cannabisnews.com: Medicinal Pot a Heated Debate





Medicinal Pot a Heated Debate
Posted by FoM on July 16, 2000 at 08:18:41 PT
By Karen Auge, Denver Post Medical Writer 
Source: Denver Post
Ror Poliac could be the last man prosecuted in Colorado for growing the marijuana he smokes to relieve pain.The 43-year-old Poliac, who has multiple sclerosis, liked to smoke a little at night, to help him sleep."I have spasticity in my legs. There are times when I can't even bend my legs, and it's hard to get into bed," he said.
That illegal habit could cost him two to six years in jail, but Poliac doesn't think that's going to happen. He just can't imagine a jury looking at him, in his wheelchair, with his colostomy bag, and deciding he should be in jail.This November, Colorado voters will get a chance to decide whether people like Poliac, who smoke marijuana for what they say are medical reasons, should indeed be prosecuted. Voters will be asked to decide whether to change the state's constitution to allow medical use of marijuana.Proponents say the change makes sense, that marijuana is less dangerous, less addictive than other drugs, like morphine, that doctors prescribe legally.But opponents say there is a big difference - that people like Poliac still couldn't get a prescription, precisely filled out by a pharmacist. Instead, they'd still have to grow their own or buy off the street uncertain doses of an unproven, potentially dangerous drug.Making a Statement:In Poliac's case, the Arapahoe County district attorney's office offered to bump the charges down to a misdemeanor - if Poliac agreed to stop using marijuana for the length of his probation.But Poliac said he can't do that. Besides, he and his attorney, Warren Edson, want a trial. They want to make a statement about Colorado's marijuana laws. And until the trial was delayed this month, they were hoping to make that statement in time to sway voters.Proponents tried to get the medical marijuana measure passed in 1998, but thenSecretary of State Vikki Buckley said they had not gathered the required 54,242 signatures. As the legal wrangling dragged on, the question remained on the ballot, but the results were not tallied.Even without the outcome of Poliac's trial to digest, voters will hear plenty of messages this fall, some factual, many just designed to tug at their heartstrings or play on their fears.Like the pitched battles over abortion or gay rights, the war over medical marijuana is often waged on an emotional front.On one side is the baggage of marijuana - the popular drug of the counterculture, a symbol of rule-breaking, of listless hippies and VW vans.Pitted against that are the images of hairless chemotherapy patients, skeletal AIDS patients, and people like Poliac.Cancer patients say marijuana relieves the roiling nausea brought on by chemotherapy. MS patients say it relieves their pain. And AIDS patients claim it gives them back an appetite.There is already a legal, pill form of marijuana that patients can get with a prescription.So why do initiative proponents insist that only smoked marijuana will do?"We want to give Colorado patients an additional treatment option," said Luther Symons of Ridder Braden public relations agency, which is heading the campaign this time around. "I don't want to see people become criminals trying to treat an illness."Chemotherapy patients say they have trouble keeping the Marinol pills down. And Poliac, who takes 10 to 15 pills a day, said he doesn't want to swallow another one.The issue has drawn the attention of nearly all the nation's medical heavyweights. The Colorado Medical Society, the American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association are opposed. This month, conservative scion William F. Buckley Jr. sounded a pro-medical marijuana note lamenting the death of a friend.Literature distributed by Coloradans Against Legalizing Marijuana, or CALM, hits the family-values hot button, describing the initiative as "bad for families," and the organization's spokesman, Dr. Joel Karlin, a past president of the Colorado Medical Society, calls it "the wrong message to send to our children." To which Chuck Thomas, of the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, fires back with his own charged rhetoric:"Someone with late-stage AIDS who weighs 85 pounds and is covered with Karposi's (purple skin lesions) is not something to make marijuana glamorous to use." Regardless of what a state's voters say about medical marijuana, federal law still trumps state law. And federal law says marijuana is illegal, period.In 1998, the U.S. Justice Department reminded California of that when it won a court order shutting down most of the state's cannabis clubs.Those who oppose Colorado's initiative raise the specter of medical marijuana unleashing a wave of efforts to legalize drugs from non-medical marijuana to heroin."This has been a campaign which has marched from state to state financed by wealthy out-of-state individuals whose purpose has been to legalize drugs," Karlin said.In Colorado, as in other states, much of the money backing the initiative comes from a California-based group called Americans for Medical Rights. That group has been linked to financier George Soros, an outspoken critic of the so-called war on drugs.Far from being a grassroots populist movement, initiatives are big-money endeavors that "really circumvent the democratic process," Karlin said. And the resulting constitutional amendment is far more difficult to amend or get rid of if it doesn't work out, he said."I have yet to have a person give to me a good, valid reason why this should become law," Karlin said.If the initiative is passed in Colorado, patients will have to grow their own marijuana, or buy it from dealers.With this delivery system, "the potency of marijuana varies greatly from one batch to another, so you don't really know what you're getting," or how much to use, Karlin said.And the initiative would let marijuana skip the usual, exacting process through which the Food and Drug Administration tests, and then tests some more, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, he said.Proponents, meanwhile, ask why doctors can legally prescribe for their patients drugs far more potentially addictive and toxic than marijuana - morphine, cocaine derivatives - without anyone warning about possible addiction or those drugs' influence on children.And backers of medical marijuana say hundreds of years of therapeutic cannabis use have left a library of unofficial research.In the United States, marijuana was not classified as a narcotic, off limits to everyone including doctors, until 1937.Then, in the '70s, the federal government legalized some medical marijuana use, sort of.The government created the "compassionate use" program, which allowed some glaucoma, cancer and other chronically ill patients to apply to receive marijuana grown by farmers at the University of Mississippi.Then in 1992, faced with a flood of AIDS applicants, the Bush administration decided those already enrolled could continue getting their marijuana, but nobody else could sign up. The Clinton administration has continued that policy.There are eight patients in the United States who get government-grown marijuana to use for medical conditions.The current move to legalize medical marijuana grew out of the discovery by AIDS patients that the same dope-smoking known for inducing insatiable munchies gave them back some of their lost appetite. Marijuana became a weapon to fight what doctors had begun calling wasting syndrome that left them hollow-eyed and emaciated.Researchers are working on a patch, like the one used to help the nicotine-addicted quit smoking, and a method of inhaling marijuana that would eliminate the toxicity of smoking it.Colorado voters won't have the luxury of waiting for either device to be perfected. So CALM and Coloradans for Medical Choice are busy gearing up for a vigorous campaign.Proponents have history on their side. No state's voters have nixed a medical marijuana initiative. And a March 1999 nationwide Gallup poll found that when asked whether they would vote for or against a measure to make marijuana legal when used to "reduce pain or suffering," 73 percent said they would vote in favor, 25 percent would vote against, and 2 percent had no opinion.In 1998, Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli found just slightly less lopsided support among Coloradans.That's one reason, Poliac said, that he's not too worried about going to jail."I just can't see my fellow Colorado people wanting to give me trouble about this," he said.E-mail: kauge denverpost.comPublished: July 16, 2000 Copyright 2000 The Denver Post.Related Articles & Web Site:Coloradans For Medical Rightshttp://www.medicalmarijuana.com/Here's a Chance To Say Nohttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6411.shtml2 Doctors, Attorney Fight Plan To Allow Medical Pot http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5455.shtml Patient To Test Drug Law in Court http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5110.shtmlBusybodies Trying To Stifle Debate http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread3044.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by Kanabys on July 17, 2000 at 07:46:19 PT
Is this right???
>>regardless of what a state's voters say about medical marijuana, federal law still trumps state law. And federal law says marijuana is illegal, period.Is this really the case? Or is there such as thing as state's rights? Can someone answer this?
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Comment #1 posted by Dr. Ganj on July 16, 2000 at 11:02:34 PT
Colorado Medical Marijuana Initiative
Look at this quote from the above article:"Proponents have history on their side. No state's voters have nixed a medical marijuana initiative" Yes, indeed, this will be one more state where the voters are taking control, and allowing the use of cannabis for their ill populace. It's the right thing to do, and that's why no other state has had a similar initiative fail.This will be a very important November, as other states are voting for even more progressive cannabis reform. Take a look at what happens this fall, and when we look back on when the war on cannabis finally collapsed, the most notable years will be 1996, and 2000. I can smell the sweet aroma of G13 x Hash Plant, and the wonderful scent of freedom wafting through the air!Dr. Ganj 
http://www.freehempinak.org/
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