I remember the last time I saw my grandmother. She was 96. She'd been in a nursing home for a year or so, and she died two weeks later. When my father and I went to see her we knew it might be the last time. She knew it too. She seemed to have shrunk in every direction, down to about 4' 10", 80 pounds.

We were sitting by her bed when they brought in her breakfast; eggs, toast, fruit salad, etc. - not a bad looking breakfast. She ate the toast and fruit salad but barely touched her scrambled eggs.

"Not hungry today?" my father asked.

"I'm watching my cholesterol." she said. She was totally serious!

I'm always reminded of that story when I think of a terminally-ill cancer patient, too nauseous from chemotherapy to eat, being denied medicinal marijuana because of the possible dangers. Like denying a man his last cigarette on his way to the firing squad because of the health risks of smoking.

For most of my adult life I've felt ashamed to be a citizen of a country that persecutes people for using marijuana. The consequences of the war on drugs have been devastating. Four hundred thousand people a year are arrested for marijuana-related offenses. Many have their lives ruined, not from pot but from pot laws. We have all become victims as a result of our limited resources being expended on this senseless political witch hunt.

There is finally something I can do about it. There is finally something we can all do!

THE INITIATIVE FOR COMPASSIONATE USE OF MARIJUANA FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES IS ON THE BALLOT IN CALIFORNIA ON NOVEMBER 4th. REGISTER TO VOTE AND VOTE FOR IT. DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO GET EVERYONEELSE TO DO THE SAME.

The methods the United States government uses to withhold a safe, effective medicine from sick people in need are barbaric. It's tantamount to cruel and usual punishment.

Marijuana has been shown to be effective to relieve nausea associated with chemotherapy, prevent blindness induced by glaucoma, serve as an appetite stimulant, act as an anti-epileptic, ward off asthma attacks and migraine headaches, alleviate pain and depression, and reduce muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and paraplegia.

A D.E.A. administrative judge, after reviewing volumes of scientific evidence, declared marijuana to be one of the safest drugs known to man. You can drown in a glass of water, but there is no known toxic level of marijuana. There hasn't been one case of death caused by an overdose of pot in the history of the world. Even if you took all the anti-marijuana lies and disinformation the government propagates and call it the truth, it's still impossible to justify the inhumane practice of withholding an effective medicine for seriously ill patients.

What will the opponents say? What reasons to allow sick people to use morphine, Seconal, Valium, Librium, lithium, codeine, steroids, radiation therapy, surgery, but not allow them to eat a pot brownie?

They argue that marijuana could somehow get into the hands of minors, or adults that aren't sick could get high and abuse the drug, suffering its detrimental, habit forming affects.

First of all, it *is* in the hands of minors because of the ridiculous war on drugs and the false information propagated to perpetuate the war. Alcohol is highly regulated and legal for people over 21. Pot is not. And it's easier for a fourteen-year old to buy a joint than a beer. Doesn't that say it all about the effectiveness of the drug?

The unfortunate consequences of lying to our children is that when they're told by D.A.R.E. or P.R.I.D.E or other government sanctioned organizations, that crack, heroin and pot are bad for you, the entire representation loses credibility. The kids know pot doesn't do the horrible things the government says it does. They know it's a lie. So they figure what they hear about crack and heroin is also a lie.

And of course the bottom line is, if the disinformation the government spreads is taken as true, out of the millions of pot smokers over hundreds of years, where are all the impotent, infertile, sex-changed, brain-damaged casualties?

Yes, I have personally known adults that smoke so much pot that they sit around, lethargic, experiment with harder drugs, blah, blah, blah. And for every person like that I've seen hundreds (thousands?) of doctors, lawyers, business women, judges, athletes, artists, scientists, presidents, who smoke a little pot now and then recreationally, and suffer no detrimental effects. And the only reason they're exposed to harder drugs is because the government puts pot users in the same courts, police files, prisons, and retail outlets as hard drug users. If they made ice cream illegal you'd have to go to the same person who sells heroin and machine guns to buy ice cream.

Over the last ten years the amount of money, prisons, legislation, interdiction, and political rhetoric against cocaine has sky-rocketed. The price of coke on the street has plummeted to the lowest it's been in a decade. So now what? More laws? More prisons?

Financially, the number-one largest political lobbying effort in California in 1995 was by the prison-industrial complex. The highly addictive, harmful-to-your-health war on drugs has permeated our society to such an absurd extent that we now have furniture and construction companies lobbying for harsher laws so more prisons can be built.

In a recent article by Peter Livingston, it's suggested that at the current rate of increase of our prison population (combined state and federal population grew by 8.8% during the year ending June 1995) in a very short time the entire population of the United States will be in prison. The good news is that although everyone will be in prison, we'll have no more problems with homelessness, crime on the streets, highway deaths, abortion issues, affirmative action, college loan deficits......

It is argued that at least a small percentage of marijuana users would abuse the drug if it was more readily available. First of all, it is hard to imagine it being more available than it already is. Second, what are the real risks? I suppose someone might go to bed early or watch too many cartoons.

Anything can be habit-forming. Exercising, not exercising, eating, not eating, being indoors and being outdoors are all addicting. Between four and five percent of Americans have eating disorders. Should we ban food? Maybe allow possession of small quantities for personal use but come down hard on the growers and distributors?

I guarantee that if coffee was made illegal tomorrow people would soon be sneaking around in back rooms doing twenty double espressos. They'd find ways to make it smaller and stronger for smuggling purposes and eventually they'd be smoking crack-caffeine.

The real tragedy is not only sick people being denied medicine or children having hard drugs available to them. The overall detrimental effect to our society of wasting our precious resources is more pervasive than most people think. Every victim of behavior that results from a lack of good education is a casualty of misplaced priorities. Every victim of a violent crime is a victim of the drug war. A profound personal experience two years ago provided this realization for me.

A young girl, Polly Klass, was taken from her home in Sonoma county where she was playing with her friends, and she was brutally raped and murdered. My band Zero and a host of other San Francisco musicians performed at a benefit to raise money for the cost of having one or two small private planes search for Polly. We did this as a community effort to supplement the limited resources of the local police. While we did this, the United States government (God Bless America) sent dozens of helicopters and planes and hundreds of soldiers swarming over the hills one county north of us to search for pot plants! They were too busy to look for Polly!

The parole officer assigned to keep track of Polly's murderer neglected to find out in advance why his parolee had missed his recent appointments because that officer was overwhelmed with a roster of drug offenders.

Polly Klass was a victim of the drug war! We all are. If your child is kidnapped, get together some money for a reward and print up your own posters. If you know someone growing a pot plant, you can mobilize an army by calling an 800 number. Our priorities are upside down!

The roof in my kids' school is leaking and there's no money to fix it. I say, let's get some D.E.A. agents to use the butt-end of their guns to pound nails so the children will have a safe dry place to learn to care for one another. Let's put our precious resources toward educating our children; let's give them the knowledge and confidence to differentiate between use and abuse - of anything. Let's teach kindness and compassion so our kids will grow up with enough sensitivity to know that political reasons aren't good enough reasons to withhold pain-reducing medicine from sick people!

The system is set up to make it hard for young people to vote. It's set up so it's difficult to register or ascertain if you're already registered, or even to tell what district you're in. This is especially true if you move around or go to college. But not voting is allowing the system to work against you. Hold your nose and vote for Clinton. Or vote for Nobody. But vote for this initiative. It can save people's lives. And the life you save may be your own.

Greg Anton is the drummer for the San Francisco band Zero.

He is also a practicing criminal defense attorney.