ON FEB. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft warned that our country might be the victim of a terrorist attack the next day. He was right.

Early in the morning of Feb. 12, armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed into San Francisco's Sixth Street Harm Reduction Center, a medical marijuana provider that has long worked in cooperation with local health and law enforcement authorities. They dynamited the door, seized computers and hundreds of marijuana plants, and arrested four individuals for the "crime" of growing and dispensing marijuana for medical use by patients suffering the symptoms of AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses, as allowed by California law. It was the latest in a series of medical marijuana raids that began last October and shows no sign of abating.

We tend to expect hypocrisy from politicians, but the Bush administration may have reached a new low. These are the people, after all, who keep talking about shrinking the federal government and returning power to state and local authorities. During the 2000 campaign George W. Bush even told the Dallas Morning News that while he opposed medical marijuana, he thought that states should be able to deal with the issue "as they so choose."

And since the Super Bowl, the administration has been warning us that buying drugs helps fund criminals and terrorists. While that is far less true of marijuana than of heroin and cocaine, there is no doubt that street drug dealers can have some pretty unsavory connections. So what is the Bush crowd doing? Shutting down legitimate medical marijuana providers who work closely with local law enforcement, forcing thousands of patients to turn to street dealers for their medicine.

It's infuriating, and the howls of outrage from San Francisco citizens – not to mention District Attorney Terence Hallinan and Sups. Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, Mark Leno, and Matt Gonzalez, among other local officials – were right on the money. But we must do more than just yell. We must pressure our members of Congress to put a stop to the Bush administration's state-sponsored terrorism.

What can Congress do? Plenty. First, it can pass H.R. 2592, the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act, sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Frank's simple, sensible bill would stop the federal government from interfering with state-authorized medical marijuana programs. It would move marijuana to Schedule II in the Controlled Substances Act, alongside drugs such as morphine, cocaine, and methamphetamine, which physicians can presently prescribe or administer.

Most Bay Area congressional representatives have signed on as cosponsors of H.R. 2592 – most recently, Rep. Tom Lantos (representing the southwest corner of San Francisco, Pacifica, and San Mateo). But there are two notable exceptions: Anna Eshoo (Redwood City and Half Moon Bay) and Ellen Tauscher (Walnut Creek and Antioch). They need to hear from their constituents that the time for fence-sitting is over.

Congress can also call the DEA to account for its irrational, wasteful actions. Why, on the day of a terrorist alert, were law enforcement resources being spent keeping sick people from getting their medicine?

Congress should hold hearings immediately. It should demand that DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson fully account for his agency's behavior.

It should hear from patients who have been deprived by these raids of their safe, legal source of medicine and who are now forced to either suffer without or turn to unreliable and potentially dangerous street sources.