DEA Probe Targets Doctor Who Recommended Pot

A family doctor in the Sierra foothills is becoming a test case in the federal government’s war on California’s new medical marijuana law.

Narcotics agents questioned Dr. Robert Mastroianni last month because he has recommended marijuana to three patients since the November passage of Proposition 215.

They also are investigating his practice in what may be the first hard hit in the tug of war between the doctors who advocate the use of the drug and the federal government, according to court affidavits and Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

In addition, a local pharmacist told the doctor that DEA agents contacted him and reviewed Mastroianni’s prescription records, according to affidavits filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

“The pharmacist made clear to me that he felt intimidated,” Mastroianni said in the affidavit.

Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, a group of local doctors and AIDS patients, intervened Friday. They asked San Francisco’s U.S. District Court to stop White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey and other senior Clinton administration officials from punishing doctors who discuss marijuana or recommend its medical use to their patients.

DEA agents questioned Mastroianni on Jan. 27 in this small, community about 120 miles northeast of San Francisco and warned him he was under formal investigation, according to the affidavit.

Sacramento-based DEA Agent Stephen Delgado confirmed that agents visited Mastroianni but refused to comment further.

Mastroianni said in his affidavit that the agents showed him a copy of a “letter of recommendation” for marijuana that he had written for a patient.

Doctors who recommend or prescribe marijuana risk losing their federal authority to write drug prescriptions, exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid programs and criminal charges under federal policy detailed by McCaffrey in December in response to Proposition 215.