clearly, we cannot continue to arrest and incarcerate this country over the use of marijuana. It just doesn't work.

And to talk about marijuana use being any sort of gateway drug is just not the case at all. Statistically, one out of 105 marijuana users goes on to use cocaine on a regular basis. And again, we cannot continue to arrest and incarcerate over a bad choice.

And when I say legalize marijuana, I advocate the legalization of marijuana. When I say legalize marijuana, it's never going to be legal for kids to do marijuana, to sell to kids. It's never going to be legal to smoke pot and get behind the wheel of a car and drive a car impaired.

But that ought to be our concentration is, hey, you're going to smoke pot, do harm to somebody else, be in a position to do harm. That's when you belong behind bars.

DONAHUE: Let's say again, here, Governor, you will always be able to pass Breathalyzer. If they ask to you pee in a bottle, you are ready. You're a triathlon athlete. I thank you for-I think it's courageous what you're doing.

I think, too, if kids smoke pot in high school, General, that is not a good thing. I think it makes you stupid. You can't remember anything. A lot of kids are stoned all day. They lose their adolescence. They get to be 32 going on 17. Don't smoke pot!

But we don't need the cops and they're knocking the doors down, and the $82 billion...

MCCAFFREY: Oh, Phil, come on. Let's have a discussion. The facts of the matter are, I spent this afternoon with Dr. Mitch Rosenthal of the Phoenix House, the biggest nonprofit drug treatment chain in the country. Terrific people.

When you ask about children and drug treatment in America, 50 percent of them are there because the primary drug of abuse is marijuana. We actually think marijuana is a dangerous drug with limited benefits. I think having it be illegal is an extremely sound policy choice.

There is a good argument that you clearly don't want people locked up for possession of two joints. I would argue, that's actually not the case in America. I think we've got a very clever campaign right now by people, to normalize and lower the rejection rate of marijuana. We don't agree with it.

DONAHUE: You speak about medical use?

MCCAFFREY: No, I'm talking about general use. Now, medical marijuana is a completely different issue.

DONAHUE: I want to give you a chance to make your case about that. Because we do have other people who want to say that it helps, it shouldn't be illegal. And we'll find out...

MCCAFFREY: But remember, we have to keep the facts on the table.

DONAHUE: OK, I'm trying. And that's why you're here.

MCCAFFREY: And the facts come from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and Mitch Rosenthal, not from Governor Johnson.

DONAHUE: Well, but he certainly cannot be disrespected.

MCCAFFREY: He can have a viewpoint. But he shouldn't articulate the statistics on the drug problem. Let's get that from scientists.

DONAHUE: And we'll give him a chance to make his case when we come back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two and I didn't like it. And didn't inhale and never tried it again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DONAHUE: That was Bill Clinton, as you know, during the 1992 presidential campaign, admitting that he tried marijuana.

Governor, the general has some major misgivings about the figures being thrown around here. Among other things, you want-you're saying that nobody is in jail because a cop found a roach in the ashtray of the car.

MCCAFFREY: No, I didn't say that. What I'm saying is that the overwhelming majority of people behind bars in America, more than two million, have a substance abuse or alcohol problem. And their primary cause of arrest tends to be burglary, breaking and entering, robbery, waste, fraud and abuse.

And the secondary charges tend to be drug-related. Many of them have drug problems. And they frequently will plea-bargain down to a marijuana possession instead of a weapon or a forced entry. I think that very few people in America are put behind bars when chronically addicted to drugs, for simple possession. I think that's a false argument.

I think the number of arrests we're quoting on marijuana are certainly...

DONAHUE: Four-point-one million marijuana arrests during the Clinton years.

MCCAFFREY: But again, you go to the number of people that drive drunk. Do we want to stop arresting people for driving drunk because nine out of 10 aren't arrested when they do it? We think that having strong social disapproval of marijuana is helpful.

DONAHUE: I do, too. Governor?

JOHNSON: Let's have strong social disapproval for marijuana. Let's decriminalize marijuana. Let's say that it's bad to do. But we're criminalizing a behavior here that arguably, when somebody doesn't do any harm to anyone, again, other than themselves, is criminal and can end you up in jail.

Look, the government maintains that there are about 13 million users of drugs on a fairly regular basis. I just find this incredible to believe, given that we're arresting 1.6 million people a year on drug-related crime. That's one out of seven.

I have the sense that when the government says we're down to like a million users of drugs, we're going to be arresting 18 million people a year.
And I don't want to be flippant here. But I'm going to live to see 80 million Americans arrested in this country. That is not to condone marijuana use. But I have to tell you, the punishment is way out of context to the act. Way out.

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: There would be overall less substance abuse if you were to legalize marijuana. And I'm speaking now from experience. Alcohol is the real killer out there. And everybody talks like, gee, we're going to let another genie out of the bottle.

DONAHUE: Gentlemen, the computer is looking me square in the eye.

You get to speak and so does the general, in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DONAHUE: Everybody agrees nothing scares a parent faster than to smell it or learn that a child is using marijuana. We're talking about the move to legalize pot with the Republican Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson, who is for - who thinks the drug war isn't working and should have his own time to tell us what he is for. He's foursquare against young people using drugs and he wants you to know that and he's entitled to at least be understood on that issue.

Governor Barry McCaffrey is here, the former drug czar. You told me that it was really one of the most rewarding times of your life professionally.

MCCAFFREY: Sure. You know I was honored to be part of it. We had huge increases in drug prevention funding, drug treatment programs.

Governor Johnson and I have certainly disagreed before. I have great respect for him as a person, but we're also listening to a guy that called for the legalization of heroin. New Mexico has the highest death rate of heroin in the country. I personally find his views on this...

JOHNSON: I got to cut in here right now.

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: Talk about harm reduction strategies for heroin and we have cut down the usage of debt. We've cut down deaths from heroin from overdose in the State of New Mexico and nobody seems to really care about that and that's what we've done. I never advocated the legalization of heroin. What I've talked about is harm reduction strategies on all these other drugs and that is basically to look at this problem as a health problem rather than a criminal justice problem and these are things I get thrown at me all the time.

MCCAFFREY: You know I think Governor Ventura and Governor Johnson represent an irresponsible viewpoint that is largely denied by the law enforcement and treatment professionals in their states, and I think their parties. I just disagree with what he...

DONAHUE: General. General I have to say you are ascribing the word irresponsible; you're using the word irresponsible to describe a stance that has been assumed by former Secretary of State George Schultz.

MCCAFFREY: By the way, I talked about heroin use.

DONAHUE: By Milton Friedman (ph).

MCCAFFREY: I talked about heroin use and 48,000 dead a year from drugs in America so.

DONAHUE: The governor is denying that. I wish it were possible because I think you're both civil people here.

MCCAFFREY: Sure.

DONAHUE: Responsible people. I know that the governor is bone dry, no alcohol, no nothing, and I think you know he's saying like so many others are saying that we're looking a little bit hysterical here, and that we - you know 20, 30 years ago you could smoke on an elevator. You could smoke a cigarette. There were ashtrays on elevators. It's amazing what we can do to change public opinion. Why can't we do this with something like pot and young people?

MCCAFFREY: Well most of us, meaning pediatricians, teachers, coaches, religious leaders, think it would be an irresponsible policy choice. We don't agree. We simply don't want adolescents using drugs. We don't want the transportation industry using them. We don't agree.

DONAHUE: We don't want them drinking Bud Light either but they do and nobody seems to be hysterical about that.

MCCAFFREY: We certainly haven't legalized adolescents drinking beer either. We are firmly against it. Phil, no one will accuse you of being neutral on the position, I'll tell you that.

DONAHUE: No, that's true and it's not a secret. Governor, you wanted to say?

JOHNSON: Well, I just think it's very hypocritical that we haven't criminalized tobacco use that we haven't criminalized alcohol use, but gee we did try that before. You know America is founded on freedom and with that goes personal accountability and responsibility and, again, if you smoke marijuana, do harm to anybody else, put yourself in a position to do harm to somebody else just like alcohol, that ought to be the concentration. We ought to put you behind bars.

Look, from where I sit when half of what we're spending on law enforcement, half of what we're spending on the courts, and half of what we're spending on the prisons is drug related. This is crazy, and when we talk about harm reduction strategies, getting back to heroin, you know what?

Zurich, Switzerland, they have a free heroin program. It's not the end all, but it's looking at the problem as a health problem rather than a criminal justice problem. The idea of free heroin, you go to a doctor. You get a prescription.

The government provides the heroin. No more overdose, clean needles, ingestion at a clinic, no more having to rob and steal to get the product. No more HIV, no more Hepatitis C. Death, disease and crime has plummeted in Zurich and that comes from the chief of police from Zurich.

MCCAFFREY: Oh, governor, come on.

JOHNSON: And now Germany is engaged in the same heroin maintenance problem, not the end all, but a basic look at the problem as a health problem rather than a criminal justice problem.

DONAHUE: Can I try for Julian here. Julian are you there?

JULIAN: I am.

DONAHUE: You wanted to say briefly.

JULIAN: I did. You know General McCaffrey used the word "dangerous" to describe marijuana and it seems to me that marijuana, as opposed to alcohol, cause no violence. We know that alcohol causes thousands of deaths in this country both on the road and through disease. You never hear of a stoned person starting a fight or doing harm to themselves or anyone else.

DONAHUE: Well.

JULIAN: So, I'm curious how does the general support his characterization?

MCCAFFREY: Well, first of all I think that alcohol is an enormously harmful drug that causes 150,000 dead a year, possibly as much as $150 million of damage. It is clearly part of the poly drug abuse problem in America. I think we ought to be glad that the use rates have gone down, but we ought to be equally glad that the adolescent population, cigarettes and alcohol use is the lowest in 15 years.

DONAHUE: Yes.

MCCAFFREY: We ought to be glad that the illegal drug use rates is the lowest in eight years, and we ought to be concerned about the fact that the majority of the people behind bars, in fact, have a poly drug abuse problem. I don't agree that marijuana is not a dangerous drug and neither does the National Institute of Drug Abuse, probably more importantly than what I think.

DONAHUE: Yes. You're not suggesting - did you suggest that you thought prohibition worked?

MCCAFFREY: Well, I didn't talk about it. Governor Johnson did.

DONAHUE: What you would feel about it?

MCCAFFREY: What I would tell you categorically is that no one's going to get tricked into trying to acquaint marijuana and prohibition, although there is no question that the impact of alcohol abuse on America was lower during prohibition than at any other time in our history. It went down and we implemented it. It went back up and we took it off but socially it didn't fit with America.

DONAHUE: And the price of the product went up and turf wars broke out.

MCCAFFREY: Don't talk about the price of the product. There is - the supply of every drug in America grossly exceeds the demand. That's the most nonsensical figure imaginable. The supply of heroin in the world is over 500 metric tons. The U.S. is using about 13 metric tons.

DONAHUE: Yes.

MCCAFFREY: The price is not the determinant of human behavior. The problem with heroin is it changes the neurochemistry of the brain.

DONAHUE: Yes, not unlike alcohol. Governor, you wanted to say?

JOHNSON: Again, this is not about condoning the use of drugs at all.

It's just about making sense. It's about getting away from prohibition. Not for a minute would I condone the use of any drugs. I don't think anybody here is condoning the use of drugs. It's just that we can not arrest and incarcerate our kids. Fifty-four percent of the graduating class of the year 2000 did illegal drugs. It seems to me that we ought to be putting our money - putting our resources into education. Don't do drugs. Don't use alcohol. Don't use tobacco. That ought to be our focus.

MCCAFFREY: Eighty percent of them had drunk driving but that doesn't mean you legalize drunk driving.

JOHNSON: Our focus ought to be putting resources into treatment for individuals that want treatment. Our focus ought to be to reduce death, disease, and crime. I just maintain that 90 percent of the drug problem is prohibition related, not use related, and that is in no way to discount the problems with use.

DONAHUE: I get you.

JOHNSON: But that ought to be our focus.

DONAHUE: I let you both in.

MCCAFFREY: By the way, I might add Governor Johnson vetoed his drug treatment programs until we put a blow torch on him in the last two years.

DONAHUE: I'll give you a chance to respond to that, Governor, and we'll also talk with a ranking conservative in the Reagan administration who goes against the grain and supports the legalization of marijuana. Know who that is, Lyn Nofziger, no kidding, back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DONAHUE: Well, we're back with General McCaffrey, who is out-manned as he reminds me.

MCCAFFREY: No, I said there was an unbalanced viewpoint.

DONAHUE: Unbalanced, sorry.

MCCAFFREY: I don't think I'm out-manned at all.

DONAHUE: No, you can handle it, I'm sure. Well, it's not an intent at all to overwhelm you, which I agree, I don't think would be possible, and I thought that I made the case that you are an honorable man and that honorable men have differed on this subject.

MCCAFFREY: The only thing I would argue is the viewpoints of the millions of Americans in recovery out there and Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous aren't being represented when we imply that marijuana isn't a dangerous drug. I got to treatment centers all over this country.

The people who are clinging to sobriety a day at a time don't want to see marijuana normalized. They're against it.

DONAHUE: OK. Nobody is saying that marijuana is something we want to hand out.

MCCAFFREY: Right.

DONAHUE: Nobody. We don't want to hand out alcohol.

MCCAFFREY: Right, we want to have high social disapproval.

DONAHUE: The question is what do we do about it and are we corrupting and is it fair to the cops? They're knocking doors down. They're risking their life.

MCCAFFREY: Well, ask Gary Johnson's guy who resigned on him when he called for the legalization of heroin and marijuana. The guy quit. We don't agree with his position.

DONAHUE: Governor.

JOHNSON: And ask my new appointee who has been the federal prosecutor, who happens to agree with me down the road on all of this, that what we're doing is a failure. General, you talked earlier about the fact that I vetoed some money for treatment.

MCCAFFREY: I sure wish you made these arguments when you were running for office instead of lately.

DONAHUE: The suggestion is if you made these arguments when you were running, you wouldn't be elected, Governor.

MCCAFFREY: You wouldn't be the governor. We wouldn't agree with you.

JOHNSON: Look, here's - look, the general says I vetoed money for treatment. You know, New Mexico is one of five states in the United States that is not in deficit spending and that's because I vetoed over 750 bills because, you know what? I really do a damn good job of managing the checkbook.

So I vetoed about a billion dollars worth of spending here in New Mexico and again, it gets back to the fact that legislators consistently over appropriate for the money that we have. So, yes, I think I'm doing a good job as governor.

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: And I got to talk too about the fact that the government, when it comes - let's get back to marijuana use. The government assumes two things when it comes to marijuana use. Number one is you need to go to jail or; number 2, you belong in treatment and you know what? That just isn't the case. Most people that smoke marijuana, smoke marijuana like other people have cocktails in the evenings. It's not a good choice. I don't suggest it. I think it's an incredible handicap, but do you belong in prison? Are you criminal for that choice? No.

DONAHUE: Governor, let me get Lyn now. Are you there Mr. Nofziger, sir?

LYN NOFZIGER, FMR. REAGAN PRESS SECY.: Yes, I'm here.

DONAHUE: Lyn, we regret to re-inform some folks out there that you lost your daughter in 1994 to cancer, and she was a medical marijuana user. Now, that makes your foursquare in favor of medical marijuana use, correct?

NOFZIGER: Oh, absolutely. Not only that, I've learned a lot since.

DONAHUE: But you also admire General McCaffrey. You know the banner that he's carrying, so tell me your feelings here.

MCCAFFREY: By the way, I haven't told you what I thought about medical marijuana. We're talking about marijuana legalization. If it comes to the medical use of cannabinoids for the control of pain or other medical indications, all of us are foursquare for NIDA and FDA making these drugs available if it's controlled clinical studies.

DONAHUE: Mr. Nofziger, sir.

NOFZIGER: Yes. Well, I don't know what he means by controlled clinical studies. I do know that if there's enough evidence out there that marijuana helps when other medicines do not, such as Marinol, there's enough evidence out there that it not only helps people with chemotherapy who have nausea and diarrhea and loss of appetite, it also helps people who have glaucoma. It helps people with multiple sclerosis.

MCCAFFREY: If I may differ, sir, it doesn't help with glaucoma. The Institute of Medicine study...

NOFZIGER: May I tell you that you haven't talked to people who need this help and I have.

MCCAFFREY: Well, I spent a million dollars on a study out of the Institute of Medicine...

NOFZIGER: I don't care what you spent. Government is good at spending money, but government is not looking at the people that it does help and the fact is, it has kept people with glaucoma from going blind, and you can find people who will tell you that.

MCCAFFREY: They just don't happen to be National Institute of Drug Abuse of the FDA.

NOFZIGER: I don't care about that because government can twist things around any way it wants to make its point and my point is that medical marijuana is usable to help people with pain, to help people with nausea, to help people with the wasting symptoms of AIDS, to help people with glaucoma, and there are people out there who will testify that it helps them.

DONAHUE: Yes, and you know from personal experience; your daughter's pain, nausea, diarrhea, all the accompanying symptoms to the serious illness that was to consume her life, relieved those symptoms.

NOFZIGER: Yes. You know we don't claim, I don't think anybody claims that marijuana is a cure but it's a palliative and what it did for her is it got rid of the nausea. It helped with the diarrhea.

DONAHUE: Right.

NOFZIGER: It restored her appetite and it gave her some comfort during that period of her life when she was undergoing this.

DONAHUE: And your feelings about that, General?

MCCAFFREY: You know, the bottom line is I've spent probably three years of my life in hospitals. I've had 17 surgeries. I am all for any reputable therapeutic intervention to control pain. We don't do it very well. The American medical establishment needs better training.

We do have terrific drugs nowadays, but at the end of the day if it's medical marijuana we're talking about, disassociating 32 cannabinoids, and using them in controlled doses for medical reasons, how about it. We'll make the science do it not a bunch of potheads in California.

NOFZIGER: You know that's an nice, easy insult, but a lot of those potheads in California in fact have been taking marijuana because they have one affliction or another and it has helped them.

MCCAFFREY: Well, you got to hear what I said now, Mr. Nofziger. I actually believe that if it's medical intervention we're talking about, then have the FDA and the NIH do disassociated studies, put out the cannabinoids in pill or rapid onset delivery vehicle, we're all for it.

NOFZIGER: Well, general, are you aware of the fact that at one time the federal government was giving marijuana cigarettes to 17 people and now it's down to seven, but some of those people had glaucoma and it was helping them with glaucoma?

MCCAFFREY: Yes. Actually, the institute - either you pick one of the few indications, by the way, for which it's probably not helpful.

DONAHUE: Thirty seconds, General.

MCCAFFREY: But we are fully convinced that NIDA should fund any legitimate investigation of either smoke marijuana in the short term or, more importantly, pure cannabinoid research in the long term. We're all for it as long as it's science and medicine we're talking about.

DONAHUE: Yes. Governor, you're still there?

JOHNSON: Yes, I'm still here.

DONAHUE: OK, I want to give you a chance. I'm afraid if I throw you the pass now, you're not going to have time to catch it. Up next, we'll find out what's happening in the battle to legalize some of those potheads from California when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DONAHUE: We're talking about the issue of legalizing marijuana. In San Francisco, city supervisor Mark Leno has put a proposal on the ballot in November to gauge interest in government grown and distributed marijuana.

And in Las Vegas, Billy Rogers of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), a policy project to spearhead a ballot initiative to legalize possession of up to three ounces of pot in Nevada. Welcome gentlemen. Let's go with you, Supervisor Leno.

MARK LENO, SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISOR: Hello, Phil.

DONAHUE: You're going to have - we're going to grow pot on the - the city's going to grow the pot, do I understand you?

LENO: First of all, I've been following your debate here and for the general to say he wants to put backs on the table, to use inflammatory words like "potheads" in California really confuses me. This is a medical issue, a serious medical issue.

I'm concerned about the thousands and thousands of San Franciscans, Californians, and Americans who depend upon a safe and reliable access to their medicines. There is no good reason in the world why the federal government should stand between ill and vulnerable citizens and the medicines they depend upon.

You know the Institute of Medicine wrote in a report, commissioned by the White House in 1999, that said there is clear evidence that medical marijuana does relieve chronic pain, nausea, weight loss, from all the different illnesses that have already been reported by Lyn.

DONAHUE: Yes. Right.

LENO: So what I've done is I put a measure forward, which will be on our November ballot, which will ask San Franciscans if the city should explore the possibility of creating a program whereby we would grow and distribute...

DONAHUE: All right.

LENO: ...to our medical patients.

DONAHUE: All right, the general has my guilt wheel turning here. It is quite true the man is alone here on this program. Go ahead, sir.

MCCAFFREY: Well, I just pointed out it seems to me this is the most biased presentation of the issue I've run into. They city councilman whom I have great respect for looks like a better version of Tom Cruise, a great icon to push forward for a city growing pot? Come on. You got to do this with a straight face. I personally think...

LENO: It should be done by the state and the federal government should stay out.

MCCAFFREY: What many of us think is it ought to be science and medicine and the FDA and the NIH define what's a therapeutic compound and what isn't.

LENO: Sir. Sir.

MCCAFFREY: By the way, just before I came on this program, I reread the Institute of Medicine study that I commissioned and it doesn't say what you just said. It says there are some subpopulations for which there may be a contributory benefit of some aspects of cannabinoids.

LENO: I do need to point out, though, for all of your years in your position, you talk now about yes, we should go ahead with these studies. It is pure politics and that is the simple truth.

DONAHUE: Yes.

LENO: That have prevented the kind of research that we should have done decades and decades ago.

DONAHUE: Mark, let me get Billy Rogers in before the program is over. Nevada, three ounces and you walk, no arrest. Do I understand your proposition?

BILLY ROGERS, NEVADANS FOR RESP. LAW ENF.: Absolutely. Most people in Nevada don't think we ought to be wasting tax dollars and police resources on arresting people for small amounts of marijuana. This initiative would protect responsible people, but it also punishes those who are irresponsible.

Adults would be allowed to possess three ounces of marijuana but there are strict safeguards. Anyone who sells marijuana to minors under this initiative would go to prison. Driving dangerously under the influence of marijuana, people who did that would get arrested and would face possible imprisonment. There are safeguards in this to ensure that the general public is not jeopardized, but we're also protecting responsible people.

DONAHUE: All right.

LENO: Phil, I do want to point out that a Pugh (ph) Poll in 2001 revealed that 73 percent of Americans polled support the medical use of marijuana.

DONAHUE: All right.

LENO: Seventy-three percent. That's how out of step our federal government is. Nine states in this nation have already, by ballot initiative, voted to approve medical use of (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

DONAHUE: Yes, they have.

MCCAFFREY: Oh come on, we have...

DONAHUE: General, you're on.

MCCAFFREY: Thirty-six states passed peach pits for cancer. We had thalidomide approved in a lot of states. We don't have a nation where our medicine is decided by city plebiscites nor by...

LENO: Not city, but state yes. The state has a sovereign interest in the health and well-being of its citizens.

MCCAFFREY: Look, the bottom line to medical marijuana is you're actually talking about medicines. You're talking about controlled delivery of a pure substance for a medical indication where there's a clinical trial that says it helps, let's do it.

LENO: Sir, do you support the measure that's before the U.S. Congress right now?

MCCAFFREY: But if it's smoking pot for prostate cancer, you basically have to be able to say this with a straight face (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

DONAHUE: With only seconds left, you wanted to say what, Mark?

LENO: I want to know if the general supports the measure pending in Congress right now, which would reclassify from Schedule I to Schedule II, medical cannabis, which it should be with morphine and other drugs that should be prescribed for medical use and additionally...

MCCAFFREY: We're not talking about that.

LENO: Yes, you are.

MCCAFFREY: Now wait a second.

DONAHUE: Right, thirty seconds.

MCCAFFREY: Schedule I has to do with should smoked marijuana, 4,000 compounds and you set it on fire, 400 when it's sitting there...

LENO: Medical cannabis is not Schedule II right now. It should be.

MCCAFFREY: Synthetic THC is already in pharmacies.

LENO: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MCCAFFREY: They're already there. It's an approved drug and more...

LENO: But also...

MCCAFFREY: Let me answer it.

LENO: Yes.

MCCAFFREY: More can come as long as it's science and medicine.

DONAHUE: Right. I regret that the clock obliges us now to interrupt. We have been watching a debate on marijuana. I ask you to stay tuned now for "HARDBALL" with Mike Barnicle who's filling in for Chris Matthews this week. Meantime, remember all these folks the next time you get in this argument.

END

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Complete Transcripts: http://www.msnbc.com/news/787845.asp

Guest: John Unger, Gary Johnson, Barry McCaffrey, Lyn Nofziger, Mark Leno, Billy Rogers