“Waiting To Inhale” is not an item on former president Bill Clinton’s “To-Do Punch List;” it’s an award-winning medical marijuana documentary film.

Troubled by glaucoma, suffering from loss of appetite as a result of chemotherapy treatments, got muscular dystrophy, suffering from naturopathic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, or tumors on your long bones? Try medical marijuana.

That is, try medical marijuana if your state legislature approves of it and writes it into law. After passage of the law, comply with all the details of the law as passed. See a doctor, get a prescription, verify the diagnosis, document your doctor is in good standing, get the weed and light up in a space not declared to be smoke-free – maybe your own home. But still – sick as a dog – be prepared for an unannounced interruption and forcible entry by DEA agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency, “The feds.”

Sick or not, state law or not, marijuana as medicine or not – remember that according to the second sentence of the U.S. Const., Article VI, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

In other words, despite your state plebiscite, despite your condition of ill heath, despite your personal thoughts on the subject of medical marijuana – don’t be surprised if you hear in the privacy of your own home: “This is a raid! Everybody on the floor! Hands behind your head! Now!” Don’t be frightened, don’t … in your pants. These are our own constables fighting to keep us safe from ourselves, our doctors’ prescriptions and the horrors of a Schedule-I drug, the dreaded cannabis sativa.

“But I’m sick. My doctor prescribed…,” you protest.

“Quiet,” orders your guardian, your federal in-loco guardian and agent.

“Waiting to Inhale” won the CINE Golden Eagle Award, the Eureka! International Film Festival and a bundle of other awards, but Jed Riffe’s film cannot be found at Blockbuster or in most theaters. (Try http://www.waitingtoinhale.org/thefilm.htm)

Last night as a panelist with Melanie Dehers, Dean of the College of Nursing at Rush University, film director Jed Riffe, and filmmaker and moderator Gordon Quinn at Columbia University’s Film Row following a showing of Jed’s film, what struck me most about the medical-marijuana leg of the drug-war centipede was the utter absence of human compassion for the sick, the aged and the dying. The heartless withdrawal of medicine prescribed by physicians and made by God, trumped by law-enforcement agents learned in handcuffs, headlocks and tasers. Then, like a bolt of lightening striking me after many years of studying the evils of drug war – it dawned on me.

The drug war lacks compassion. In a nutshell, in all its aspects, the drug war knows no compassion, only zero tolerance and muscle. The drug war has no compassion for the addicted, the arrested, the incarcerated, the families of the incarcerated, the innocent crossfire victims, the neighbor forced to live in drug-prohibition Hell. It is a prohibition war without compassion.

If forced to choose between compassion and drug war, drug warriors would rather make prohibition stick with a binge of intolerance than show some compassion and understanding for addiction, human weakness, illness and mortal flaw.

So add to the long list of drug-war faults. Not only does it not work, not only does it exacerbate most American crises – it also is heartless, compassionless and cruel.