cannabisnews.com: Prosecutors Putting Heat on Medipot Doctors





Prosecutors Putting Heat on Medipot Doctors
Posted by CN Staff on August 25, 2003 at 20:09:59 PT
By Tom Elias
Source: Daily Breeze 
When U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision blocking federal agents from punishing — or even investigating — doctors who recommend marijuana to patients, he was not doing anything unique.For California Attorney General Bill Lockyer was already moving against the most prominent medipot doctor in the nation, helping the Medical Board of California in its attempt to get the doctor’s medical license lifted.
The question: Is Lockyer, who says he favors medical use of marijuana to help alleviate severe pain and other conditions including nausea caused by AIDS and cancer drugs, trying to clamp down on free speech or simply trying to restrict trade in an illegal drug?Another question: How much leeway should doctors have when recommending pot use to patients? Should physicians be required to examine those patients, verifying they have the conditions they claim?All these questions are central to the case of Tod Mikuriya, a Berkeley physician revered in the medipot movement who also serves as medical coordinator for the embattled Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative.“Dr. Tod is like an emergency physician,” says Steve Kubby, a medipot user and former Libertarian Party candidate for governor who sought refuge in Canada after being convicted of possessing a single hallucinatory mushroom. “He’s attempting to help a huge population of sick and disabled people who are being shunned by most other physicians. He is one of our movement’s greatest heroes.” The medical board moved last spring to take away Mikuriya’s license, claiming he did not take proper care in recommending pot to patients. After reviewing records of 16 of the more than 7,000 patients for whom Mikuriya has recommended marijuana, a Medical Board expert blasted his procedures.The expert, said Lockyer’s court brief, “was critical of Dr. Mikuriya’s failure in virtually every case to examine the patient, to obtain a history, to perform appropriate workup of the patient’s symptoms and findings, or to follow up with or monitor the patients.”In short, Lockyer implies that Mikuriya essentially recommends pot to anyone who claims to have a problem which he thinks marijuana might help. The doctor, however, claims he examines each patient, spending at least 15 minutes in every case.His lawyers contend all that is irrelevant, anyway. They say the case is about free speech. The government — state and federal — is out to get doctors who recommend pot under any circumstance, they imply, with authorities disregarding the protections written into the 1996 Proposition 215, California voters’ attempt to legalize medical marijuana, which passed with a 56 percent majority. Says the law, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no physician in this state shall be punished, or denied any right or privilege, for having recommended marijuana to a patient for medical purposes.” This section, Mikuriya’s lawyers note, is silent about physical exams or checking patient histories.But that is simply standard medical practice, replies the attorney general. Without such a stricture, doctors could simply sanction use of marijuana by anyone, facilitating trade in and use of an illegal drug.Nope, say medipot advocates, doctors who make recommendations are only saying the weed can be helpful for certain conditions and recommending it for such use. What anyone does after that is not their responsibility.What’s more, say Mikuriya’s lawyers, the ongoing action against him, with the next hearing set for Sept. 3, is a roundabout way of getting back at patients authorities have tried and failed to convict for using pot.“The case against Dr. Mikuriya is based on the hearsay of disgruntled, sore losers: the police, deputy sheriffs and district attorneys who lost their criminal prosecutions against a bevy of medical marijuana patients,” says Mikuriya lawyer John Fleer. “They’re angry because they lost their underlying prosecutions.”If Mikuriya loses his license, chances are other doctors will refuse to make many recommendations under Proposition 215, and the patients who say they desperately need marijuana will have the rug pulled from under them. Tom Elias is author of The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It, now available in an updated second edition. Source: Daily Breeze (CA)Author: Tom EliasPublished: Monday, August 25, 2003 Copyright: 2003 The Copley Press Inc.Contact: letters dailybreeze.comWebsite: http://www.dailybreeze.com/Related Articles & Web Site:Tod H. Mikuriya, M.D.http://www.mikuriya.com/Mikuriya's Motion Deniedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17012.shtmlPsychiatrist's License May Be Revokedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16839.shtml 
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Comment #3 posted by MOTAVATION on August 26, 2003 at 13:48:32 PT:
Cali-way or the highway!
They can't stop us! The few fighters, patients and doctors are working daily to educate and infom others of there rights. The other's are smoking and paying the price of the bay area while forgetting the mail goal.Now we must work to help un-educated and scared citizens to speak freely with there doctors. Then work on a new larger list of doctors and grow as the community gets stronger and approaches the medical needs a alternative way. A co-op community center is the next thing in California.Is Medical MJ for you? Are you a patient?
We are looking for help in media,legal, and medical fields.. We must contact the doctors that are not speaking freely and openly. Then educate them as well as get there thoughts and support on prop 215.
Calfornia Primary Caregivers and Consultants!
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #2 posted by phil_debowl on August 25, 2003 at 23:21:42 PT
recommend pot
Doctors can recommend/prescribe the pill version of heroin, cocain, meth, without any questions about wheather they should. Occasionally when it becomes obvious that one might be providing opiates to a whole city, they might think about doing something, but they recommend a benign drug, for lots of symptoms, because why? It relieves lots of symptoms, with minimal side effects, and the doctor has to vigorously defend himself. I don't understand how this bullshit has lasted so long!
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #1 posted by Petard on August 25, 2003 at 20:58:25 PT
Desperate people do desperate things
Sounds like the fed and local encroachment authorities and local and state plus federal prostituters are desperately attempting to hang on to their power and control measures. Get over it folks, the people have spoken in Cali before they could be muzzled. The more these law encroachment folks and legal prostituters try and get slammed by the courts, the more people in other states begin to wriggle free of their muzzles too. Before long the national/international media will have to report on these legal struggles and then all hell will break loose. Headlines of "America, land of the incarcerated, home of the naive" and "From Pee to shining Pee, tests that is" will begin appearing nightly. Maybe they'll even start reporting Asscrapt's tours as "Gullible's Travels". 
[ Post Comment ]


Post Comment