cannabisnews.com: Lobbyist Hired to Resist Measure! 





Lobbyist Hired to Resist Measure! 
Posted by FoM on March 17, 1999 at 11:08:52 PT

The sponsors of Alaska's medical marijuana initiative are campaigning against a Senate bill they say will gut the law voters adopted at the ballot box. 
"What do you call a politician who tries to overturn a lawful election?" an actor says on a radio ad that began airing Tuesday. "Well, here in Alaska, we call him Sen. Loren Leman." Leman, R-Anchorage, says his bill is aimed at improving the law, for police and for the ill people the initiative claims to benefit. "I'm trying to make the new law work as represented," he said. The medical marijuana law took effect March 4. Approved by almost 60 percent of voters, it allows people to possess and use the drug if they have a written recommendation from their doctor. The doctor must specify that the patient has a "debilitating medical condition" and "might benefit from the medical use of marijuana." The law says eligible patients can register with the state to get an identification card, which may help them avoid arrest, although the state has not yet begun a registration program. Senate Bill 94 puts more limitations on the medical use of marijuana. Only people who have AIDS, cancer or glaucoma would be able to use marijuana, although the bill would allow the state to add other diseases to the list. It would require doctors to say there are no other effective, legal treatments that the patient can tolerate. Among other provisions, it would also make registration mandatory. David Finkelstein, who managed the Alaskans for Medical Rights campaign leading up to the November vote, said Leman's bill is unfair and would make it virtually impossible for anyone to use medical marijuana. Doctors, he said, are reluctant to write notes of the sort Leman's bill would require, especially when they can authorize powerful narcotics with a few strokes on their prescription pads. The radio ads, which are on the air in Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks, say Leman's bill steers people who want medical marijuana to take morphine. "What is this man thinking?" the ad asks. Leman said the bill is aimed at limiting medical marijuana to the people it is intended for. In November, he said, voters decided they didn't want to deny marijuana to a patient in the last stages of a fatal disease. The problem, he said, is the initiative was written so broadly that it would encourage allow people with a headache or backache to try to evade enforcement of the drug laws. His bill was written, he said, with help of state and local law enforcement officials. They've complained that the law would be a nightmare for officers on the street. "If you make it work better for law enforcement, it will also work better for those who ostensibly need it," Leman said. Connie Schill of Sutton doesn't think Leman's bill will help her. She has a degenerative nerve disease that she says causes her extreme pain. She takes as many as 500 morphine-derived pills a month. Marijuana, she said, calms her stomach and helps her keep food, water and medication down. "It is one of the few things I have found that will work on me," she said. She believes Leman's bill would endanger her right to use marijuana as medicine, since she doesn't have AIDS, cancer or glaucoma but a disease so rare most people have never heard of it. "There are an awful lot of diseases out there that don't have the publicity of AIDS but are the same living hell," she said. Leman said he is open to making changes in the bill. He expects it to get its first committee hearing next week. Alaskans for Medical Rights has hired lobbyist Sharon Macklin to fight the bill in Juneau, Finkelstein said, and is paying her $5,000. Finkelstein won't say how much money the campaign has to fight Leman's bill or where exactly it came from. Now that the issue is not on the ballot, he is no longer required to disclose that information. Before the election, Alaskans for Medical Rights received most of its money, more than $120,000, from a California group called Americans for Medical Rights.  http://www.adn.com/stories/T99031767.html Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at lruskin adn.com
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